Film of 2002!!!

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2003)

Is this better than Fellowship? Well, I'm undecided. This has improvements and in turn it has elements that are lost from the first one. I'm not talking in terms of quality, in production, acting, directing etc, but this is the middle of the story. While this introduces new characters and had the complication and more large scale battles, I really liked the exposition of the first film, with its sense of mystery building up, I was also a big fan of Borimir, he was a great character and his brother, who appears in this film is not quite as interesting.
Some of the improvements are as followed. Aragons role in the film is more central. In this film he is in it start to finish whereas he didn't enter the first movie until an hour in. I think Viggo's expanded role will give him a very good shot for an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. He didn't quite have enough screen time in Fellowship to warrant that but he certainly put an Oscar worthy performance in. The rest of the cast are on fine form and I think I really have to re-iterate everything I said about the first film. This is pure magic and film making excellence, the production design is fantastic, the whole look of the film from its sets to the visual effects really transport you to middle earth for three hours and keep you transfixed. The real, real star of this movie and really what really breaks the mould in terms of movie magic, which wasn't yet broken by the first installment, is the most frighteningly realistic CGI character ever. Gollum is freakily realistic, and the vocal performance from Andy Serkis is Oscar worthy. You really feel as if he is a real living person, the animation is superb, awe-inspiring.
As I mentioned all the cast are great, the new additions such as Bernard Hill and in particular Brad Dourif as Worm Tongue are excellent. Basically, like Fellowship, you won't find a better mixture of top draw action, music, acting, cinematography, direction, production design, visual effects in any movie period. No other films can compete in terms of having grade A class in every department. This gets a well deserved 10 out of 10.