What Happened?

Rating: 7/10 (25 February 2003)

I'm not sure how this film could have gone so wrong but it did. All the power and heart of the first film (The Fellowship of the Ring) is completely gone. It's like Peter Jackson took a few weeks off while George Lucas and Steven Spielberg came in and took over direction for him. These two directors can be good and even excellent at times but have the habit of pleasing the masses too much. The great thing about The Fellowship was that it was original and not full of Hollywood clichés. With The Two Towers Peter Jackson seemed hell bent on filling it with nothing but Hollywood clichés and wiping away the integrity of The Fellowship.
The only thing interesting in this film were the trees that walked and talked, but even they got a little tiresome especially since one of them had R2-D2 and C3-PO (Yes, I'm aware that's not their names. It's sarcasm - see George Lucas reference above.) in it's branches for a majority of the film.
This film was a real disappointment, but I have hope that the Return of the King will be better. A part of me hopes Return is just as bad because if it's good then when it comes time to buy the movies I'll be left without a middle. If Return is bad then I can just buy The Fellowship and just use my imagination to fill in the rest.