Terrible (spoilers)

Rating: 3/10 (3 January 2003)

'The Fellowship of the Ring' was a decent movie that has been overblown completely out of proportion by fans of the books. And I did like it but it's not one of the top movies ever. 'The Two Towers' on the other hand is an overly long and boring film that has nearly ruined my desire to finish the series and pursue the books.
This film has so many problems it might not be possible to fit them all here but I will try. The biggest issue is that Peter Jackson, his fellow screenwriters and his editor have gotten way ahead of themselves and have crafted themselves a book on film that moves elliptically and slowly at that. This film screams 'Slave to the Book and I haven't even read it.' The editing problems is what contributes most to the problems of pace in this film we get unnecessary fantasies of the future both of Arwen's and Aragon's. The film amidst is big action sequences is too talky Galadriel gives a huge speech so does Samwise and so much of it is unnecessary. This is where I point to the screenwriters and the editor (for allowing all these pointless traveling shots)."Is this a film? Or a play or a book?" because there's too much talking and too much story and so little of it is interesting.
Gollum is another huge problem. When he's not incomprehensible he's annoying. Why should I care at all that he has some form of Middle-Earth Schizophrenia? And all he does is further point out that Frodo is the most flawed character for being too trusting and also leads us to notice that Frodo is the only one constantly in conflict yet he's missing 85% of the time, after the first act and Gandalf is the only one who makes the movie worth watching and he's missing 95% of the time. The rotation of the characters in their own scenes becomes predictable and another hindrance. The Battle at Helm's Deep is interrupted 4 times by the stupid walking tree scenes (If the trees can walk and fight how some get chopped down?). What I found more often than not is that I saw many concepts that I've seen in other fantasy films. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the Bible of fantasy literature but the other films paying homage to it have been far and away better. The score of this film was also overrated in the first film and in this one Howard Shore was trying to make every single moment in the film the most important and most memorable and it never worked. His quasi-Irish quasi-classical score did nothing but bore me to tears. Not only was there a lack of filmic sensibility on the part of the makers of this film but there were story problems like when Gandalf revives the King what is that shot of Saruman falling all about.
The actors do their best in this film besides Elijah Wood who seems to be wasting his time playing such a paper-thin character. Viggo Mortensen has my sympathies but not even the likes of Christopher Lee and Ian McKellan could stop this train wreck. 3/10.