Trying to maintain an impossible balance.

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2002)

Before I saw the first movie, FOTR, I thought Tolkien's LOTR was impossible to adapt to film. It has so many strong characters and such a rich, multithreaded plot that I couldn't imagine how anyone could make all these people and ideas come to the screen without heavily watering down many of the details and characters. Somehow in FOTR Jackson maintained Tolkien's richness of story and characters with only minor changes. Jackson maintained an impossible balance of all Tolkien's detail to appeal to the Tolkien read as well as the unread viewer. In TTT, the big question for me was whether or not he would be able to maintain this 'impossible balance' as the story continued.
THE MOVIE - TTT ***Some minor Spoilers***.
The re-introductions to the FOTR characters and introductions to new characters was setup well. Gandalf's battle with the Balrog continues and Gandalf's return is explained in a great yet vague manner consistent with the book. Frodo, Sam and Gollum together worked for me. Gollum's schizophrenic scenes were believable and even comic (if a little overlong) at times. Merry and Pippin were more serious and no longer the comic relief duo, but any comic responsibility they shed was picked up many times over by Gimli. I'm sure he had more comic lines than serious ones. Aragorn and Legolas will again have their fan followings either for their battle prowess, or their lady swooning abilities. Saruman was back in a lesser role with his army of badies. We were also introduced to King Théoden, Wormtongue, Eomer and Eowyn in the first hour of the movie, so the beginning laid a solid foundation for the rest of the story.
I first got a sinking feeling that something was really missing when the Uruk-hai fought over Merry and Pippin. There was no division of ranks between the forces of Mordor and Isengard. Nor was there the counterplot in which Saruman had designs on keeping the ring for himself. Later, I again experienced this feeling of something missing when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli met Eomer and the Riders of Rohan on the plain. Many of Tolkien's subtleties of that meeting were missing, and I could see that there was not going to be a brother-like bond between Aragorn and Eomer.
Merry and Pippin's escape from the Uruk-hai interleaved with Aragorn discovering the clues of their escape was well done. This sequence lead up to the introduction of Treebeard. I'm sure that there will be many who pick apart the CGI in these scenes, but I give top marks to Jackson et al. for being brave enough to include a force of walking, talking, fighting trees in the movie. My problem with the Ents was not with the effects, but rather it felt that Jackson was struggling to stay consistent with Tolkien. Jackson kept them very true to the book and 'unhasty' in some scenes then had them act in the opposite manner in the next scenes. Also, for one of the oldest, wisest creatures in Middle earth, Treebeard was more than a little naive. He acknowledges the smoke over Isengard, but failed to deduce than smoke means fire, fire mean wood, and wood means... (wait for it) ...TREES. Further, the overall significance of the Ents overthrowing Isengard was not clear, but there is (hopefully) room for exposition on that in the next movie.
Théoden's transformation back to himself was nicely done, but it didn't seem very logical that Grima was spared and set free given the knowledge he had of Rohan's defenses. This is perhaps another riddle to be answered in the next movie. The flight to Helmsdeep was good with a little of everything: comedy, romance (via Aragorn / Arwen flashback), and a battle.
Frodo, Sam and Gollum's journey introduced us to the flying Nazgul, and gave us glimpses of the mental turmoil the ring was causing for Frodo. We also got our first look at the impressive, impenetrable fortress of Mordor and of Sauron's massing armies. I thought Jackson did well to stay somewhat true to the book as Frodo, Sam and Gollum watched Faramir's ambush of the Oliphant riding Wildmen and during Frodo and Sam's capture, but struggled with Tolkien consistency in subsequent scenes. For the next few scenes I thought their whole interaction disappointing. There was no sense of mutual respect between Frodo and Faramir. When Faramir 'showed his worth' by declaring that the ring would go to Gondor, I felt my eyes bulge in my head.
The Helmsdeep arrival and battle preparation sequence was OK. The whole pacing of the movie seemed rushed here. Why did they have to try to make so much happen in one day? Between the arrival at Helmsdeep, the battle preparation, the tension building moments, the comic relief moments, the arrival of reinforcements combined with scenes of the simultaneous doings of Saruman, Aragorn, Merry and Pippin - whew!...keeping track of everything was a bit difficult to follow. Also, as an aside, what were those Hobbit children doing in Helmsdeep? - grin.
The battle of Helmsdeep itself was excellent with bad moments. On the good side, the scope was immense and the effects very good. Ten thousand enemies assaulting a fortified stronghold. There was an outer wall battle, an inner wall battle, and last stand at the gate - wave after wave of attack and counter attack. On the bad side, a few unbelievables that stood out for me: For example, Aragorn being blown off the outer wall to the courtyard in a massive explosion then getting up, uninjured, a few seconds later, or the scene where Aragorn and Gimli attacked everyone on the ramp then get pulled to safety by a dangling rope. Gandalf's arrival with Eomer was good but their initial charge looked to be a poor battle tactic - charging downhill into a pike holding mass. Another minor criticism for me was that King Théoden doesn't come across as very noble - quite inferior to Tolkien's Théoden.
The battle with Faramir's people in Osgiliath served no purpose. OK, reading a bit into it, we see that Faramir is the only one brave enough to raise a weapon to the flying Nazgul. But after Frodo's scene with the Nazgul Faramir comes to understand what Frodo is going through and decides to set him free after all. HUH!?!?!? What insight has he had? How could he possibly understand Frodo's situation and turmoil? Did Sam's speech win him over? This did not flow for me at all. Perhaps Jackson et al. wanted to include another battle using Sauron's forces to show that more evil forces were at work than only Saruman (? - I don't know.).
Overall, it didn't seem as though there were as many subtle scenes , or as many scenes with hidden significance in TTT as there were in FOTR. In the end we were left in similar circumstances to what we were in FOTR. While TTT still has the flavour of Tolkien's LOTR, the full essence of Tolkien's great work is not as strong as it was in the FOTR. There are so many things happening in the movie that I think the unread viewer will have problems following the 'why' behind all that is happening. But, by the same token, once you've read the book you can't help but to compare it to the movie and here TTT fails to achieve the same impossible balance that FOTR achieved.
My $0.02.