Is this the same director??

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2002)

Note, there may be spoilers in these comments.
I just returned from Ireland's first showing of the film. I was at the first showing on The Fellowship of the Ring last year and was blown away, and I still hold that it was more deserving than "A Beautiful Mind" for last year's "Best Picture" Oscar. It got many things right, the characterizations were perfect, the locals were amazing, set design was top notch, special effects, cinematography, landscapes and script were superb. They couldn't have improved it.
unfortunately it seems that this film was tainted by Hollywood execs who wanted more bucks from this film and padded it full of stuff to bring in a more varied audience. It doesn't work.
Firstly, the film does not have the same focus as the last. The characters are separated, doing different things. In the book, it mostly deals with each group's quest one at a time according to the timeline. in this film, it switches between them constantly, trying to squash all of these events that happened over a certain timeline into a much smaller timeframe. It seems disjointed.
Secondly, there are major story rewrites. This was forgivable in the first film (Face it, Tom Bombadil deserved to be cut, and the sweet scene between Aragorn and Arwen was nice) but in The Two Towers, a full 45 minutes of the film is just invented, padding out the time that should have been spent on the relevant story. Most of these scenes are painfully clichéd and remind one of Fabio romance novels, especially the cover illustrations. Also, Frodo heads to a particular place far too early, a book too early in fact. I'm not looking forward to the rewrites they'll do for Return of the King.
The atmosphere and mood of the film is surprisingly different from the Fellowship. Last year's film was dark, brooding and full of impending doom. Well, if the doom has come in The Two Towers, it wasn't much to worry about. It's full of one-liners. The comedic angle is exploited far too much, at the expense of Gimli's character especially. The first film did an excellent job of portraying the relatively minor characters of Gimli and Legolas. They hate each other at first because of racial differences, but soon grow fond of each other. Gimli's range of emotion is surprisingly versatile, especially seen in the Mines of Moria. Despite the large focus on Gimli's and Legolas's relationship with each other in the book, none of it is present in the film. None.
Set design was another disappointment. Yes, Rohan was a feat that none of it was CGI, but it still looked awful and downright small. The scale in this film, with the notable exception of the Battle at Helm's Deep was far too small. Entire cities we are supposed to care about are not much bigger than the little towns that get ravaged early on.

In the oft-discussed Battle of Helm's Deep, there's a lot to like. Unfortunately, there are at least a dozen times when the focus cuts from the action to a Titanic-esque look at the women and children cowering in the caves. Just one shot of that would be forgivable, but it shows them so much it just becomes annoying.
Also, The film ends before the book does! It handles the three major quests at dif ferent paces; so Frodo's quest takes him into Return of the King territory while the rest of the story leaves off only halfway through!
But there are plenty of good things about the film. The highlight is Gollum. This CGI ch a racter gives the best performance out of anyone in the film! (Even the likes of Gandalf are sub-par in this film, when he returns he is so unlike the character we knew before that one almost wishes the Balrog ate him) Gollum is a triumph of computer animation and his voiceover is excellent as well. There were also a couple moments of visual brilliance, like at Barad-Dûr.
But over all I give this film a 6/10, whereas Fellowship earned a 9/10. It is not a worthy sequel to Fellowship and considering it was all filmed at the same time I am at a loss as to how it could have turned out like this.