December 31, 2002

You Know What This is About
Razors

Yes, I just got back from (finally!!!) seeing TTT. And yes, now I must log on and rant.

First of all, let me be the 947th person (probably) to comment on what a huge, visually-spectacular, action-packed epic of a movie this was. There, it's out of the way.

Gandalf's falling battle with the Balrog was a suitably eye-popping opening, even if it was just Frodo's dream brought on by eating lembas before bed. And Gandalf's resurrection, as I'd hoped, went some way to explaining the true nature of wizards (they even threw in a little comment later on about Gandalf having been around for "800 lifetimes of Men" or something, just to drive the point home).

The Riders of Rohan wiping out the Uruk-Hai was good, although I thought it came a little early - Merry & Pippin didn't seem to have suffered all that much, and I'd have liked to see the Ugluk/Grishnak relationship played out a bit more. Treebeard was awesome, although with John Rhys-Davies doing the voice he sounded like a more gravelly-voiced version of Gimli (kinda looked like one, too). And I hate to say it, but some of the other Ents kinda looked like muppets...

As for the battles - Helm's Deep was just as long, action-packed and massive (pardon the pun) as I'd expected. The White Rider coming down the hillside followed by 2000 cavalry and ploughing into the Uruk lines is one of those movie images that I'll take to my grave. But for sheer spectacle the prize has to go to the Ents marching into Isengard and trashing and flooding the place. I'd hoped Faramir's ambush on the Southrons would be a bit more of a battle scene than it turned out to be, but the oliphaunts were nice...

Which just leaves the one character I REALLY went to see, Gollum. Everyone's favourite ring-chasing monkey-boy was the highlight of the whole flick. He looked almost frighteningly real and it was easy to forget he wasn't. I thought the scenes where he was arguing with himself were a little overdone, but the moment where a horrified Faramir listens to one of these "debates" (and thus finds out about the Ring) was one of the scariest things I've seen on film. I must admit I always thought of Gollum as one of the villains of the piece, but in this movie I really felt sorry for the poor little bastard, and my hat is off to Andy Serkis and the special effects crew for bringing the character to life. Although for some reason I was expecting him to look more like Smokie the crack-head from the PJ's...

My one real complaint might be that the story was all over the place, but then so were the characters, so I guess that's to be expected. Oh, and the one thing I wanted to see but didn't was Smeagol's back-story. There was a scene where Frodo was talking to Gollum and it looked like they were going into a flashback, but it didn't happen. Think it'll be in the Special Edition, or will it have to wait for ROTK?

Overall, I'll give it a 9 and I'm going to see it again. Who's coming with me?