After watching the first movie, I genuinely thought I'd rewatched this trilogy to truly understand it too late (I watched it as a child but always felt like it was a movie for adults with its serious tone, so I was never quite attached to it). The first movie showed me the reason why LotR was so often the point of comparison whenever a new high fantasy series came out. But 2 decades later, having seen so many films and shows somewhat inspired by LotR's ambitiousness, I was honestly... a bit whelmed.

But this movie... damn.

Given more time to get to know them somewhat, the characters have become a bit more likeable (though I understand that it would have been hard to form an attachment to them with just the first movie, which had a lot of introduction to do). I also really liked the way this film handled the split narratives without taking away anything.

Probably what I loved most about this was the introduction to more of this world's lore. Now I'm tempted to rewatch the first movie with this newfound appreciation for it (I most likely will after the third movie). It makes me wish I still had the time and patience to read books because I'd love to read the series just to delve deeper into this rich universe. Might be time to finally dust off that old copy of The Hobbit lying around here somewhere…

Also, for a long time, (I avoided spoilers and they weren't really abundant) I genuinely thought this was about Frodo gaining control over the ring. I now realize that it's really just about this high fantasy world, an impending war against 1 dude (who's really just empowered by evil Dumbledore at this point), and a host of races selfishly trying to gain control of The Ring. Well. It's mostly just been Men at this point, go figure.

And what an edge-of-the-seat battle! [spoiler]I went from being so sure that the Ents would show up to turn the tide, but then they didn't and I thought the battle really was unwinnable massacre, then the elves arrived and provided some hope (even for viewers like me who hadn't read the books, I assume), but then they were still massacred, and at that point, I figured it truly was done, with such heavy losses made more tragic by the scenes leading up to it. And then... sunrise![/spoiler] Damn, a rollercoaster.

Also… poor Gollum?