In theaters

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, directed by Peter Jackson, written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Jackson, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, 201 minutes, rated PG-13.

Midway through Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” the spectacular final installment in the director’s epic journey through Middle-earth, Jackson unleashes an extended battle sequence that’s among the best ever captured on film.

That’s no overstatement. Shot in Jackson’s native New Zealand, whose mountainous terrain and lush valleys have proved perfect for the series, “The Return of the King” mounts one of the most thrilling, superb re-enactments of war shot for a movie.

It’s fantastic, bloody and exhausting, an orgy of carnage stunning in the sheer audacity of its scope and the ferocity of its vision. It creates the same sort of sensation D.W. Griffith’s Civil War epics “Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance”- or Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” for that matter – must have generated some nine decades ago, when movies were still relatively new and had the power to fully surprise.

As was the case with its predecessors, 2001’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” and last year’s “The Two Towers,” “The Return of the King” is as big and as overstuffed as a summer’s worth of blockbusters, featuring a literate cast with a commercial eye. The first hour is just as uneven and as occasionally plodding as the first hour of each previous film, but when Jackson digs in to deliver the goods, he does so with masterful flourishes that are undeniably great.

Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Jackson from J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1,000-plus-page opus, “The Return of the King” launches audiences into the last leg of the story, pushing forward as if there hasn’t been a year in between movies – or the distraction of our own wars to absorb – and that those in attendance will be fully up to speed on where things stand now.

This approach will work for the legions of fans who know the series intimately, but for those who don’t, “Rings” and “Towers” are required viewing.

In brief, the quest at hand: The hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood), entrusted to save Middle-earth by keeping the Ring of Power from its vicious creator, Sauron, dark lord of Mordor, is moving closer to the fiery pits of Mount Doom with his friend Sam (Sean Astin) at his side and the monstrous Gollum (Andy Serkis) as their duplicitous guide.

Only at Mount Doom, where the ring was originally forged in a gathering of evil and hate, can its seductive powers be extinguished and Sauron stopped. Getting there has proved more taxing and dangerous than any of them expected.

Paralleling this story is another: Gandalf (Ian

McKellen), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), hobbits Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd), dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and master archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) come together to distract Sauron so Frodo can complete his unenviable task. Along the way, the battles of Minas Tirith and Pelennor Fields are fought, giant winged serpents sweep from the skies to do their ugly snatching, an enormous spider challenges Frodo in Shelob’s Lair, a vast army of the dead marches to victory and countless lives are lost.

Seamlessly blurring the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated, “The Return of the King” is by far the year’s best-looking film. It deserves the Academy Award nominations its art direction, costumes, makeup and digital effects will receive.

Just as in “The Two Towers,” nowhere is Jackson’s technical greatness better realized than in the character Gollum, the former hobbitlike creature whose lust for the ring has turned him into a ruined freak divided between the good and evil festering within himself.

Completely computer-animated, he is a feat of showmanship of the first order and once again steals the show with the sleepless malice that controls him.

When he’s onscreen, he eclipses those around him, drawing one into the well of his wide, troubled eyes, where he holds you in his grasp in ways matched only by Wood and Astin in the film’s climactic scenes.

There, with their haunted faces framed by the fires of Mount Doom, these two actors do their finest work in the series.

If the movie errs, it is, in fact, in its ending – or to be more accurate, in its series of endings. Jackson doesn’t know when to stop this cinematic child of his and, as such, he lets it run loose onscreen, dragging out several false conclusions (and honoring “The Wizard of Oz” and the first “Star Wars” series in the process) before his movie – all 31/2 hours of it – finally comes to an end.

Also missing rather conspicuously is Christopher Lee’s Saruman, Sauron’s powerful ally, who was so chilling and instrumental in “Towers,” yet who was cut because the director thought his scenes slowed the movie. He will be part of the reassembled DVD release, which will feature a good deal of the cut footage, but the face of evil he represented is sorely lacking here.

Still, what an amazing achievement. Some Tolkien purists will be disappointed at all that was lost in the translation, but they still have the books, which haven’t changed, and they can turn to them for solace. Jackson has covered more territory than anyone could have hoped for or imagined, and he has done so in a series of films that have raised the bar for moviemaking. Only now can his work be fully and fairly judged, but how best to judge it?

Give him the Academy Award.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.