A huge and jolting dissapointment

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2003)

I am a huge fan of both the original Tolkien LOTR trilogy and the first film, the fellowship of the ring. Both possesed a certain intimacy and overall sense of strength due to the way in which they were original and engaging. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the Two Towers. TTT was a total and complete mess from top to bottom, a downward spiral of pathetic Hollywood money making schemes and an overall heap of cliche garbage.

Characters are as deep as a puddle at this point, and the sole desire of the movie seemed to be geared towards "awe inspiring" battle scenes,"scary" orcs and the sappy, melodramatic "bravery" of the heroes. Well, awe inspiring they were not. Predictable and bland is more like it. Gollum was the only shining light in this film, otherwise it was just a total piece of trash. It hurts me to say that, because I enjoyed the first film so much and the books are just absolutely phenomenal. I think P. Jackson must have polled a group of 11 year old boys on the way out of the Fellowship of the Ring last year and decided the go on their advice. They probably said stuff like "The dwarf gimli was so funny! heehee!", "the battle scenes were really awesome - wow!!!", "the Uruk Hai leader was scary! - eeek!!!" etc etc etc. After tabulating this information, it seems like he based the movie around these weak sets of standards and made it a long boring waste of time and money.
Many crazed and obsessed fans of this film have been defeated by the hype. I think they have been convincing themselves for the last year that since the first one was good, this one will be even better. When they were presented with this melodramatic b.s., somehow I feel like many of them just accepted it because they didnt want to be let down. Thats a real shame. I say embrace the dissapointing feeling and just be honest, rather than trying to convince yourself that it was the incredible triumph you think it was. Hey - if you liked it, you liked it. Im not going to argue with that. It just seems really pitiful when someone claims they dont like TTT and get ripped apart for speaking their opinion. Thats just depressing. I think many fans are unfortunately starting to equate the books with these movies, and claming that a true fan of the books MUST love TTT or else theyre not a real fan. Thats just sad, I think. will probably bring up the boneheaded argument "well why did you post this much if you hated it so much!?!?!". Im posting this in hope that maybe somehow, someway, anyone else out there who loved the books and was dissapointed with this movie can honestly feel like they arent the only one who is honest with themselves. A film series of this magnitude also deserves an even headed approach rather than just a bunch of blind Peter Jackson worshippers saying that it is the greatest movie of all time.
I would like to see a more charecter based and mature approach to the last film so that it can at least be seen as some sort of overall effort rather than just a good start and nothing more. This needs to improve, its gotten very weak.
Can you honestly claim that this film deserves a 9.0?????????