The Lord of the Rings has been a touchstone for most of my life. My father discovered the books when he was in school and eventually passed the novels on to me. If you knew my father, you might consider this story an odd thing for him to take a passionate interest in. He spent almost 25 years doing mindless, physical dock work for a freight company. He's been a lifelong motorhead, having personally driven, fixed, scrapped and re-built hundreds of cars throughout our family's history. (The whole car thing never quite made it to me.) But if you knew my father, you might have uncovered this fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece of fantasy.

To my knowlege, he's never read any other single work of fantasy. Quite frankly, he's not even a reader of fiction, period. But something about LOTR grabbed and held him... to the point where he can recite lines, discuss the minutae of chapters and characters, and generally "geek out" over it in a manner worthy of the biggest D&D anime gamer Star Wars fans. He's even read The Simarillion, a thick, dense, posthumous Tolkien novel that you have to be truly hardcore to attack.

He is an exacting fan, and we have had many conversations on the movies, their strengths and weaknesses. Overall - beyond overall - we're thrilled with them. Now, having seen Return of the King, we've experienced nearly the entire scope of Peter Jackson's adaptation. They're quite a balancing act. For every slight misstep, there's ample scenes of perfection to rein it all back in. You don't like Arwen's stand at the Ford of Bruinen? Just sit tight until the reveal of an aged, hobbling Bilbo and his heart-wrenching reunion with Frodo. A little put off by the way in which Merry and Pippin trick Treebeard into witnessing the devastation of the Gap of Isen? You're about to see Ents go apeshit against the cauldrons and axes of a thousand Orcs. Confused as to the continuing presence of Osgiliath, a city that Tolkien had abandoned years before? The Pelannor Fields battle is frame for frame an astonishing barrage of war and confusion and loss.

For purists, the film version is more akin to a Greatest Hits collection of scenes from the books. In that regard, there are very few disappointments. In fact, I'm often left to wonder what people might think who haven't read the books, because the book can explain things that the movie can't. I read one dickhead's critical review of the trilogy (and he was being critical solely for the sake of being critical, because he thought the entire franchise needed to be brought down a few pegs and he was just the prick to do it) where he expressed disgust at, among other things, Elrond neglecting to wrest the Ring from Isildur in the Prologue, but then complaining about the weakness of men during the conference at Rivendell. Vitriol aside, it's a valid point. One that requires some additional reading of the text and even some reading into Elrond's thoughts as presented in the movie. The answer being that young Elrond was little more than a drummer boy during the Last Alliance of Men and Elves and the movie kinda fudged that whole scene just to give some weight to Elrond's words and warnings. If you're going to judge these three films as merely three films, you might come away with questions and plotholes... but I would say that's not seeing the forest for the trees, because these are more than movies, these are accomplishments of emotion and vision, buoyed by a backstory of the finest literary traditions and propelled through the endurance of the best of modern cinema. There's so much that's right that it's difficult, even useless, to consider what might be wrong.

That was pretentious. Especially if this sort of thing isn't your cup of tea.

I was floored by the relentless march of scenes. Where Fellowship has that pleasant meander to it, and Two Towers the staccato point-counterpoint of the divergent storylines, Return of the King is almost cruel in its continuous thrust of moment after moment. Only three hours long? I could have sat for twice that and not noticed. And even after you hit all the major conflicts - all the terrible dramatic battle bits you've been anticipating for three years - there's an unexpected parade of soothing epilogues, as if to calm you down and pat you on the head and send you off fulfilled and happy.

Now there's just one more wait to go, the wait for the Extended Edition of the DVD. And maybe, just maybe, The Hobbit.