Gollum. Truly Brilliant.

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 2003)

Sure, TTT is the middle episode of a trilogy, and by the end of it the characters are not much closer to the completion of the quest... but man, this is how fantasy is supposed to be done. And Gollum - I still get goose bumps when I hear his sad song over the end credits. Has there ever been a more brilliantly realised non-human character? Rubbish like Harry Potter's Nobby just serves to show how brilliant Gollum is. The same dialogue, both brilliantly funny and utterly tragic. One of my all-time favourite characters, which isn't bad for a vicious little traitor.
*SPOILER* One question - why on earth doesn't Frodo explain to Gollum why he had to "trick" him? He has to know that Gollum will have felt betrayed, and that Gollum's "conversion" was reasonably tenuous to start with. I can't believe that Frodo does that to Gollum without explanation and then blithely trusts Gollum not to do something vicious in return. For someone who understood Gollum so well throughout the film, this sudden lapse of insight is a bit strange...