Bad CGI scenes?

Return of the King’s Extended Edition primarily adds the confrontation with Saruman, an extended Paths of the Dead sequence, the Witch King confronting Gandalf in Minas Tirith, romance between Eowyn and Faramir, the Mouth of Sauron and more of Frodo and Sam in Mordor.

I’m not really seeing worse CGI here than in the rest of the film, and actually, not that much CGI dominated scenes at all. Really only the Paths of the Dead.

Meanwhile it adds stuff crucial to the story. Saruman at least should’ve been in the theatrical release because it leaves a huge loose end by skipping him. Christopher Lee was also quite surprised and puzzled at the time because of this exclusion, and was a bit angry over it to Peter Jackson. Obviously they reconciled in the end because Lee happily appeared in the Hobbit trilogy for as big a role as he had in Lord of the Rings.

Anyway I think you should give the Extended Edition another chance.

I watched all versions more than 10 times, so giving them a second chance is not possible anymore :P

I might be exaccerating a bit, but I'm mostly talking about the extra scenes around the battle of Gondor before the rohirim arive. The trolls (and massive fields of orcs) seem to be glitching a lot in the extra scenes (the first time I saw that I was really thinking, wtf, did they forget to finish these scenes or something?) and it took me out of the movie a bit. Furthtermore,  the extra scene around the  'nothing can brake the door', 'Wolf can brake it', was really weak and I think the scene between Gandalf and the Wizard King was a lot less epic than in the book, so I didn't mind that they skipped that one in the theatrical version :)

My parents were big LOTR fans (as am I) so growing up we always watched the extended versions (religiously, starting every 22nd of September, since that's Bilbo and Frodo's birthday) and only in recent years did I rediscover the cinema cuts.

So I've watched the extended versions a lot more than the theatrical versions, and tbh I just find the former too long.

Gotta say that I really loved these movies in when I first saw them in the theatres.  However, I appreciate the extended versions so much more.  I've never read the books and there are several parts that didn't quite make sense until I saw the extended cut.  For example, it wasn't totally clear that there were two battles going on at the end of Two Towers.  In the theatrical release the focus is almost entirely on Helm's Deep, and the Ents vs. Saruman just get a few fragmented scenes.

The extended versions do seem a little too slow on pacing, but it is worth it, because there is just too much cut out of the theatrical versions and certain plotlines get muddied.

They cut some important exposition about Aragorn in Two Towers, about his Numenorian heritage. They also cut the encounter of Gandalf and the Witch King out... although in the film it took place on the way to the Citadel and in the book it was at the front gate. With Fellowship, I agree with Curl, while those bits fit importantly in with the psychology of the books, in the much more simplistic snapshot of the story the films give, they don't really fit. 

That aside, I found the theatrical version of Two Towers had poor pacing compared to the extended edition. It feels much more like he cut up what was otherwise an excellent film as far as blockbusters go and instead made something clearly inferior to the Fellowship of the Ring the year before. I think the Extended edition did a lot more to fix the story, especially for the people who had never read the books - I always found it weird why someone would want to see the film Lord of the Rings without reading the books... It's kind of like wanting to read a book about a Star Wars film without watching the film, except reverse.