A near perfect adaptation of LOTR

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2002)

As one who has always wanted a top-quality movie adaptation of LOTR, I must say that Peter Jackson et al did a near perfect job.
Spoilers, ya hear? SPOILERS!!!!!!
The scenes were done with consumate artistry, the acting is terrific, the special effects are damned convincing and the score is excellent, though I'd have recommended atonal music for the bad guys. The battle with the Balrog vies with the first movie's outstanding beginning. The giant elephants, the trolls opening the gate (I thought trolls turned to stone in sunshine. Maybe they're given sunblock...) and of course the Ents are fantastic achievements. It's obvious that Gollum is drawn, but what a character! My brother, who isn't familiar with the books, found him to be among the most fascinating characters he's ever seen.
Gandalf's wink was priceless, Aragorn and Legolas are perfectly cast, Gimli's buffoonery might offend purists but is well within the director's acceptable licence, Frodo (Wood) is proving to be a fine actor. Much of the dialogue, which could so easily fall flat, is pulled off extremely well. Elrond's (who up till then tended towards overacting) talk with his daughter, blended with the images of an aging Elessar (Aragorn), is memorable, on the level of a similar monologue by Al Pacino in "Devil's Advocate". Of the other hobbits, Pippin's Pythonesque absurdity (credit to Mr. Beare) is more irritating than endearing, but you can't like them all. And who doesn't like the great Christopher Lee - wotta villain!!! There's even Aragorn's romantic interest, pitting elf against human, that is vicariously titillating a number of nerds I know.
The wheels could easily have fallen off this movie with all its disparate and outlandish elements. They didn't.
My only problems are with Tolkien's affectations. A couple days' flight by a giant eagle dropping the ring in the fire would be less risky, would have saved time and thousands of lives - but then there wouldn't be a story, would there? Sparing Wormtongue allowed him to give counsel that resulted in hundreds (only??) of deaths (though also resulting in the routing of a vast army). The horses running through those spears was a stretch. Airlifting Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas into the middle of the 10,000 strong army (though a statistical pixel-analysis reveals the number to be approximately 47,350, but this can be attributed to over-zealous rogue computer agency) as it was leaving Isengard would have allowed those three, under divine (read: Tolkien) protection, to decimate the bad guys. At a kill rate of about 300 per hour, the entire army would have been wiped out in a day and a half. When any of these three are out in the open, enemy arrows mysteriously cease to exist. In the first instalment, a single Uruk-Hai was almost too much for Aragorn; now an *injured* Aragorn among Uruk-Hai is like a Tasmanian Devil with razor blades among paper dolls. Oh well, after all it's mythology. I still think the books and the movies are high points in their respective artforms. Looking forward to ROTK.