Good movie but many plot deviations

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

As a long time of the LoTR story I have a few comments.
Let me start by saying that they nailed Gollum. His actions and speech pattern was just as I had pictured it from the books. The CGI interaction with the "Real" world was amazingly good, without looking at it closer than I did I could see no obvious CGI goofs.
I know they were using Gimli as comic relief since the story line was a bit intense but it made him look like a bumbling fool most of the time, this is not in charictor.
I was not too happy about the fact that in the movie that Theoden wants to go to Helms Deep and Gandalf warns against it because in the book it is Gandalf that tells him to go there. And what was that about banishing Eomer, I know it supports the plot line that they have very few warriors at Helms deep but they could have used Erkenbrand's arrival at Helms deep to drive off the Orc's. And the Elves at Helms is just wrong, if they wanted to increase the drama then have Eomer show up instead. What about the Ent/Huron assistance in the battle?
The Entmoot was fairly good but I wonder why they changed the decision to having the Ents not wanting to help. If it was so they could have Merry's "there will be no Shire" speech then they could have had them give it at the Entmoot instead. But on a positive note the Ents were well portrayed except that they were too flexible. At the breaking of Isengard the Ents flooding of the ring with all of the Ents still inside seemed a little irresponsible for beings that have lived for 10's of thousands of years, in the book all the Ents were out of harms way when it was flooded. I did like the Ent dunking its burning head in the flood water to put it out.
The portrayal of Faramir was a little too much like Boromir in his desire for the Ring.
Don't get me started on the Arwen plot deviations. The arguments between Arwen and Elrond are not too bad except for being too long but the Aragorn/Arwen "Dream" sequences were superfluous and a waist of time.
I liked "The Fellowship of the Ring" movie more than "Two Towers" but it was not bad.