Well. I saw it.
Finally saw Return of the Kings. Didn’t like it nearly as much; they left out a lot of the stuff from the books, and made up some other stuff. Perhaps part of my dislike is that I saw it with chills and a sore throat and a fever of 102. Major spoilers ahead, if you haven’t seen it or at least read the books.
Some of the new stuff was quite good (like the Paths of the Dead), and some of it pretty wretched (the “new” ending when they return to the Shire, mostly). As always, the stuff they did include was very well done, except (of course) for Galadriel and Arwen. No, Tolkien didn’t put in much about women characters. Deal with it. And don’t insist on turning Arwen into Studly Heroine and Mystical Dea Ex Machina just for the sake of making her “cool”. And for crying out loud, don’t over-do the stuff about how “the Eldar is leaking out of her” because “her life is now bound up in the Ring” (why? she never carried it, barely even saw it). The original wasn’t THAT hard to understand, and it was much better than the chopped-up muck they put in the movie… They meet when he stays with her father, he falls in love, she puts him off, she changes her mind when he goes off and becomes heroic, she decides to give up elfhood and her ticket to the Undying Lands for his sake, they get married at the end. Ta-da.
Good points: Shelob (and I can see why anyone with an aversion to spiders would be cringing!). The final struggle over the Ring. Frodo and Sam in Mordor (except for the bit where Gollum turns Frodo against Sam, but that really was well done and believable, I just didn’t like it much). The fact that Frodo *did* get to keep his pants after being “rescued” by the orcs (phew!). The battle scenes, as always. The Riders gave me goosebumps they were so well done, except for the odd use of Celtic knotwork as decoration on all their tents and robes and stuff… the books make them seem much more Middle English or Scandinavian. (Unlike the unexpectedly-Irish Pippin.) The Witch-King. The Oliphaunts. Paths of the Dead, and the battle at the landings. (Can’t believe I’ve forgotten the name of the landings, but it’s at the mouth of the Anduin.)
Overall: Seemed most like they tried to take a huge oil painting and turn it into a cartoon. It was a very well done cartoon, and, taken all alone, it’d definitely be an excellent movie (series) (I still think the “new” ending was very, very weak… leave out the Saruman in the Shire stuff if you must, but they’ve also chopped off a huge bit of the hobbits. And they’re not so big they have many bits to lose!). But, having grown up with the painting, it’s hard not to dislike what they’ve done in the cartoon. 
