Is it really The Two Towers?

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2003)

Peter Jackson's film The Two Towers encapsulates a heavily edited and modified version of parts of Book III and Book IV of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which are normally published as The Two Towers (following the original printings). Indeed, there are many places in the second entry where it only bears a superficial resemblance to the source material. But that, in and of itself, does not automatically condemn a film.
The problems with Peter Jackson's The Two Towers are many. Aside from the lackluster direction that action fans are depressingly willing to look away from, and the eminently forgettable score, most of them lie in the telling of the story.
Jackson cross-cuts between three different stories in his course; at most, Tolkien only ever did with two. Unfortunately, these stories are not at all similar in tone, and there are points in the major battle sequence where we cut away to rather tranquil scenes. He already had enough difficulty creating anything of a pace or a mood in his subpar Fellowship of the Ring; with The Two Towers he simply falls flat on his face. It is understandable that Tolkien's generally more leisurely step was not well suited for transition to the screen; unfortunately, I don't think the problem was solved even quasi-adequately. Jackson's storytelling skills are highly overrated by fans who have read the books, and I think that on their own the films don't tell the story well enough for any subtleties to be grasped.
Worse than this are Jackson's rewrites to the story. I'm not approaching this from a "How dare he rewrite a classic!" aspect, mind you. What upsets me are the way that he alters plot elements and turns them into banal cliches. Theoden's possession, Aragorn's near-death experience, Faramir's temptation, the Elves at Helm's Deep (it was clear that, until the battles in Book V, it was all Men making their stand and not the other peoples of Middle-Earth), the insultingly insipid "Gandalf arrives with cavalry" (why not just have him descend from the Heavens and wipe out the Orcs with a mighty blast of magic?)...not just alterations, but blatant and frankly boring elements that have been done a hundred times before. I could have accepted plot changes if they had made the story better, or even if they had been adequate replacements that worked for a superior filmic pacing, but these are just plain awful and make the resulting film worse. And there were large swaths of material lost in favor of this waffle, which only adds insult to injury.
Characters are changed without needing to be; again, the result is always worse. The Faramir depicted in the film, for instance, doesn't serve any real purpose as he did in the book. Most actually seem less three-dimensional here than either in the novel or in the first film, which is quite an accomplishment. To put in something of a positive word, Gollum was a technical achievement (though when I saw it in the theatres twice, audiences laughed - not an effect that seems intended by the source material).
Nothing in this mess improved on the source material or even came close to matching it. As a film, it's a passable entertainment if you can overlook the severe pacing issues; as an adaptation it's a miserable failure.