Vastly better than the first film - Jackson's Empire Strikes Back!

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

The quest of the ring continues with the fellowship broken up. Aragon, Gimil and Legolas pursue the orcs who took Merry and Pippin. However they lose the hobbits when the orcs are attacked and killed by Eomer, nephew of King Theoden. Merry and Pippin escape into the forest, meeting the keeper of the forest, Treebeard. Aragon et al follow their trail into the forest to meet Gandalf the White who leads them to defend Rohan where Saruman's forces are preparing to attack and wipe out man. Meanwhile Frodo and Sam are joined by Gollum, addicted to the ring and corrupted by it's power. They reluctantly allow Gollum to lead them to Mordor despite Sam's mistrust. Gandalf frees King Theoden from Saruman's spell and the King takes his people to the fortress at Helm's Deep where the armies of man and orc will collide.
The plot sounds plain confusing. And looking in the film magazines at the various maps and family trees that they published I did fear that the film would be even more demanding than the first and would almost require me to start ploughing through the book's appendices to follow it. But no, that's the first thing Jackson has done well. He has stripped down the detail and has made the relationship easy to see and the characters easy to understand. I'm sure much of the text has been lost but it works better. On top of this the film's pace is much more even.
In my review of the first film I disliked the stop/start nature of the talking/running plot and found it tiring and hard to enjoy. Here the film manages perfectly with a good level of action and story that is consistent and builds to the battle for Helm's Deep as it's climax. It makes for an enjoyable film rather than the pacing of the first. Even the fragmented story line is dealt with well - it could easily have pulled the plot in 3 different ways and affected how the film hangs together but it really worked out well. All three stories are told but none is lingered on longer than needed (with the possible exception of flashbacks of Aragon's love).
This made it much more enjoyable to me - that the film was fun to watch and not hard work. Also the comedy was inserted nicely. Again the first film felt like it would be rude to enjoy this sacred story - but here we have nice laughs that don't cheapen the story or the characters. The action is less chaotic than before and only the odd scene is a blur. The special effects are excellent despite looking computer generated beside real things. The riskiest effect is Gollum - he could easily have been another Jar-Jar Binks in the way he didn't work well as a real character. However the animation is superb. Sure he doesn't always LOOK real beside Frodo and Sam but that's cause he's not!
In terms of character Gollum was the best addition to the cast. He is a real character - pathetic yet dangerous, funny yet treacherous. After a few minutes I forgot that he was an effect and was as involved with him as with any of the others. In fact the extent to which Serkis made Gollum watchable was shown by how held I was by his scenes with Frodo. I found Wood to be too serious and worthy and hard to watch - Serkis' Gollum changed that and I was gripped. The other good character is Astin's Sam who appears minor but is really the honest heart of the fellowship thus far, he is well acted and not allowed to be just a clumsy sidekick. Pippin and Merry have minimised time which is good but their scenes are better this time round. Mortensen, Bloom and Rhys-Davis are all great and any scene they are in holds the attention effortlessly. Mortensen is especially good and I can't understand why people prefer Bloom over him!? Generally the acting is very good. In the first film everything felt very tight, like the actors were afraid of upsetting anyone and read every line like it was gospel. Here they fit their characters better and seem to enjoy it which in turn helped me.
Overall I pretty much enjoyed the first film but had big reservations about it - having to work to enjoy it and finding the pace tiring and ill-judged. In this outing all my reservations had been dealt with. Sure it's not perfect but it is a very, very good film. Epic in every sense but yet enjoyable and (thank God) fun to watch. Just like Lucas improved Star Wars with Empire, so too has Jackson done much better second time around. Lets just pray that The Return of the King doesn't turn out to be his `Return of the Jedi' - nope! It's unlikely - I can't wait!