THE GREATEST TEN AND A HALF MINUTES IN THE HISTORY OF MOVIES, YOU GUYS.  From Eowyn & Merry getting knocked off the horse, though the moment when Theoden, well…this takes almost exactly ten and a half minutes, and I have to watch it through eyes full of tears because Miranda Otto has this completely terrified and stricken expression on her face (which you can see despite that big stupid-looking helmet) and she’s clearly scared out of her mind but she is going to get up and she’s going to kill that monster, because she doesn’t understand that it’s impossible and she doesn’t know how to do anything else.

This is an amazing stretch of film, it’s the time that our heroes go from the point of losing to winning (not technically but narratively) and IN ADDITION to the amazing stuff that’s going on with Eowyn, you also get (a) Gandalf explaining how they’re all going to die but it doesn’t really matter (b) Aragorn jumping out of a boat (when I saw this in the theater for the first time, it’s possible I involuntarily yelped “Viggo!” in a manner that — fortunately — caused the total stranger in the seat next to me to crack up laughing rather than to punch me and (c) Legolas climbing a ginormous MOVING elephant creature, then managing to knock it down while standing on its head.

I’ll be the first to admit there’s some fat in these movies that could have been trimmed.  But if you told me I could never watch another movie again and from this point forward could only watch that ten and a half minutes of Return of the King in a continuous loop?  I’d be okay with that.