I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on saturday. And just like the Matrix sequels, I knew I'd love it a long time before the usher split my ticket. And I really did.

The movie starts off with a short sequence depicting Sméagol's turn into the evil Gollum. This scene, although very informative, was not as great as the opening sequence from The Two Towers where Gandalf fights the dragon like creature. Anyway, we then cut to present times, and follow Frodo, Sam and the evil Gollum in their journey to Mount Doom, where they have to destroy the one ring. Similar to the second installment, we actually follow three inter-related subplots, the second and third one dealing with Gandalf, Aragon and the rest of the fellowship of the ring. This time around we fight to save Minas Tirith, the throne of the Kingdom of Gondor, in particular, and Middle Earth in general. In the end it all depends on the destruction of the ring, goodness prevails and all the subplots come together as one great movie. You even have King Aragon's ballad to look forward to.

The battle scenes here are even bigger, and may be even better, as POST and SFX technologies are improving every minute. It's still amazing how designers from a little known company called WETA in the small pacific nation of New Zealand managed to pull off the best ever (read ultra realistic) effects ever. You have to see it in the theatre to fully understand what I'm talking about. Just don't forget to read this before you do.

This is indeed part of a nine hour masterpiece in film-making history. The Return of the King alone runs 3 hours 21 minutes, which would most probably pass 4 hours in the extended DVD version that will come out next holiday season. I'm definitely getting the trilogy DVD set.

The movie is already on it's way to earn $500 million worldwide... meaning that the trilogy will easily get to the $3 billion mark. Not bad at all for a previously little known director such as Jackson.

I'm waiting for King Kong already. :)