Chapter II does not deceive

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2002)

A marvelous movie! It closely follows the spirit of the second book although there is some artistic license at work. In this second chapter, we follow three parallel stories: Frodo and Sam's attempts to enter Mordor, Pippin and Merry's capture by the Orcs and Aragorn's fight to save the Human Race. The pace is much faster than the first chapter with much more emphasis on action than on character development (as opposed to the first chapter). The special effects are stupendous although in certain segments, I found them to be a little too apparent -- not enough to be distracting however. I find Frodo and Sam to be a little one-dimensional as characters but the detail put into Gollum's character more than compensate for that. No other CGI creature comes close to what Jackson and his team has done in this movie. This movie rates a solid 9.5 for me... wait, I can't do that... Well, 10 it is!
L