Bridging the trilogy

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2002)

I needed a little bit of time to ponder upon this installment of Lord of the Rings after seeing it. I wanted to think about how it would be viewed in the grand scheme of things for this trilogy years from now. Because basically, I don't view Lord of the Rings so much as three different movies, as much as one giant 9 hr movie that we just happen to see in three 3hr segments. Looking at it from that perspective, I think this "segment" had two main goals :
1) have more action than Part I 2) set up Part III as the mac-daddy ending-to-end-all-endings

This one does have more action scenes than Part I - though the majority of the action scenes are grouped together towards the end of the movie.

As far as setting up Part III to be an ending-to-end-all-endings, well, I think this film accomplishes that because it really kept some key parts from "The Two Towers" book. Because of that, Peter Jackson is basically going to have a ton of material to put into Part III. I mean, there's probably about 45-60 minutes worth of material that's going to have to appear in the movie "The Return of the King" that is from the book "The Two Towers". So, the third part should be pretty interesting.
So, I'll admit it, I was slightly disappointed at first - but when I started thinking about what Jackson has set himself up for in part III, I realized that it's all a matter of telling the tale in a way that will make for the most successful trilogy possible.
Part I : has to be awesome, make sure the entire audience wants to come back for Part II Part II : give everyone their action fix & those big battles that movie goers love Part III : make sure the audience leaves this one thinking it was a home-run on all levels
Knowing what all material Jackson left for Part III, he definitely has set up the trilogy to end with a home run.
I will have to say this : The second time was much better than the first! MUCH BETTER! Somehow, the movie seemed to move along much smoother & the pace was more tolerable & balanced.
On the other hand, certain aspects of the film that caught my attention in a negative way stuck out even more noticeably the second time. The best example of this was Aragorn's "dreams" that he was having of Arwen (which were NOT part of the book). Because of the awkward change of pace to the rest of the film, these scenes felt slightly out of place - and the fact that they are not part of the book makes it look like a bad call on Jackson's part to add them. I'm convinced Jackson is viewing this whole epic as a giant stew that he wants to be able to look at 10 years from now and never have to worry about saying to himself "hmmm...I should have put this in there when I had a chance". I mean, after all, is anyone going to care that there are 10 minutes of mushy dream scenes between Aragorn & Arwen when they view these films back-to-back on DVD on a 11 hr Super Mega Platinum Edition years from now ?
Gollum was especially impressive to me the second time around. They just couldn't have done a better job with him. They don't overuse him in the scenes and they make sure that when he says something it's memorable. Inevitably there will be comparisons to Jar-Jar, but in reality there really is no comparison. I think this is another example of how LOTR has shown up the new Star Wars in yet another way. Lucas was determined to have Jar-Jar be one of his shining accomplishments with the new trilogy (have a completely CGI character play a supporting role in the movie). Instead of having Jar-Jar viewed as a great cinematic accomplishment, Lucas has people begging him to get rid of the character. Gollum, on the other hand, is actually a very interesting character that actually brings something to the story, and you enjoy viewing on screen.
I'm a little worried about what all Jackson has left for Part III, though I do understand why he left it for Part III. However, he has so much material to cover in that movie that it could be quite overwhelming to those that didn't read the books. "Return of the King" is definitely going to have to be the longest of the three films if he is going to cover the material the way it needs to be covered.
When I wrote comments on "Fellowship" on IMDB, I said it was a good start for what could potentially be the greatest trilogy in cinematic history. I think this installation of LOTR does a proper job in bridging the trilogy & setting us up for what should be the proper ending to the greatest trilogy of all time.