Don't bother if you're not a fan of the books

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2002)

The most fervent of LOTR fans seem to be those who have read the books. Having not read any Tolkien I will have to review the movie as a film in its own right.
Although I have seen TFOTR (which I gave 4/10) I still found TTT somewhat of an overload of characters, races and politics. If you like the books and you liked TFOTR then there isn't any point in reading a review that doesn't declare TTT as the best movie ever...but for those fans of films I will try and point out the main flaws.
The biggest problem for those not fans of the books is that we simply don't care about the characters and nothing is done to make us care. People are introduced to us and 10 minutes later when they are killed/revealed as having unrequited love/had their lands taken from them, we are actually supposed to care. But why would we?
The other criticism would be the overuse of trying to make you believe that the main characters might actually die, only to reveal later on that *gosh* they haven't. To my count this was done three times and is rather cliche and boring. Quite childish to be honest.
To make it on its own strengths as a movie it needs to lose an hour at least, but I realise that would simply disgust people who avidly boast at the number of times they have read the books. I said about the first one what I'll say about this...if you need to have already read the books to like the movie and care about the characters then it is *not* a good movie, and this is not a good movie. I gave it 4/10 also.
On the plus side, yes the scenery and computer effects were all wonderful. As were the effects in Terminator 2 but I don't hear anyone claim that as being the best movie of all time. TTT is just childish nonsense that fails to appeal to children due to the running time and the fact that nothing really happens.