Good film, flawed adaption *** spoilers ***

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2002)

Translating a book to film is entirely the art of the compromise, what made FOTR such a great film was the quality of the compromises made, the choice of scenes cut from the book, the characters collapsed into one while preserving the essence of both the narrative thread and the integrity of the characters.
TTT fails to meet these exacting standards set by FOTR and most of it's failures stem from the effort to have the remaining eight characters in the fellowship be the driving force for all the events in the narrative.
PJ made compromises in the confrontation of Gandalf and Saruman, by including it in the healing of King Theoden from his evil influence, an excellent choice to collapse two events into one to impart all the necessary information and keep the narrative flowing. My suspicion is that those hoping to see more of this in ROTK will be disappointed.
Treebeard and the Ents deciding not to go to war against Saruman and then being tricked into it by Merry and Pippin significantly failed in all aspects. The length of time to cut back to Treebeard stating that Saruman had been cutting down trees for too long and needed to be short would have been less than the substitute reason for their attack and having established the Ents as being non-hasty to suddenly burst into a fit of rage diminishes them
The now rejuvenated Theoden changes from a man with his courage restored who goes out to face his doom to a coward who runs with the women to hide in the hills and allowing Aragorn to take the lead in the defense of Helms Deep. A compromise that lessens the film for those knowledgeable in the book. Conversely the elves turning up to help under the lead of Haldir, is easier to explain and insert into the narrative than the troop of Rangers with the two sons of Elrond as occurs in the book.
*** potential spoiler for ROTK in next paragraph *** Faramir's transformation from the noble man in which the line of Numenor runs true to one that succumbs to the temptation of the ring on his first sight of it was probably done to add drama to the journey of Frodo and Sam, which it does, but will probably end up being the part that most fans will hate the most. Keeping Shelob in TTT would have served the cause of drama far better but then would have ended the film with the 'death' of the main hero, not something you can do in Hollywood.
The threads of Aragorn fake death, the Warg attack and Arwens leaving middle earth are again changes to the book aimed at increasing the drama of certain portions of the film and by themselves they achieve more or less that (though some of it drops into melodrama) but when combined with the other deviations from the book it reinforces the other failed compromises.
Overall I still liked the film, the brilliance of FOTR probably inflated my expectations for TTT so I'll go back and see it again with my expectations suitable modified and see how it goes from there