is everybody crazy?

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2004)

I still don't like these films, but this was the least intolerable of the three. I think it had the greatest departures from the books in plot, but was perhaps the closest to the books in meaning. I'm not even talking about all the characters and events left out; there's lots of stuff here that never happened in the book.
The acting is sometimes painful. Frodo and Sam are particularly given to intervals of mawkishness. Gimli is shamefully used for comic relief. The dialogue's just horrible; exposition is awkward ("A diversion!") - I suspect the actors are giving the director what he's asked for, it's the director and writers I question. Anyway, the adults come out okay except Eomer, reduced to mere grimacing in the background. It's the little people who suffer.
Visuals are often not to my taste, but are impressive. Frodo always glows. Everything hobbity is very golden-lit and twinkly and twee - I think that's the worst setting mistake. Hobbits should be those we identify with most closely, not those we're distanced from. Minas Tirith is barely glimpsed before it's overrun by the Goths and Visigoths; Edoras outshines it.
I don't like the battle scenes. Cuts to show the sea of Orcs menacing a small city of troop of Men are unimpressive after so many repetitions, and the fighting scenes are very rapidly cut and look kinda undercranked and unfocussed, especially when using lots of CG troops. Necessary perhaps, but it still looks bad.
What was right? They made a great scene of the lighting of the signal fires, and the relay from hill to hill, though it went on too long. The songs were good. The human kings rallying their troops to hopeless battles were actually magnificent. Gandalf was less the remote magician and more the humanized power than in the first two movies. The tone is more epic than in the first two installments - they seemed to use scale of battles and scale of scenery as a substitute for theme and pace. ROTK didn't make me look at my watch nearly as much as FOTR and TTT. And there's more Viggo, whom I love, but he may not be quite as good. *sigh*
Anyway, it's still pretty crummy. Gak! Also, I think this one would be _very_ hard to understand without having read the books or seen the first two - I wished I'd refreshed my memory of the previous movie before watching this.