[Anguirel]

I think the first two, by rights, should have a longer life-expectancy than the third.

All were visually beautiful, but money can buy much of that.

FOTR caught the elegiac essence of the book, and was also indisputably helped by Bean's Boromir and McKellen's Gandalf the Grey (he lost a lot of that roguish spark as the White).

TTT made the book into mincemeat with hearty zeal, but I still love it, far beyond either of the other two, I must say. Miranda Otto was a brilliant Eowyn, Dourif made Wormtongue, and the whole feel of Rohan seemed to have created something extremely evocative. The soundtrack was brilliant, the battle and its reasoning worked.

ROTK was over-Oscared. For me, only its beauty is going for it, really. The Field of the Pelennor was horrific, that whole subplot veered towards some of Orlando Bloom's more piratical films...the Frodo strand was essentially well done but marred by lembas antics, etc...