Best of the three?

Fellowship of the Ring, since it's also the book I enjoyed the most.

Cheers, DeepThought
 
My favorite was The Return of the King. Can't remember which book was my favorite while reading them (it's been awhile) but I thoroughly enjoyed the last movie. Everything seemed to work perfectly together, special effects, acting, music, etc.
 
I haven't read the whole thread - just Brian's initial comment and this page - but I was so surprised I had to say that I liked TTT far and away the best of the three.

We had finished with all the introductions, the fellowship was well established, though two lost, and we had all the lovely Rohan stuff - my absolute favourite part of the books.

And as for the battle of Helm's Deep, nothing in ROTK matched it for me. And together with many others I missed the Scouring (not "scourging" please note) of the Shire from the last film, together with the proper ending of Saruman and Wormtongue.

So, although there are wonderful moments in the other films - House of Elrond, Moria, death of Boromir ("My brother, my captain, my king" - not a dry eye in the house), the Argonath in the first one and everything to do with Faramir and Eowyn, the Paths of the Dead and Gollum in the third - it's the Two Towers for me all the way.

Mary
 
Well i rate 2 separed ways: longest and more action

LOTR 1 _ 4/5 - 3/5
LOTR 2 _ 4/5 - 5/5
LOTR 3 _ 5/5 - 5/5

Best - LOTR 3
 
TTT for me, the Battle for Helms Deep is brill and then there are the Ents (the last march of the Ents music is my second favourite. Although there is the whole charge of the Rohirrim and the sheer scale of the Minas Tirth battle, are great, the actual siege of Minas Trith itself doesn't quite live up to the scale they set it up for, IMHO. It's pretty close (although The Fields (from the Rohirrim charge, is my single favourite song, atm)
 
FOTR demains my favourite movie. When I went to see it at the cinema for the first time ( I went three times) i wasn't sure Peter J could do justice to my favourite book. But after the opening scene I was already starting to relax and enjoy the spectacle:)

Besides that point I really love the film for its character moments and the mines of Moria. And well just about everything else about the experience.
 
It was the imagery in the first movie that makes it my favorite. To see Gandalf's fireworks display for real was wonderful. Bilbo's farewell speech just as I pictured it. The scene of the 9 Black Riders chasing after Arwen on her one white horse was stunning. To actually see the foaming river with the charging horse waves was a real treat. Same with the awesome depiction of the Balrog. There are many more. For some reason the scenes I most wanted to see visually was in the first film.

Although the single most awesome part of the trilogy, IMHO, was the Battle of Helms Deep in The Two Towers. Pure genius the way that was put together.

RotK is probably my least favorite of the set. Though the Battle for Gondor was more massive, I don't think it was as epic as Helm's Deep. Frodo's journey, which makes up a big part of the film was never interesting to me in the book; and that carried over to the movie as well.

And it has always annoyed the Dickens out of me that the Wraith King put the smack down on Gandalf. Jackson made that up from whole cloth as that was never stated in the book. I always felt Gandalf could take him!
 
FOTR, hands down. It's the closest to the books and most of the changes can be forgiven. I even like that Boromir is more fleshed out and likable than in the books.

TTT and ROTK are just crappy Hollywood treatment of one of the greatest works of Western literature.
 
I think they're about the same. The only characters I liked were Sam and Gollum.
 
On reflection, I think the quality of film-making, acting and cinematography are similarly good in all three films, so it comes down to storyline for me. And those where Jackson monkeyed around with JRRT's plot most are less good. Hence:

FOTR: Largely like the book, and I enjoyed it tremendously. PJ made up the Arawen story line, and missed out the Barrow-wights but otherwise I was more or less ok with this film.
TTT: PJ mucked around with this book far too much. Elves at Helm's Deep really pissed me off. And those dog-things didn't look anything like Wargs. And what the hell was that bit with Aragorn falling off a cliff? Well made and enjoyable romp, but too much of it wasn't Tolkein for me.
ROTK: Wonderful Hollywood film, and PJ kept fairly closely to the book here, but still, there were numerous glaring departures. Pippen (Billy Boyd) stole the show for me.

So, the first one is preferred.

I hope someone remakes them one day and actually sticks to the books. Same goes for the Hobbit, having said that.
 
I just saw this thread and it brings back memories. Hard to believe these movies are already a decade old. Time flies.

Choosing the best of the three is a fairly simple task for me though. First of all, it's a only a contest between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King as far as I'm concerned; in The Two Towers, the Frodo and Sam storyline was deliberately held back to save the Shelob sequence for the next movie, giving us a meaningless side trip to Osgiliath. Add that to Aragorn's fake death and the unnecessary Arwen scenes and you've got a lot of time-wasting going on. And that's the last thing you need in movies as long as these ones were.

Also, I still can't understand why the Shelob sequence was held off for the third movie. I know Peter Jackson has said that chronologically, it belonged there but I doubt that was his true motive for holding it back. It seems far more likely that he wanted to pack the final act with everything but the kitchen sink and it was the wrong move. The cliffhanger ending the Shelob sequence provides in the books was so wonderfully cinematic, why would an adaption of the story for the cinema eschew it? It makes no sense.

So that leaves The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King but for my money, I'm going to go for the first of these.

I like the more linear narrative. It's not as jumpy. The smaller scope of the story allows you to spend more time with certain characters and it's the only movie of the three that feels self-contained. No, the ring is not destroyed but it tells the tale of the formation of the fellowship of the ring, the trials and tribulations its members share and ultimately, the breaking of the fellowship.

I also feel it is more atmospheric, especially when it reaches the scenes in the mines and Lothlorien. The only real thing I didn't particular care for was the sickly orange hue to the Rivendell scenes.

An additional point in its favour is that, while all the movies attempted to walk a line somewhere between straightforward adaptations and more cinematic enterprises, I feel that The Fellowship of the Ring is the only movie of the three that did this particularly well.

Finally, of all three, The Fellowship of the Ring is the only movie that I thought had real tension. Although I know Gandalf returns, his fall in Moria is nonetheless wrenching and the impact on the other members of the fellowship feel all too real. And the Urak-hai attack on the surviving members at the end still holds up and is easily the most powerful battle scene of the three movies. It may be the smallest in scale but it's the one the has the most tension because the danger feels real. You can't help thinking that at any moment, Aragorn could get killed while in the other movies, he may as well be Superman. It's also a good example of how the movie balanced fidelity to the source material with the needs of the cinema, giving the story a satisfying ending and depicting a pivotal sequence that was glossed over in the books.

Compare all that to Return of the King, with its ponderous beginning (the ending of The Two Towers transposed), less focused plot lines, almost superhuman protagonists (Legolas, I am looking at you) and bloated self-indulgence, and it's really no contest.
 
Sorry for the double-post. I wanted to write 'adaptation' instead of 'adaption' in the third paragraph but the editing window has closed, that wonderful but short period of time in which we can check out what we wrote and fix those typos.

Anyway, the main point is that I prefer The Fellowship of the Ring to the other movies in the trilogy.

Oh, and since I'm at it, I also wanted to chime in my agreement with Gordian Knot regarding Gandalf and the Witch King. Even if one ignores fidelity to the books, the way that played out in the Extended Edition DVD disregarded what preceded it in the movies: Aragorn could fight off several Nazgul. Gandalf is more powerful than Aragorn, as evidenced by the fact that he defeated a Balrog and bested Saruman, both presumably more powerful opponents than the Witch King.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of silliness in the movie adaptation (yes, got it right this time) of Return of the King.
 
Excellent points in favour of Fellowship.

I wish I could say something as sophisticated, but Return of the King had the charge of the Rohirrim in it, so I'm voting for that one. :)

Legolas wasn't appealing in the trilogy, but he was not particularly bad in ROTK, was he?
 
Wow. Thanks, guys.

The charge of the Rohirrim was a definite highlight of the trilogy as well. It was quite exhilarating. And I really liked the way that Peter Jackson and company made that scene so convincing... by actually getting hundreds of people, dressing them up in armour and putting them all on horses. While this was not unheard of in the real golden days of epic cinema - the charge on Aqabar in Lawrence of Arabia quickly comes to mind - in this day and age with the heavy reliance on CGI, that's something of a breath of a fresh air.

As for Legolas, he wasn't dislikeable as such, but The Return of the King pushed his superhero abilities a little too far for me. The Two Towers started it of course with stunts like Legolas skateboarding down a flight of stairs on an Urak-hai shield but the scene with the Oliphant in the third movie took it all a bit too far.

I also had a problem with it as I felt the filmmakers, while finding things for Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to do, undermined important scenes for other characters. And with the Oliphant scene, that came right after Merry and Eowyn defeated the Witch King.

Then later in the movie, Aragorn and friends are seen lounging around in the great hall of Minas Tirith while Merry, Eowyn and King Theoden don't rate so much as a word.

There were obvious parts of the book that should have been included here. I think Prince Imrahil is important for one thing, as with Faramir incapacitated, there needs to be a sufficiently high-ranked person among the people of Gondor to welcome Aragorn into the city. However, one thing I would notice even if I had not read the books would be that Eowyn and Faramir are left by the wayside from this point of the movie onwards.

As I understand it, the problem is that Peter Jackson and his colleagues thought that Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were as much central characters as the hobbits were and that they therefore needed to have more to do in the movies than they did in the books. However, I feel that they are still supporting characters in the story and that it was wrong of the filmmakers to build them up at the expense of other supporting characters.

Still, for all its flaws, it's an impressive piece of cinema and I'd say that about all three of the films, The Two Towers included.

Even if one didn't particularly for the story, I think they'd still have to admit that for any film to bring an imaginary setting to life as well as this trilogy did is a feat deserving of considerable praise.
 
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