No, I haven’t seen it — probably won’t until sometime Saturday (maybe, just maybe, Friday, but more likely Saturday), but since everyone else and their brother has seen it, and everyone but Doyce has posted the same review, I thought I’d jump on the Geekwagon and pretend I’ve seen it, too.
1. Faboo movie. A must-see. Incredible effects, stirring story, heroic characters, great stuff.
2. Suffers a bit from being the middle bridge episode. Minimal exposition, lots of action, potential audience confusion. Overall not quite as good as FotR, but we’re just talking degress of excellence here.
3. Peter Jackson’s taken some liberties with the original story, a bit more than in the first flick. Most of these are good, some are a bit mysterious.
4. The movie is preceded by an overly-long set of commercials and trailers, most of which were so-so at best.
5. Gollum is a tour-de-force, and possibly the most interesting character in the film.
6. When’s the next one coming out? I can’t wait!
UPDATE: Of course, the Onion has it’s own opinion.
Ironically, I just posted a review and said much the same thing you summarized, although I don’t know what they think Jackson had added that was ‘mysterious’ — as in ‘why did he do that’ — I think his reasons for the stuff he added were pretty obvious.
And again, technically, he did not make anything up*… everything shown in the movie is SAID to have happened in the books, it’s just that in the book it’s only mentioned, not shown — in the movie it’s been fleshed into a (very cool) couple of scenes.
(* – Although granted he does have a couple characters in attendance at the scene that weren’t there in the books.)
Well, I can’t speak in the “mysteriousness” issue, not having seen it myself … yet.
I whined at Lou when Eowyn talked to Aragorn about being a shieldmaiden…I want to see her fight the Witch King NOW, dagnabbit!!
I want this year to go by quickly. I want my RotK!!