Wonderful Film

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2002)

"Two Towers" was very different from the first LotR film, which surprised me given that all three movies were shot simultaneously. I enjoyed it very much.
It wasn't perfect: Characters like Galdalf, Saruman, Merry, and
Pippen didn't get much screen time (the extended DVD will certainly
fix that problem to some extent); Samwise got a little talky near the end (in a way that Tolkien would have liked, though); and the Battle of Helm's Deep and Frodo's adventure unfolded in much different ways from the book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I thought the Helms' Deep battle could have benefitted from some type of wrap-up.
But, like the first movie, Two Towers' flaws did not work to hurt
the overall film all that much. It is an incredibly entertaining
movie. The visual effects range from very good to over-the-top great.
Oftentimes, a truly great effects shot was placed amongst shots that
were not as good, but still enjoyable. The Helms' Deep battle,
though, was extremely well-done (it reportedly took four months to
film). Some have criticized the movie because it kept breaking away from that battle to show Merry and Pippen with the Ents, but the battle was pretty intense and probably needed a couple breaks, and I thought that breaking from a ferocious battle where everything was on the line to the slow-moving Ents who couldn't make up their minds added tension to the close of the film.
Gollum was amazing -- Serkis and the effects team should win some type of special Oscar for that character. I was worried about whether the effects people could pull off the Ents, but I thought they did a great job with them, and the final scenes with the Ents contain some truly inspired special effects.
Anyway, I think it's a major accomplishment. I did get the feeling at times that I was watching a sneek preview for the special extended DVD that is sure to be superior to the theatrical release. But what do you do? For some reason, a three-and-a-half hour movie is out of the question these days for the studios, so I guess we just have to live with the fact that we are not yet seeing the final product.