Better than the first

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2002)

I decided to slack off today and went to see TTT and I'm in agreement with the vast majority of people here. This is the best movie I have seen this year. It's dark but funny and zips along at a tremendous speed (the parts without Liv Tyler at least. Her character served its purpose in the first film as a way of fleshing out Aragorns' motivation but I feel Arwen is a distraction now).
I, like everyone else, was worried when I heard about the digital Gollum and the rumours that Jackson plays fast and loose with Tolkien in this one but I needn't have bothered. The CGI is superb (JarJar Binks eat your heart out) and the changes don't hamper the story. I think a lot of people have trouble detaching themselves from the text which is something I had trouble with on FOTR. This time I enjoyed the film on its own merits. Anyway, the biggest change took place on the Frodo/Sam/Gollum thread which, in my mind, improved on the book as it was quite a dull episode in comparison with the high drama of Helms Deep.
Like anything in life though, its not perfect. As it is the meat in the sandwich there's no real beginning and end to this installment. The 'Three Hunters' story thread is by far the most engaging and the other threads do detract from the tension somewhat towards the end. I get the feeling that the director felt this too as he spends so much time building up to Helms Deep that he begins to labour the point to cover over the problems with the other threads.
However, I'm probably being overly critical here and all I can say is that, for a 3 hour movie the time flew by and I didn't have to go to the toilet once (unlike half the audience).