Awestruck

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2002)

Right after watching LOTR, the group I was with - all of whom having read the trilogy several times - started debating whether this one was truer or less true to the original than Fellowship was. Even moreso than with FOTR, we concluded quite quickly that we didn't *care* about these deviations.
The score was much more balanced than FOTR. I have read many times that Howard Shore has composed the score for the entire trilogy as one piece of music, however the Wagnerian usage of themes was a lot less obvious in this installment than it was in Fellowship.
Furthermore, where in FOTR Gimli was a little too recognizable as a standard John Rhys-Davies character, in TTT he appears more "natural" in his fumbling, quirky behavior, probably because he knows when to keep his mouth shut. In short, I found his character to be a nuisance in FOTR, and a great source of comic relief in TTT.
As for the Elves, their stance towards humans seemed to have grown more distant and in the case of "Agent Smith" Elrond (I can't help it) sometimes almost seems hostile. Which of course breeds tension for the love triangle that develops between Arwen, Eowyn and Aragorn - something I anticipate will deepen in part three even though Tolkien's original barely scratches the surface.
Smeagol, in his computer generated glory, is a visual delight if one can call a wretch like him that. His creepy, crawly hideousness goes beyond the human form, so Jackson made an excellent choice in putting the latest and the greatest of rendering systems to work, and the end result is simply baffling. Especially since the immense pity Frodo feels for the creature takes hold of the viewer as well. Not bad for a bunch of pixels.
Also wonderfully done are the Ents, whose way of disposing with Orcs I couldn't help but find terribly amusing. Here you see the splatter artist Jackson briefly appear, though the film keeps neatly within its PG-13 borders.
There are some weaknesses in the editing storyline, and I am left wondering why this had to be done. Probably the alterations made for the Battle of Helm's Deep allow for a grander army to come from Isengard without the story losing too much of its credibility, but one wonders whether this could not also have been accomplished by simply doubling the garrison.
Nevertheless, special praise has to be given for the way vast armies are created with the help of computers, ironically the very machines Tolkien was anxious about. I will not go into much detail, but you can very well expect to be swept off your feet by the intensity, the grimness and the sheer magnitude of it all. There has never been a battle on a movie screen with such ferocity and enormity, and one can only speculate what will happen once New Line unleashes the third installment of this already epic trilogy.
We will see, my Precious, we will see...
9.5/10