The battle to end all battles, until ROTK!

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2002)

As the cinema burst into spontanious applause as the credits rolled, I sat there soaking in all the fantastic images that had rolled before my eyes over the previous 3 hours. The critics were right. This is a stunning film from Peter Jackson, who must surely now be hailed as one of the greatest directors of our lifetime.
So many go great scenes, with only a couple of small gripes from me that will probably not matter once I have seen the Two Towers a couple of times.
--------------SPOILERS---------------------------- The Battle of Helms Deep has got to go down as the greatest battle in cinema history. The charge out of the Hornburg by King Theoden and his few surviving men, to a guaranteed hero's death at the hands of 7,000 Uruk Hai, (3,000 must have been killed by then) was both breathtaking and very thrilling in its execution.
Then the Ents almost go one better in a fantastic sequence where they sack Isengard, destroying the Uruk Hai nursery and standing Saruman in Orthanc.
Of course the star of the film has to be Gollum, played by Andy Serkis, whose movements had been captured by computer and turned into the best ever CGI character in the history of cinema. His conversation with himself, as Gollum's good and bad parts battle for control of his will, is both amusing and extremely pitiful.
The story itself wizzes along at good speed and the pacing is better than Fellowship. however, I do have a few minor gripes.
The Treebeard sequence looked like Merry and Pippin stuck up a tree with a giant blue screen behind them. It only looked good when they were moving. And cutting away from Helms Deep to the Treebeard story at the hight of battle wasn't a good move as the intensity of battle was interplayed with the slowest creatures on Middle-earth! I just wanted to get battle to Gimli hacking at Orc necks.
Faramir's character was also changed, but this alteration was for the better on a man who is fairly static in the book. By releasing Frodo and Sam at the end he showed redemption, which in the Return Of The King will bring him just rewards with Eowyn.
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So how do I rate it? From the opening scenes to the final credits, the three hours wizzes by. A great story well told, and great acting from McKellen, Mortensen, Douriff, Otto and Gollum (Serkis). Superb CGI most of the time, and a couple of battles to end all battles. Until the next movies even bigger one.I am sure that with multiple viewings all my tiny gripes will fall into insignificance as I walk and breath again in Middle-earth.
10/10