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The second chapter in the J.R.R. Tolkien saga, the hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) brave terrible dangers in an attempt to have the evil ring destroyed, while Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas, A.K.A. “”Bow Guy”” (Orlando Bloom) and their allies strive to rescue the abducted hobbits Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan ) from the clutches of evil.
The great wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) also makes his miraculous return to aid in the struggle against the united towers of Saruman and Sauron (Christopher Lee).TTT is stupendous, absolutely the bestess film EVER, an Amazing feat of filmmaking and is Mindblowingly good! I wet myself. I had cinema orgasm while watching this!!! Psyche, just kidding….. Now there’s a popular misconception that I hated the first film last year, and nothing could be further from the truth. I didn’t HATE, LOTR. I disliked it, found it boring, found it repetitive, but did not hate it. I dislike LOTR’s radical, geek fanbase (not all, just the rude vocal ones), but that’s another story. I admired Peter Jackson’s accomplishment in getting this trilogy made. Even I can see the obvious love and care that went into the creation of this massive and impressive bit of filmmaking. But at the end of the day, admiration gives way to the actual finished product, and it did nothing for me. I will go on record as saying that I tried reading the books this year and after a hundred pages into it, gave up. I just don’t like Tolkien’s writing style. I think it’s trite, juvenile and just poorly written, I understand I’m in the minority on this; so be it. I was actually dreading watching and reviewing TTT primarily because I didn’t feel like having a rehash of last year and the trailers for TTT did not do a thing for me, it looked like it’d be another three hours of bad, dark cinematography. So when New Line invited me to see this film several weeks ago, I was like, yey! Big whoop, there were a thousand other things that I would have rather done with my day than sit there and watch this movie. As I’ve always said, critics are humans and we have our bias when we see a movie, if a film is good or great, it’ll change our opinion of it.When the lights went down, and TTT started, I was mesmerized by the opening sequence. The film starts off where Gandalf apparently dies fighting the Balrog. It was one of the goofiest moments in LOTR, but the way that same sequence is handled in TTT is absolutely amazing. Peter Jackson’s camera angles, helicopter shots, really gave this scene an awe inspiring sense of scale and style. For the first 10 or 15 minutes when the film focused on Aragorn, Gemli, and Legolas’ search for their missing hobbit friends I was really into TTT. I was thinking, “”Yes! Now I can be one with the crowd, and shock everyone.”” The sweeping landscapes were impressive, it gave the quest a sense of scale and time, just sucks you into the movie.![]()
While the fate of the Fellowship and the search for Merry and Pippin held my attention and I was into the quest, the problems occurred with Frodo’s Quest to destroy the ring in the fires of Mordor. The first time they cut to this story, it took me out of the film. The spell was broken. Wood’s performance was just pitiful, his only expression was to look constipated for most of the film. No matter what the situation was, he looked as if he ate a sour tomato. While I liked Astin’s performance as Samwise, it still left a lot to be desired, his character struck me as being one dimensional that there wasn’t much depth there. His role was simply to say “”Yes Mr. Frodo, No Mr. Frodo. Don’t put that ring on Mr. Frodo!”” Oddly enough the best performance during the Frodo story came from a CG Character. Gollum (Andy Serkis) at times is a brilliantly realized CG character, and other times the CG looked weird, and if the best thing in that story arc is that you can go “”wow, that’s a great CG Character,”” then something is wrong. When watching Gollum I couldn’t help but think of “”Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”” His facial expressions and Jackson’s repetitive shots of closeups of Gollum smiling became irritating really quickly. I half expected Gollum to start saying “”puhlease.”” As a character I found Gollum to wear thin as time went on and to become more and more irritating as the film progressed. He was realistic and if you are a fan of Gollum then you most likely won’t be disappointed. Quite frankly I just can’t buy into the notion that if they destroy this stupid ring that all their problems will be solved. But the irritation of Gollum and Frodo’s Quest is nothing compared to my absolute HATRED of Treebeard. God talk about bad CGI!! As much as Frodo’s quest kept taking me out of the movie, when they cut to Merry and Pippin sitting on top of this huge, fake looking talking tree I howled with laughter every time I saw it, it was poorly realized and rendered. Even worse was just listening to the poor voice work on the trees, you can barely understand what the tree was saying, and he really didn’t say much of anything, yet those scenes seem to last FOREVER. I was begging for these scenes to end and for the film to get back to Aragorn’s quest. The trees in “”HR Puffinstuff”” was more realistic and had more personality than those Ents. “”Ohh, look at the fake CGI tree sit and think for a minute. That’s exciting.””![]()
I LOVED Aragorn and the “”Bow Guy,”” as well as some of the new characters. Merry and Pippin weren’t annoying this time out, I actually liked them, but Gimli was irritating as hell and his “”comic relief”” seemed out of place. It was as if the filmmakers decided that they would give all of Merry and Pippins dumbness and comedic moments to Gimli this time out. As I said before I thought the “”primary”” story with the broken Fellowship and their quest for their missing companions was riveting. I was absolutely into it. Peter Jackson’s repetitive Helicopter Shots were annoying, but the unforgivable thing is the way PJ over uses the whole “”fake death inspiration gimmick.”” In LOTR he uses it way too much, and in TTT during almost EVERY battle scene, someone supposedly “”dies”” which enrages everyone else to the point where they can fight against all odds and win. Then a few scenes later the person who “”dies”” just pops up. It’s shamelessly manipulative and if they didn’t over use the gimmick in LOTR I could have felt more for the characters, and when he does it in TTT, I didn’t believe the character was “”dead”” for a second.The Battle of Helms Deep is an amazing and breathtaking battle sequence, there is no doubt about it. It’s probably one of the best battles to ever be filmed on camera and watching 10,000 Orcs storm the fortress was stunning. The technology used in this sequence really brought the sense of scale to life. While that is a definite plus and ensures the battles believability, it also highlight’s the major fault with it as well; it was a major stretch in believability seeing about 1,000 guys take out this humongous army. When Gimli and Aragorn are on the bridge surrounded by this big ass army, they don’t get a single f’ing scratch!!!! They have two men taking out what looked like hundreds of Orcs. Now granted the Orcs’ mystique was ruined earlier in the film when they actually talked (in these nasally, girly man voices, no less), but come on!!!! A thousand men taking on this overwhelming force and no one dies (not counting the unnamed extras) or gets a scratch?!?The Battle of Helms Deep was ruined for me, by Jackson cutting from that battle to the Ents laying the smackdown on Sauron’s castle. As good as Helm’s Deep looked, the Ents taking out Isengard looked silly, and what’s even worse. Sauron this supposedly big, bad wizard who wants to take over the world, stood there and did NOTHING! He just looked out the window and basically sighed.The way the film ended seemed really weird, because to me it seemed like there really wasn’t much more “”story”” for them to tell. That if they really wanted to, another 10 minutes showing them marching into Mordor and tossing the ring in, and the movie should be over. If they wanted a 3 part story then, the good guys should have lost in this installment, or the film should have ended right before the Battle of Helm’s Deep started.I actually liked the music this time out, although the score is EXACTLY the same as before (I watched the Extended DVD the night before I saw TTT as a refresher.) The Cinematography is uniformly excellent and deserves an Oscar nod. While I hated the night shots in LOTR, here the colors and lighting were vibrant and danced off the screen.Despite all of my gripes and complaints, TTT was entertaining (where LOTR put me to sleep) and I liked this one more than the first one, it was well done, held my attention more than the first one did, but still found the story tedious, repetitive, and ultimately nothing special and does NOTHING to progress the story. Although I do admit that this movie did make me look forward to the next installment, so on that basis it succeeds. Final Grade CReview by Michelle Alexandria