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The
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Last year we all marveled at the precision and craftsmanship with which writer/director, Peter Jackson brought the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy tale, The Lord of The Rings to the big screen. The Fellowship of the Ring did what many thought to be an impossible task by delivering the sense of depth, and shear size that was portrayed in the books. Now, one year later, Jackson and company are back to do it again with The Two Towers. While Fellowship depended heavily on setting all the main characters up and building their stories, Towers takes a faster, more balls out action pace. We pick up right where FOTR left off, the Fellowship has broken into three smaller groups and "the journey stands on the tip of a sword". The Ranger, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas the Elf (Orlando Bloom) and the loveable Dwarf, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are tracking a band of Orc who have captured two of their tiny, Hobbit companions, Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd respectively) across the country of Rohan. On the other side of the Fellowship, Sam, played by Sean Astin and Elijah Wood=s Frodo continue on their quest towards the dark land of Mordor where they will destroy the ring of power. The returning cast is exactly what they were in the first film: nothing short of an amazing group of actors. A few newcomers join the cast this time around, including the king of Rohan, Theoden (Bernard Hill) and his slimy and quite frankly, creepy advisor, Grima Wormtongue, portrayed by Brad Dourif. Miranda Otto also joins the cast as Eowyn, daughter of the king and plays a very convincing little girl with a crush, seeing as most of her scenes are spent flirting with Aragorn. But by far, the most impressive new addition to the cast is the Andy Serkis-voiced, computer generated Gollum, who appeared briefly in Fellowship and is fully fleshed out this time around. Gollum looks and talks like the amalgamation of a 70 year-old crack head and the "Bat Boy" character that you see all the time in the tabloids. He is one of the most impressive CG characters ever put on film and instantly shames all other digital characters (especially Jar Jar Binks) to no end. Gollum's face portrays his emotions perfectly, his mouth is excellently synced to the voice that gives him life and his inner struggle between good and bad gives him as much depth as any other character in the tale. Peter Jackson's own Weta Workshop truly put together a masterpiece in Gollum. Considering they only had a year in between films, Weta did an amazing job with the special effects, but there are a few blemishes. There is evidence, at times, of sloppy green screen compositing and there are times when you can tell the actors were replaced with CG models for certain shots; and effect that should not be noticeable. I was also slightly disappointed with the Ents, which are large, tree-like creatures who roam and protect the forests of Middle Earth. They often looked out of place with their surroundings or "cut out" and the animations often reminded me of the claymation films of the 80's. Apart from its shortcomings, The Two Towers really is a triumph for both Jackson and fans of Tolkien's work alike. There's just nothing like watching an action sequence where 10,000 raging Orcs storm the stronghold at Helms Deep or seeing an army of trees storming Isengard to seek revenge for a forest that had been cut down. TTT is a spectacle of the grandest of scales and deserves the highest of accolades. If you do not see this film more than once, then you must be crazy. This film may be about two towers but it deserves five stars.
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