More great characters come to life!

Rating: 9/10 (13 September 2003)

(This has some SPOILERs)
They say this part was the most difficult to film, as it´s in the center of the trilogy. Well, it isn´t as good as the Fellowship of the Ring, but this part has still a lot of great stuff in it.
First, there´s Gollum. You simply can´t write a review of this movie without writing about Gollum. He is my favorite character in the book, as he is a horrible monster and an old hobbit the ring has been torturing for 500 years at the same time. I always pitied him. Gollum has been made CG on this movie, though his motions and words come from actor Andy Serkins. On screen Gollum looks quite like how I pictured him, although his ears are too big and blue eyes do not suit him, especially as his eyes were green in the previous film. Serkins also provides great acting, especially when monster Gollum and his inner hobbit Smeágol argue. Kind of reminds me of the Green Goblin and Norman Osborne in Spider-Man.
Another great new character is Treebeard the ent, who is also mostly computer-generated. John Rhys-Davies´s voice fits him, but it´s too bad the ents are on-screen very little. Well, it gets paid off in the end. Rhys-Davies also plays Gimli the dwarf who is now the comic relief of the movie, when Merri and Pippin are most of the time in the woods with the ents, where they have nothing to joke about. It doesn´t bother me, Gimli´s jokes are funnier, although he hasn´t got as good a comment as in the previous film; "Nobody tosses a dwarf!"
Most of the running time is spend in the kingdom of Rohan, where Théoden tries to avoid war against evil wizard Saruman´s uruk-hai armies. It´s not all boring, but the second hour seems to last much longer than the first or the third. Jackson has spiced up the dullest parts of the book by adding a fight against orcs riding wargs, kind of hyena-like beasts and Aragorn and Arwen missing each other.
The last hour is the best of this film and the whole trilogy so far. First, there´s the massive battle of Helm´s deep. The despair of the defenders feels in the air as 100 000 uruk-hais and orcs march in front of the fort and start shouting to taunt their opponents. It´s hard to believe most of those soldiers are CG. The viewer feels like s/he´s in the battle itself and dives even deeper to despair when the enemy breaks the walls and beats the hell out of Rohan´s soldiers. But in the morning, when Gandalf rides in with the Riders of Rohan the viewer´s despair changes to joy and relief. Peter Jackson sure can create great feelings. Although the film is not as good as the first one, it doesn´t deserve anything less, than the full points.
10/10
The best part (SPOILER): The final march of the ents. I felt very good seeing the tree people finally paying back to Saruman by coming to his fortress, Eisengard, and starting to wreck the place up! STOMP! Orcs get squashed! WHAM! Orcs get crushed under a big rock thrown by an ent! KER-SPLOOSH! The ents break the dam and the river sweeps all the smaller creatures into Saruman´s mine pit! It can´t get any better than this! Oh, I can´t wait for the third and final movie!