The worst of what is ultimately the best trilogy of all time

Rating: 10/10 (6 November 2004)

This film is one of the best films ever made. This film is almost as breathtaking as the first film but in the end the minor flaws it has makes it worse than the first film. What I consider to be the biggest flaw of this film is the character of Gimli. John-Rhys Davies is a wonderful actor and I do not blame him for the way the character turned out. I blame it on the directing (shame on you Jackson). Being that Merry and Pippin are not as much in the second films they were in the first they could not act as comic relief. Thus the choice was made to make Gimli the comic relief. While the things he says are both funny and well timed it becomes to much by the end. A second flaw that pulls the film down a bit is the fact that they deviated too much from the original book. The Theoden character is very different in the book as is Faramir. These flaws were probably necessary to make the film but the hard core Tolkien fans such as myself were disappointed to see Faramir drag poor Frodo and Sam to Osgilliath which is only mentioned in the book but never seen. This far I have only focused on the bad things in the film but there are very great film historic moments as well. E.g. the battle for Helms Deep is aside from the battle on Pelleanor Fields the greatest film battle ever conceived on screen. The acting in the film is generally on a very high level. Especially Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen do very well in the film but also John-Rhys Davies and Elijah Wood are very good. Aside from the fact that their roles were not as well written as they could have been Bernard Hill and David Wenham do very well. The effects in the film are flawless and on a higher scale than in the first film and the attention to detail is overwhelming. All in all a worthy sequel but ultimately the worst out of the three.