The ending of the book is far longer. I suspect the extended DVD will cover some of that.

The only thing that bothered me about the ending was the annoying amount of shots of people from earlier in the story. It's like, at the roof of minas tirith, everybody salutes the king, there's horseguy number one, and horseguy number two with the little scar, and there's the poison tester from denethor's castle who was in a one second shot before the fire, and there's the orc from the first movie eating a bit of elf bread, and there's the balrog, etc. Not to mention the mouthing of "aragorn". That made me cringe.

However, the battle for minas tirith and other similar scenes still made it okay for me, though I'm hoping the extended dvd solves the problems, which I suspect it will. Clearly, Jackson intended to make the extended movies, and the theatrical releass are his compromise to the studios in order to get them done. Elsewise, the dvd's would simplyt have added scenes you could watch or not, whereas the extended dvd's do not have that option.

But again, the end of the books is much longer. I've always felt Tolkein had an amazing ability to come up with imagery and story, and a passable ability to put them into words, with enough occasional flashes of style to sell it to enough people. To me, the movies are great, because they take his huge amount of detail work, and make it so I don't have to read it.