A Good Movie, Ruined by Glaring Flaws

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2003)

MANY SPOILERS
I loved Fellowship of the Ring. I thought it was a classic film and a faithful adaptation of the spirit of the books. The Two Towers is beautiful, as was FOTR, but it contains several serious flaws that make this movie more frustrating than enjoyable. People appear averse to hearing a comparison of the movie to the books, so I will stick to criticism of the film. The most glaring flaws in the film are:
1. The resolution of the battle of Helm's Deep is not credible. This is a major problem because Mr. Jackson has chosen this battle as the climax of his film. We see literally 10,000 orcs on the plain in front of the fortress. As they are about to breach the last defense, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and a handful of others ride out into the fray. At that moment, Gandalf appears on the other side of the army of orcs and charges in with what appear to be a couple hundred soldiers. Now here is the problem: in this situation, there is no way that Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas will live, and it doesn't appear that Gandalf can prevail given his limited numbers. Do 10,000 orcs, including hundreds of orc archers near Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, ALL turn around and face Gandalf, forgetting completely about Aragorn and crew? It seems much more likely that some orcs will fight Gandalf (and kill him: I didn't think he would make it past the spears set in the front line), while Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are pelted with literally thousands of arrows. Mr. Jackson, apparently unable to resolve this problem, fades the scene out. Not good enough. This is the climax of the movie and it is not believable. A fatal flaw for any picture.
2. Because the battle of Helm's Deep is the climax, we must endure almost an hour of people preparing for that battle. They shuffle out of the city, shuffle along through fields, shuffle into the fortress, get some weapons, and just generally stand around. This build-up is too long. Though the battle itself is impressively filmed, it cannot support this much film.
3. The Ents, creatures who take half a day to pronounce someone's name, who have stood silently in the forest for thousands of years, decide suddenly to wreak havoc on Isengard because they see thirty feet of burned treeline. This is not in character at all. Perhaps it was done this way to convince us that Merry has grown since FOTR. Character development is a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of consistency in the behavior of other characters. This moment makes the Ents, and Merry, look silly.
4. Faramir's decision to drag Frodo to Gondor does not resolve itself well. How does watching Frodo try to give the ring to a ringwraith convince Faramir to allow Frodo to take the ring into Mordor? If anything, he should conclude that Frodo is near the end of his rope and the ring should be in other hands.
These problems make the film ultimately unsatisfying to watch. As a side note, all of these problems were caused by Mr. Jackson's decision to deviate from the books. Here's hoping ROTK stays closer to the writings.