I am a Peter Jackson fan. I just don't understand what made part III SO much better than I or II. Was there seriously an increase in the drama of the final installment? Could the first two have been improved (or is the EXTRA footage on the DVD an acknowledgement of this).
Dr, Jeckyll won a couple of awards (although the first WINNING film was suppressed for awhile).
Aliens got a nod (Rambo in outer space).
It wasn't really that ROTK was so much better. The fact that it was acclaimed, however, and the fact that it was the third in the trilogy, when the first two had lost Best Picture, made for a feeling that it was owed. A lot of people say that ROTK's win was more for the entire trilogy, and that the Academy decided to wait for its conclusion to reward it, rather than give Best Picture to an unfinished story. While one could argue the specifics of that assertion, there is a lot of truth in it. The Academy can be strange in its reasoning.
Anyway, ROTK was the first ever fantasy Best Picture winner, amazingly. No sci-fi film has ever won Best Picture, and The Silence of the Lambs is the only Horror film to win it. Star Wars, E.T., Beauty and the Beast (the Disney animation) and The Wizard of Oz come to mind as other fantasy BP nominees. As for Horror, The Exorcist, Jaws and The Sixth Sense were nominated. The Academy obviously prefers drama.