I don't even know where to begin.
PJ includes all these odd erratic out of place 'Easter Eggs' for the fans of the book, that are really odd in the context of the movie and don't really serve a purpose. They make the parts of the story where he is adhering to the book extremely choppy and brisk.
And yet, for all his ability to get trivial details right, when it comes to doing the important scenes he completely blows it, rewrites it badly, dumbs down the dialogue to a 6th grade level, turns the characters into unempathetic fools, and misses the point completely. There are only about 5 passages of dialogue that are both key to the story and which are monumental in character in TTT. And yet, PJ is capable of drawing word for word some minor quotation from the book repeatedly, but when it comes to the moment of truth PJ utterly slips up. Lose the minor dialogue and keep the important parts! I can loose Merry dropping the elf leaf. I can loose the gift of the coneys. I can loose the EntMoot and the fact that Entish is a slow language. I can lose any number of things that aren't important to the story, but I can't lose the story.
I don't know how many times laughter broke out at odd moments in the theater because PJ can't stop over directing. At times when we are meant to pity Gollum, people are laughing at him. At times when the Orcs are meant to be intimidating, people are laughing at them. And the heroic character of Gimli and Aragorns sally forth from the walls is broken by some weird dwarf tossing joke. What's up with that?
Let me get this straight, its not even a very good movie in its own right. FotR, that was ok. Not great, but ok. This was terrible.
Theoden was made to be a great fool. Aragorn was made to be a great fool. The power of the healing scene was completely lost in this chuckles rewrite. Did anyone in this story act wisely? Theoden did not go to Helm's Deep because he was a fool, he went to helm's deep because he was wise. You know, how many times are we going to throw characters from high places and have them appear to be dead? Between that and Galadriel/Elrond's pretty useless narration, we have nearly 15 minutes of film that can fill in all these gaps in the story were we ask 'Errr... just what is the motivation of these characters?' How did Faramir find out about the ring of power, and why did he have a sudden change of heart? Why did Sam care about seeing an Oliphant, and why bother dropping a dead soldier at his feet if Sam does not get to wonder whether or not the man was evil or whether he only served Sauron out of fear? Why did gollum suddenly begin fawning over Frodo after the rope was taken off, and what about the quite important scene where Frodo curses Gollum? Why play up the 'betrayal' at the pool, and play down the far more important 'nature of stories speach' that leads up to the all important 'Where have you been dialogue'. Why play Sam up to be so cruel? Why _again_ play Frodo as a useless fool? Why is it necessary for Pippin to tell lies in order to cause the Last March of the Ents when the truth was and could be made to serve better? Is Treebeard also a fool? Who in this story isn't a fool? My wife thought Grima Wormtongue was the most empathetic character in the story! And for all his discussion that it was necessary to have the elves at Helm Deep to show the fading of the elves, I for one had I not read the book, would have NEVER drawn the conclusion that the elves are fading because 'only' a thousand of them show up to be the principal defenders of Helm's Deep. Indeed, where it not for the dialogue, I would not have known the elves where fading at all (and what does that tell you?), and I seriously doubt any Tolkien noviate thought the Elves showing up at Helm's Deep was a sign of thier withdrawal from the affairs of ME.
I mean, I can accept that PJ screwed things up so much that the battles no longer make military sense, or that the time line no longer is carefully plotted out, or that the travel time between places is no longer accounted for. It's a movie. The average person isn't going to care, and if you haven't read the book you aren't going to know.
But it's a pretty darn poorly written movie for all of that, and none of its problems are uncurable by simply better writing.
In many ways, we are again seeing the same sort of writing weaknesses that PJ showed in Heavenly Creatures. All the best dialogue/monologue (indeed all the good writing) was stolen word for word from the transcripts of the trials, and between all this well crafted language we have PJ's quite weak filler. How that managed to win 'Best Adaptation' I'll never know. Strength of a young girls words plagerized for the screen I guess.
And on top of this, I could go scene for scene and say, 'Sorry, PJ, journeyman effort at best, what I don't understand is when you had the alternative between doing what you did and doing what Tolkien wrote, how you managed to chose what you did over the more visually powerful thing that Tolkien did?' Where does a man get the arrogance to presume that he can tell a better story than the most beloved and popular book in English of the 20th century? It's not just one scene where you can say, 'Well XF constraints..., 'Budget constraints...', and its certainly not 'Time constraints...'. It's just _everywhere_.
