Waiting for the de-cheesified version

Rating: Null/10 (22 December 2003)

First off: the effects in the battle scenes were awesome. The technical team behind this movie is the greatest that's ever been assembled, bar none.
But there are deep flaws in this movie, flaws that could have been fixed very easily and cheaply. You forget about them during the battle scenes, but you can't escape them.
The most serious general flaw is the unforgivable shallowness of the characters. Really, they are pure lifeless caricatures. Everybody declares their one "motivation" and then follows it. Sam "protects Frodo". Frodo "is a good hobbit who tries to do the right thing but the ring tempts him." Theodan (played well, at least) hesitates before he helps Gondor, but in a "Lucas-moment" captured on camera he decides, for no apparent reason, to ride down to his death in Gondor anyway. Denethor (the second-most butchered character of the trilogy) is just mad and villainous for some inexplicable reason, so Gandalf whacks him a few times to get him out of the way. It's fine, because he's apparently evil. Faromir (the most butchered character) had his Lucas-moment transformation in the last movie, and here he is just a prop. (Good actor; terrible role). Who else... Yes, Aragorn: "I am a dirty but noble ranger who has to accept a heavy responsibility" (and I have erotic dreams about my elf-girlfriend so she gets more screentime. Arwen is a prop, photographed with a soft-lens effect. Mary, Pippin: Start taking responsibility after all this time. Gimli: comic relief again. Legolas: there to say things that no sane living person would say in order to inform the audience what's happening. Oh, and he has to do one physics-defying radical battle stunt to show off that along with knowing how to state the obvious, he has impressive dexterity. Eowyn: Woman who's mad the men don't let her fight, has a crush on Aragorn, of which comes nothing. Later makes eyes with Faromir. Seagol: "prototypical split-personality. This confused some people into thinking that his character is the most complex, and (a truly pathetic statement about the movie) he might well be. Still his "character" is so silly that you start thinking Jackson designed him to make the kids laugh, like JarJar.
So, you might say: well, we only had 3.5 hours; that's not enough time to develop the characters and the plot. Bull. Now it's true, Jackson dropped many balls in TTT and it's now too late to pick them up. But at least the most absurd caricatures could very easily be patched up. Jackson CAN do it, if he puts his mind to it. He did a great job with Boromir in FotR. It's not from many minutes of screentime. If was from not dumbing down the part, and repesenting his motivations as Tolkien did. Faromir got robbed in TTT because Jackson had no interest in making him a real character. But what he does with Denethor is unforgivable. Instead of an apathetic evil guy, Denethor was a great and wise leader from the elder line of men. He was profoundly intelligent and cared deeply for Gondor. But he was utterly without hope because he was demoralized through direct contact with Sauron by the seeing stone which wasn't mentioned. Denethor, unlike Gandalf, had a sane plan for how to deal with the ring: Keep it in Minas Tirith, the most defensible place in the West. Now, I know that Gandalf has mystical insight into the future, and that helped him launch the "Kamikaze Frodo" plan, but on the face of it, the plan is patently absurd. Denethor (and Boromir) are no fools to think so, and Denethor is quite understandably upset with Faromir for sending the ring into almost certain capture by Sauron. How long would it take to convey this situation of Denethor's? Less time than Pippin's absurd song, or Gandalf's absurd lecture on the afterlife, both of which served no purpose and weren't in the book. This alone would have added mountains of credibility to the movie. But no. Instead, characters either act exactly according to their stereotype, or just randomly (like Denethor insisting Faromir attack the entrenched orcs in Osgiliath but not caring about the defenses of his own city - totally senseless and random).
Oh, how I wish a real Tolkien fan and an intelligent person were there to smack Jackson (as he had Gandalf smack Denethor) when Jackson is tempted into an act of cheesifying tyrrany!
But nobody smacked him, so he produced a movie loaded with manipulative Hollywood cheese at every turn. Feel sad now. Feel excited now. Oooh, watch out, that guy's evil! Frodo and Sam are weary. Really, really, really. There is even cheesy music to make it all more shallow and spare you the burden of having to think. Every individual sequence has some sort of a climax, many done not through character development but through sheer Hollywood manipulation. After 3.5 hours of that, you're climaxed out. Or rather, you're left a bit cold for the sequences where the real climaxes are supposed to be.
In general, you leave with the sense that the worst of Hollywood shallowness tamed a gem of literature which self-consciously tried to distance itself from that sort of shallowness. If you were a fan of the book, you'll leave having been entertained... but if you don't feel a bit dirty afterwards, you've forgotten too much of the book.