This is an amazing adventure with lots of imagination. It's filled with gunfights and excitement. I think it's hard to get a movie like this just right but they pulled it off. It's creepy at times, also very funny, and has great action. Some of the graphics are a bit dated, but I couldn't care less. This movie is adventurous and exciting to watch.

New material at bottom:

You know the teacher you had in high school who, no matter what they try to explain, it just seems so much harder to understand than it is? But if anyone else explains it, you just get it? That teacher is Nolan for this movie. There wasn't particularly anything over my head or confusing. But the way the story is told just makes it seem so much more complicated than it is or needs to be. Apparently, complicated means good or smart.

A smart movie is thought provoking. That means it makes you think about things you hadn't before once you get out of the movie. This just makes you stop and think about what is happening. Again, it wasn't really confusing, Nolan just made it more complex than it was.

Complex and interesting are not the same thing. All it did was make a triple dream to make it seem cool. And then they go in to a dream one more time, seemingly for the lulz. So we're supposed to follow DiCaprio and Page in this dream. And outside of that dream, we are supposed to follow Cillian Murphy doing... something. But that's a dream too, so outside of that dream, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is floating around a hotel. Meanwhile, outside of that dream is some guy being chased in a van. And all the while, outside of that dream, they're sitting in a jet. Traditional story telling only has three things going on at the most at one time. Nolan doesn't challenge that. He just does it wrong. Seemingly because complex equals interesting. Now this, in and of itself is easy enough to follow. but when they cut to different dreams, there needs to be some kind of connection. They need to show us something happening from one dream, and then how that directly affects the next dream. Which they did at first, but then just started cutting randomly. The music is mostly what made this not work for me. The music didn't change when going from one story to the next. It made it seem like the music wan't actually made for the movie since the music didn't even acknowledge scene changes. And it made each scene change off-putting.

Again, there wasn't anything difficult to follow about this. It just felt like listening to a kid going, "Oh yeah, and then this happened. Oh, wait. I forgot to say they were doing this, too. Oh. And this was happening while the other thing was happening. No, not that thing, the other thing. Oh. Did I mention this was happening? And he was doing something to him, but I don't remember."

The smartest and best thing about this movie is really just the trippy action scenes. But those were pretty pointless except to go, "Ooh. Look how weird." And they tended to rely on it to be an interesting movie. But they were still fun to watch, just clearly pointless. But there was just something really hokey looking about it. The people weren't moving right or something. It looked choppy.

And the music was always just the same intense, loud music. No breaks. Most of the scenes in this movie would have been much better with no music at all. You need to relax for a minute and just listen to what the characters are saying. You can't do that with music that thinks that intense action is happening.

If you think about it, there's really not a whole lot to the story. The mission is complicated, but a mission isn't a story. The story is that he's doing a mission to get back to his kids. That could have been good enough if I cared about the character. I didn't get a strong motive from him until I'd spent most of the movie already not caring. So then I didn't even care when we finally got to the ending, which was incredibly trite... with intense music. In fact, I didn't get anything at all from any of the other characters.

It was an interesting idea but was ruined with bad story telling. The mindless special effects were neat to look at, but not much more. At the hands of someone else, this could have been really good.

If you're going to rate this down (as you surely will) at least leave a message. I'm more than willing to change my mind if a good point is addressed. I really wanted to like this movie.

NEW MATERIAL:
After watching it a 2nd time, though I still agree with everything I said before (save the complaint about the graphics being choppy) I found it kind of fun this time around. All those things I mentioned above that bothered me, I still think are problems in the movie, but they didn't bother me nearly as much this time around. I was able to have fun watching people run around walls in a dream world and stuff.

Hands down, best Halloween sequel. Laurie's finally back with the explanation that she faked her death. They spent the first 60 minutes of the movie developing characters (save the first murder scene) so we can actually care about them instead of just seeing a slaughter-fest. We see how the events of part one and two have affected Laurie. We see how on edge she is and that she must be like this all the time.
But I don't like that they ignore part 4,5, and 6. They could have mentioned something about a coverup at the beginning and had Laurie mention something about giving up her daughter Jamie, but not her son for some reason who happened to be born the same year, in order to go into hiding. So I don't like that they ignore it, but I still try to make it work in my mind. But watching it as a direct sequel to part two, it continues and wraps up the story quite perfectly.
Now there's one fairly big problem I have with this movie. As I've mentioned, the first 60 minutes is dedicated to character development. And that's the point where Michael starts going after Laurie and her son, John. But then it's over only 20 minutes later. Those 20 minutes are done well. It's fast-paced and scary. I care about the characters. And the music is very effective. And though I like what happens in those 20 minutes, it's just that not a lot happens. It ends too soon and too abruptly. But the ending was perfect. Finally, the series can end on a high-note with some dignity. And they certainly didn't make a crappy sequel. No they didn't... No they didn't!

This one takes a huge step forward from the last two movies with the way the horror scenes are done. But then takes another huge step backwards with the plot. We start off with the little girl from the last two (Jamie), who is now about 14 and pregnant. Was this pregnancy forced on her? So the basic gist is the little boy from the first one (Tommy) finds the baby and has to protect if from Michael Myers. That part's just fine. Simple idea, and since it's a baby whose life is threatened, the suspense is practically built right in. We don't even have to like the characters because no matter what, we think, "Poor baby." and we care automatically. Now the issue I have is that they explain away Michael as being part of a cult. He's working with a bunch of creepy people and "voice-men" and such. Michael is supposed to work alone and be a mystery. They can't go off making up background for him. Especially one so dumb.
But the step forward is that it was much more suspenseful than the other sequels. One way they did this (aside from the baby) was minimizing Michael's screen time. The fear came from not knowing where he was. And few of the kills were made "interesting," when horror movies try to do that, the kills just come off as stupid. This one mostly had simple knife or ax deaths. More believable and more frightening. However, one thing that took away from how scary this movie could have been was...
The music. What fool was in charge of this? Who says, "Michael Myers is coming. Cue electric guitar riff: weedle deedle deedly deeer!" ? My eyebrows got tired from screwing them up.
They screwed up Michael's story, but it came off as one of the more effective Halloween sequels in terms of being scary.

Death scenes are a little better this time around, but the story's a bit dumber. Little of the movie is dedicated to Jaimie, but I only take the movie seriously when she's there. The Man In Black was a really random addition to the movie. It probably would have been better if the movie had half of the pointless crap cut out.

Now Micheal has to kill his niece. That concept is okay. But what this movie needed was death scenes that were actually good and scary. Instead of someone being stabbed with a shotgun. But there were some scenes that were suspenseful. It just needed a bit more to work. Overall? ok.

I like the story in this movie. They introduce more elements with a bit of an explanation of the events of the first one. But this movie spends hardly any of its time on the main character Laurie until an hour in. It spends most of the first 60 minutes following around random characters who are obviously only there to be killed off.

And in this one, they threw out the method to the death scenes that made the original one good. They spend very little of their focus on the build-up to a kill. The build-up was there, but it was half-assed. Instead they focused more on the murder itself. They just try to have interesting and creative kills like a needle in an eye or burning someone to death in a hot tub. In fact, at times, the directing itself was more funny than scary.

Aside from that, most of the movie seemed like a pretty good continuation of the first one. They finnish up the story and you get what you really need out of it. Most of the filming made it feel like we were watching the same movie. By that, I don't mean it was a repeat of the original, but that it was like watching the second half to a three hour movie. Although, if I had a complaint about the filming, it would be that it seemed to be mimicking the style of the first one without getting it quite right. They film from Michael Myers' POV too often. But it's subtle and can be overlooked.

There is much room for improvement in this movie, but it turned out to be alright. I think that had John Carpenter directed this one, it could have been much better. I think that with that, it would have still had some weak elements, but not as many.

Boring, but good. This movie has lots of scenes where not much happens. However, this is done to build suspence, which it succeeds at. It is arguably scary; it's understandable that many would find it only boring and not scary. But I enjoy horror movies that take their time and concentrate on the idea and the kill itself rather than throwing in gore just to make the audience queezy. That is a cheap reaction that true horror movies should not attempt to acieve, which this one doesn't. This was a horror movie that I enjoyed.

Hardly ever a dull moment. It's filled with awesome battle scenes, but none of them are randomly placed for the sake of only looking cool. They're all a good part of the story. The fact that they're totally epic helps of course. I like how as the series progresses, the battle scenes get gradually more ridiculous (in a good way). If you watch the most intense battle scene from the first one, probably the cave troll scene, and then watch the most intense battle of this one, probably... any of them, you'll see that there's so much more going on. But not in a way that feels pointlessly crammed like the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

I personally love the scene with all the mûmaks [oliphaunt (big elephant)] and Legolas is a total bad-ass so he climbs the thing, takes out bad guys while still keeping count of them, then taking out the damn oliphaunt single handed. To me, that scene is the epitome of the series. That's the part I think about when The Lord of the Rings is mentioned.

I notice Frodo and Sam seem to get less and less screen time. Although I suppose they might make up for it at the end of this one. But I'm always interested to see where they're going and how they'll get there. And now after Samwise the Great spent two and a half movies (or five regular length movies) being all protective of his mister Frodo like a cute little lap dog, he finally gets his chance to kick just a little bit of giant arachnid ass.

Speaking of which, I love the way that scene was done because that was the creepiest spider in the world. The best part wasn't any moment of intense action. It was the low angle shot of the spider hovering over Frodo showing her dominance over him and his unknown powerlessness. And what made it even more scary was the fact that it didn't even make any noise. Brilliant.

The endings drag on, but after a few views, I'm used to it by now. They bring a good sense of finality to the series.
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After watching the trilogy one more time (this time, a special theatrical screening of the extended editions) I changed my mind. The endings are great.

Now that they've introduced the story, they get to the interesting part right away. There's a bit of boring talking, but the dialog is usually pretty interesting. This time, there's better action and more of it. The battle sequences are amazing. When the slow talking trees come around, they don't mind smacking the crap out of what ever they can reach and causing mass destruction. I always forget that Frodo and Sam are the main characters because so little of the movie is on them. But I'm never bothered by this because they make the rest of it fairly interesting. The visuals and musical score are both as beautiful as ever. The action a great improvement on the last one but is all saved for the end. Not as good as the first, but still a great movie.