the world of tolkien, finally captured on screen

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2003)

I saw Two Towers on dvd and i have to day it's a huge improvement on the first part. I remember reading Tolkien many many years ago and the main thing I liked about the novels was the calm and easy manner in which he created a world where men co-existed with elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, and what not. This magical sweep which permeates every page of Tolkien's writing was somehow absent in the first part, for me at least. Don't know why (have seen both films only once) but maybe it was that Peter Jackson had to spend a lot of time establishing characters and premise in part one. But Two Towers suffers no such problem. It captures the magical world of middle earth beautifully, a world not unlike our own, but yet so unlike ours, in that it is far more ancient, magical and most of all, full of natural wonders. It is a world where the earth has not yet been divorced from its ancient past. ***SPOILER BEGINS*** Trees talk, huge masses go to war, men form allegiances with elves, fortresses crumble, romance blossoms and even dies, elves wander off to strange places, forests whisper, kings fall into the grasp of evil and wither away, men get saved by strange powers, ***SPOILER ENDS*** strange creatures transformed by their own consciences inhabit the periphery of evil (Gollum is completely kick ass) and more and more. I'm not from the West so at some level all this mythology (which was at the core of Tolkien's writing) is not mine. But I'm a huge fan of its charm and wisdoms. And that exactly is what has started to permeate the Lord of the Rings movies. Am eagerly awaiting Part Three now.