Disappointing to a Devoted Fan

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2002)

Warning: May contain what some consider to be mild spoilers
I consider myself to be a die-hard Ringhead. I've read the books, ALL the books, I've seen Fellowship hundreds of times, and my room is full of the geeky paraphrenalia that the studios love for me to buy. I went into Two Towers expecting to be just blown away like I was with the first movie. The previews looked great, all the reviewers loved it, all my friends who saw it said it was fabulous.
I was disappointed.
The first movie was an intense, sweeping epic that spanned time, space, and the human emotions of love, hate, greed, fear, loyalty and courage. Two Towers had more in common with an action-comedy. They ought to have replaced Gimli with Chris Rock for all the seriousness he carried through the movie. He was the butt of so many jokes and sight gags that I wanted to fluff out his wig and name him Curly. It was simply impossible to respect him the way he was portrayed, a sad fate for a treasured member of the Fellowship.
In place of plot and deep character development, there was a massive battle spanning 2/3 of the movie, interspersed occasionally with shots of angst-ridden hobbits and Christopher Lee being toady. Arwen disappeared almost entirely, despite playing a large part in the previews. Most of the elves did. Okay, I know they were almost completely absent from the book, but I was still hoping for more since Jackson twisted and warped the plot so badly anyway. Another thing that left me reeling was the death of a character who I'd grown to love. Before I could recover from that, the movie was miraculously and suddenly over, leaving me sitting and staring at the screen open-mouthed. The first words out of my mouth upon the credits rolling were "That's it?" Granted, it was a 3 hour movie, and by the end I felt like it was, but there was so much exposition that never happened, so many scenes that flashed past in seconds which should have taken minutes, and not NEARLY enough of Ngila Dickson's magnificent Elven costume designs.
Maybe they'll be in the Extended Ultra Extended Special Edition DVD.
Summary: A superficially wonderful fantasy action flick with characters you feel like you've grown to know from the first movie already laid out for you and breathtaking epic visuals. Unlike Fellowship, the changes to the plot and "flow" of Two Towers have made movie and book two entirely separate entities, each deserving of some merit on their own. However, if you go in expecting to be floored, you WILL be disappointed. It's decent, but nowhere near as intense or gripping as the first movie, and if you get easily attached to certain minor characters, brace yourself. It hurts. My rating: 3.8 out of 5.