Fox411 weighs in on the premiere of “Return of the King” and predicts that Oscar noms are in the offing for Best Picture, Best Actor (Ian McKellen), Best Supporting Actor (Sean Astin), and Best Director (Peter Jackson). Two good quotes:

[The film is] three hours and 12 minutes long. Right before the lights went down, Wood shouted to the audience: “Don’t forget to pee.” It’s better advice than Gandalf ever gave anyone.

And a tidbit about the opening of the movie:

Jackson, Frances Walsh and writer Philippa Boyens have added a prologue of sorts to the very beginning of “King” in honor of actor Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum. For the first two installments, you only see Serkis as the CGI character. Now we get a 10-minute introduction explaining how he became this rotten creature. Serkis is every bit as good “real” as he is computerized.

As someone who was bummed that the real story of Smeagol’s gaining possession of the ring wasn’t shown in the first movie, I’m glad to hear that it’s added in here. But this now makes for another element from earlier in the saga that has been added on to an already overloaded third installment. (And couldn’t it have enlivened The Two Towers, which was missing both the beginning and ending of the book? They could have added that as a flashback when Frodo says, “You were one of the river people…”) No wonder they had to eliminate Saruman’s entire appearance from “King”! This is going to be one cramped film, I can already tell that much.