Good, very good, but ...

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2002)

Well, roughly 720 comments in ... there probably isn't much I can say that hasn't been repeated a few dozen times in other posts. But, oh well, I've always enjoyed redundancy (and I do have a few new things). Not to mention I also enjoy redundancy.
First off, let's get one thing straight. This is a good movie. A VERY good movie. Compared to any other movie you'll see this coming year, chances are they won't come close. It was action packed, the cgi and setting was engrossing, and the 3hr or so running time went by very quickly.
HOWEVER!
This movie simply was not as good as the first one. There were many things that either broke up the flow, or undermined the amount of suspense that could've otherwise been built into the movie. This movie could've been perhaps among the best of all time, but due to some planning errors it turned out to just be extremely good.
Cases in point:
*spoilers throughout*
1. The Gandalf fight with the balrog at the beginning.
This fight was cool as hell, and was a pretty good way to open the movie, BUT one of the coolest things about experiencing the story the first time (reading the book) is thinking that Gandalf is probably really dead and then when he does finally make his appearance as the White Rider, he's the coolest thing on 2 legs. In the movie this is spoiled since we know he's most likely alive from the outset, and then when there's talk of the White Rider and Gandalf does finally show up it is something we've just been sitting around waiting for, not a shocking surprise that adds to the legend that is (or should be) Gandalf. In the book you don't really even know how the hell he got out of that extremely sticky situation, and it almost adds to the awe.
2. Aragorn's fall down the cliff.
Waste of time. Happened to Gandalf and we knew he was okay. What was the point of doing basically the same thing over again with Aragorn? Totally redundant and unsuspenseful.
3. Gimli the Disney character.
After reading many posts I see I wasn't the only one annoyed with his complete demotion to comical sideshow. On the plus side he WAS often funny. On the minus side, he was no longer Gimli the bada** from the book, he became Gimli the stooge. What's worse than this however, much worse, is his jokes constantly undermined the tension and danger that should've been building with the Helm's Gate battle. More than a couple times things were looking bad, we were getting worried about our heroes and their present situation, and then Gimli says/does something goofy that totally takes us out of the story and reminds us these people are really in no peril at all because they're the heroes and this is nothing but a movie. A basic rule is: When people are engrossed in a dangerous situation, it's usually not a good idea to make them laugh. I know they were just trying to lighten things up due to the darkness of this second film, but Jackson should've just gone with the darkness. Sometimes things are dark for a reason.
4. The cuts to Treebeard
Treebeard was pretty cool, but everytime they cut to these scenes I could feel the movie go straight into a pile of sludge. Pip and Merry on his shoulder, Helm's Deep, Pip and Merry on his shoulder, repeat, etc. I don't think they could've picked a worse point in time to put the Treebeard thread. Add in the Gimli distractions to these cuts to Treebeard and to me it really hurt what could've been an amazing sequence.
5. Orcs WAY too wussy.
The first movie also suffered from this pretty badly, but there I don't think it hurt the story. Here it does. Orcs apparently are easier to kill than flies, and therefore why should I worry about these people at Helm's Deep? Seeing Aragorn and Gimli alone on the bridge against the entire orc army and not being completely over-run was excessively lame, almost unforgivably so. That scene shouldn't have ever made the movie, and once again took me right out of the story. The horses splitting through the orc army like water as they sped out of Helm's Deep was also lame. In the actual fighting scenes from Helm's Deep I never really got the feeling that a BATTLE which could go either way was occuring. It just looked fantastic, and that's all.
6. Intrusive music.
For all of you that will buy this movie and watch it a million times (like I will probably), watch for this. There are scenes of dialogue and events where not much is happening really, but this dramatic music is just blaring, almost drowning out their speech. I got the feeling that if Jackson was to film 2 regular people drinking coffee and reading the morning paper it'd be accompanied by a 50 piece symphonic orchestra playing the most dramatic and emotionally charged music they could find. I found this very annoying.
7. The revamped Faramir
While this scene was going on I was thinking back to the book trying to remember if Faramir ever took them back to Gondor. I didn't think so, and I know exactly why ... because it'd be dumb. Up to this point we'd been following Frodo, Sam and Gollum go through Mordor, head up to the black gate,etc ... They are on this supposedly dangerous trek and then suddenly... oh wait they're back in Gondor now. So they get to do everything over again? Guess we just wasted our time watching them all this time. Hell, let's just stick em back in the shire again and start the movie over. I couldn't see anything that added to the movie by this little stunt of Jacksons. If you wanted to put our triumvirate in danger or show the weakness of men or whatever, there's ample opportunities to do so without trivializing trekking through Mordor, as if going in and out is like going outside to fetch the mail. Plus they treat Faramir as a dolt basically, instead of the very cool character he actually is. I found it pointless. Unless they've got plans for him in the next movie, they might as well have just cut him out completely and not ruined the vibe Sam,Frodo and Goll had going.

That's about it for my peeves tho. Overall I did think it was a great movie, there were just a bunch of little things like those above that kept interrupting the flow for me, or that seemed pointless. Because of that I have to give the nod to the first movie, since I thought it did what it was suppose to do a bit better than this film.