Concerning Towers, Dreams and other stuff.

Rating: 10/10 (17 April 2003)

I remember reading a readers letter in some film publication around Christmas time, where the question of which two towers the title was referring to, was brought up. The answer the publication gave, in which they quoted a letter from Tolkien to his publisher, was Orthanc and Cirith Ungol. They went on to write that, since the Ringbearers arrival at Cirith Ungol is delayed to the third film, the Two Towers in the film are Orthanc and Barad-dur. Which makes more sense to me, because that is where Saruman and Sauron "live". As for the film, I think it is one of the best ever, and one where they actually made CGI moving. The scene where Treebeard sees the destruction of the forest near Isengard, and the Ents heading for Isengard really got to me. Move over, Greenpeace! I was disappointed, though, by that they didn´t include Faramir´s vision/dream of seeing Boromir dead, and later finding the broken Horn of Gondor washed ashore. If they had included this, some more light could have been shed on the character of Faramir, he was a bit too one-note for me.
I mean, at least Boromir smiled a few times during FotR, but Faramir doesn´t here, well, not before he is tempted by the Ring, anyway. Not that I blame him, after all, he is the non-favourite son of the Steward of Gondor, he knows his brother is dead, but that doesn´t make him more favoured, and his country is about to be attacked by a huge army from Mordor. The dream-sequense would only have taken about a minute or so of screen time, anyway, and I know which scenes they could have cut down on, but I won´t name names. Interesting dialogue, though: Go to sleep/This is a dream etc., because the lucky members of the audience are asleep/dreaming, while those who are too eager to catch up with the movie when it "re-starts", are awake and presumably in pain. Enough said.