A great continuation of FOTR

Rating: 9/10 (19 December 2002)

This movie is another amazing movie from Peter Jackson that is almost as good as the original. It has great acting, amazing special effects, sweeping landscapes, a huge action sequence, and on top of all that it's also pretty funny.
All of the remaining fellowship are just as good as the first, and most of the new characters are just as well cast and well acted as the original group. Miranda Otto is great as Eowyn, Theoden is excellent, the Ents are about as good as the Ents could possibly be, seeing as I never really liked them from the book to begin with, and Gollum is frankly the best character in the movie hands down. Also, Gimly is given a lot more character and shows off dwarven pride in many hilarious ways.
The opening is so cool, my only problem with it was that it was too short. I know a lot of people had issues with the pacing and the editing, but personally I didn't have a problem following things. I have read the book, but that was years ago, so I wasn't completely up on the story going in. It seemed to be very well cut together considering that there are three story lines. The movie deviates a lot from the book, but I'm not so much of a purist that I have a real problem with that. It stays true to the characters and plot, with the exception of Faramir, and it certainly ended up working well as a movie. I think over all it was a very faithful adaptation of the book.
But, I did have a few problems with it. First, the action in the movie was too clumpy. I know this is more a problem with the story itself, but it was still annoying that all the action came at the very end, instead of being spread throughout like the first one.
Also, I know I'm alone on this, but Helm's Deep wasn't as good as I was expecting. I blame that a bit on the fact that it was overhyped, as it was pretty cool, but I still think that the battles in the first movie were better. I think one reason for this is the fact that in the first movie there were individual enemies, like the Balrog, the cave troll, the Nazgul, or the Uruk-Hai chieftan, that stood out and made the fights more dynamic, scary, and interesting. In this movie all the enemies look the same, and it lacks a sense of real power on the side of evil. If they had just left Shelob in I think I would have felt better about this aspect of the film. Still, all in all it worked better as an action movie than most others in the genre, and in my mind was an even better drama than action movie, so it's hard to complain.
The other problem was the ending. At the end of the first movie I really wanted to just keep sitting there and watch more. At the end of this movie I was ready to go home. It wasn't that it was bad, but unlike the first movie the ending seemed rushed, and put a damper on the overall drama that had been running through the last hour of the movie. If the movie had been just a minute longer, and they had wrapped things up a bit more, it would have been as good as the first one.
If I could, I would give FOTR a 9.7, FOTR extendend 9.8, and this movie a 9.5, just for comparisons sake. Given that I can't, I'll just go with 10/10, as I will probably like it even more with a second viewing.