“…but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.”

As good an ending as one could expect from the overlong, flawed, but — you know what? — still endearing trilogy of films. While it should have been a duology, what happened happened and this is what we have. So let’s all just chill out and hang with Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, an aggressively digital Billy Connolly and company.

My VHS cover pull-quote: “Lord of the what? Return of the who? Oh, right. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the crowning achievement in a trilogy of crowning achievements. Yeah, this isn’t as good as that, but it isn’t terrible and Middle Earth is always a fun place to visit.”