Unlike most countries, who have had this movie for a week or two, Return of the King opened in Australia today. Traditionally, I've been going to the Lord of the Rings movies with my family, and with my brother in town today, this was no exception.

In no particular order:

• This movie kicked more arse than a platoon of arse-kicking machines set on overdrive.
• Sam and Frodo really should have just shagged and got it over with.
• Too much 'meaningful' slow-motion. Especially of the aforementioned hobbits staring into each others eyes. Not only did it feel manipulative, if you'd run more of the slo-mo stuff at full-speed, the movie would have been substantially shorter (and maybe you could have kept Saruman in)
• My mother, when questioned about her preferring Legolas to Aragorn, replied "It must be the pointy ears". I'm starting to wonder if the elf thing is hereditary.
• Sam spent almost all of the movie crying. A little more contrast of moods might have been good, but I guess there's only so much you can do with the source material.
• While the ending was drawn out, the story had to end with the departure of Frodo into the West, and there's little of the stuff in between that could have been cut out without making the departure meaningless.
• I was surprised to learn Aragorn hadn't had Anduril for the last two movies. I'd just assumed the sword had been one of those details that got skipped. I dunno, I just thought the reforging sequence was dead weight. The movie would have worked just as well if he'd had the sword with him all along.
• Aside from that, most of the other changes they made to the books were pretty justifiable in terms of making the movie work better.
• Particularly, the decision to be up-front about who Eowyn-in-disguise was from the start was a good one: Miranda Otto wouldn't have made a convincing bloke, and the effect would just have been comical.
• As visually impressive as the beacon sequence was, I was left wondering how the hell they had people at the top of those really high mountains all day manning them.
• When going to see a three hour movie, buy the small drink. I learned this lesson years ago, but from the rash of departures around the two-hour mark, a lot of people didn't realise that most people's bladder capacity is somewhat less than one of those big-gulp coke cups.
• The movie really did kick arse.