Brilliant, with a few forgivable flaws

Rating: Null/10 (22 November 2003)

The Two Towers was an astonishing movie. I sat through most of it with my mouth open and my eyes gaping, unblinking at the screen. To be honest I haven't read the books so I was seeing the story for the first time with Fellowship and Towers. I was not disappointed.
My only complaints would be as follows:
Gimli, a very cool character in Fellowship, was turned into a bumbling oaf in the Towers, the butt of jokes that I felt robbed him of his dignity in the story.
Arwen, who apparently was not even in the books, was tacked on to give Liv Tyler a role in the movie, perhaps to add a little more star power. It was not necessary, and I felt her scenes in Towers dragged the movie down a bit.
There was a certain feel to fellowship that was lacking in Towers. There was a sense of gradiose adventure in Fellowship, with the Kracken, and the trip through the mines of Moria, the various battles here and there. In Towers the closest we came to such adventure was the attack of the wargs, which seemed to be over as soon as it begun (once again with Gimli bungling about, contributing only cheap laughs to the scene).
There were also many very touching scenes in Fellowship that made me walk out of the theater deeply moved long after the movie was over. The death of Gandalf, the death of Boromir, Merry and Pippin taking a brave stand in his defense -against impossible odds, and finally Samwise marching into the water and almost drowning, refusing to let his friend go on without him. There were all very powerful scenes in Fellowship. Towers was lacking in any of this heart. The closest it came was the scenes where the people were preparing their hearts for the battle of helm's deep. There was Aragorn leading the elves into battle after the wall explodes. There was Gandalf leading the horsemen down the mountainside in the end of the battle. This was an amazing scene, but a little too short to be considered perfection. There was also Sam's speech about heroes at the end. These were all awesome, but not as powerful as anything in Fellowship.
Apparently the Special edition DVDs remedy a lot of these concerns of mine. I can't wait to see it.
These few flaws are all forgivable of course. They by no means ruined the movie for me. The action of Helm's deep was breath-taking and the struggle of Frodo with the ring was gut-wrenching, particularly when he attacks Sam, and I won't even get started on how cool Golem/Smeagul was. All-in-all, I'd say Two Towers is on the list of my top 5 favorites of all time.

I give the Two Towers a 9, whereas Fellowship Gets a 10. I'll no doubt change this to a 10 after I've seen the Special Edition.