The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Essential, and the hardest of the three to structure, which is why it is the one most often called the weakest and the one that most rewards a second watch. The Fellowship has broken into three groups moving in different directions, and the film has to cut between a chase across grassland, two hobbits with a creature who wants to kill them, and a kingdom under a spell, without any of the three resolving.

Gollum is why it works. Andy Serkis performed the part on set with the other actors and the animation was built on that performance, which was not how digital characters had been made before, and the result is the first fully synthetic character in a film who can hold a close-up against a human being. The argument he has with himself beside a pool is the best scene in the trilogy.

Helm's Deep is the set piece everybody names and it deserves it: months of night shooting in the rain, a real fortress built at scale, and a siege that is legible from beginning to end because you were shown the wall, the gate and the culvert before anybody attacked them. The crowd software written for it changed how battles are filmed, and it is used here to fill a space that physically exists.

The Extended Edition is the better film here, by a wider margin than on either of the others. It restores the Ents' reasoning, a long passage of Rohan's grief that explains Théoden rather than just curing him, and Faramir's backstory, which converts the trilogy's most criticised change from an inexplicable reversal into a man trying to please a father who despises him.