After I saw the animated version of Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi, I was pretty upset. Now that I've seen the animated version of Return of the King, Bakshi's version seems like Oscar material compared to this drudgery.<br /><br />I'm sure enough people have seen the new versions of Lord of the Rings to know that it's not impossible to make a good film adaptation of the books. However, it is mind-boggling to wonder how and why the people that made Return of the King couldn't come close to making it even remotely enjoyable. There is NO cohesion to the story, as the movie starts out with Frodo and company sitting around and talking about how glorious their victory was. WHAT victory? The movie just started! Then we see the hobbits running around Mordor without any understandable explanation to how they got there. Granted, I read the books and knew why, but you can't just leave the narration so open-ended like that.<br /><br />I need to take this next paragraph to smash on the music alone. It is SO horrible. I wanted to smash myself for letting my ears be raped with such aural torture. The story has some made-up character called "the Minstrel of Gondor" sing most of the narration, and therefore we hear repeated lines such as "why does he have nine fingers??" on the soundtrack.<br /><br />This is probably the most deplorable movie I've seen in a very long time. I would recommend it only to those who need to understand what a bad movie really is.<br /><br />1-10 Scale Overall-2 Direction-2 Animation-3 Music-1 Story-4