Tepid Two Towers

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2002)

New hideous beasts join the Balrog and Orcs as audience members return to Middle Earth during Director Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), Gandalf the White (Ian McKellen), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), and five other members of the original Fellowship continue their arduous journey to Mordor to destroy the Ring. Conditions are often intolerable. Powers clash and collide. The battles are fierce and unrelenting. Friendships and alliances are tested. Innocent people and brave warriors lose their lives. Love is found and lost and unreturned. The world is simply a darker place. But even this enormous amount of conflict and drama does not engender a superior sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
The team of screenwriters (Frances Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, and Peter Jackson) undeniably undertook a difficult task in reproducing J.R.R. Tolkien's epic in script form, but this fact does not excuse the film's slow pace and occasional incomprehensibility. Both major and minor characters are introduced too quickly and little or no time is invested in many of these people, which prevents audience members from connecting and sympathizing with the characters. Théoden (Bernard Hill) orders elderly men and young boys to fight an impossible war, but one cannot connect with the weeping women or terrified men as leaders outfit them in helmets and swords and send them off to a likely death. The writers have not given audience members the time or reason to care.
The overriding theme in The Lord of the Rings is that the good in the world is worth a tremendous fight and that evil cannot prevail despite its overwhelming force, but other themes evolve through various characters and subplots. Few people can miss the dominating theme; Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) even states this Truth at the end of The Two Towers just in case it has eluded anyone in the story's first six cinematic hours. Unfortunately, many other themes are lost not simply because of exclusion from the original text, but again, because the writers did not invest enough time in explaining the details and significance of certain events. Allowing Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) to return momentarily to clarify certain points and clever monologues by Gollum (voice of Andy Serkis) avoid complete disregard for intelligibility, but more of these not-entirely-innovative but nonetheless helpful techniques would have benefited the film.
Gollum embodies the possibility that any inherently good creature can be transformed into something evil. The entire cast delivers laudable performances once again, but this computer generated character steals the spotlight in every one of his scenes. He appears deformed and acts maliciously, but the writers gave him a tremendous amount of depth and so his deformities and deviance is forgiven. Gollum is complicated, and he is endearing. He has become a slave to the desire for power, but traces of his former Sméagol self penetrate his dominating ugliness--especially in an intense but entertaining forest monologue.
Unfortunately, Gollum also represents the most disturbing reality of the second part of this film series: The Two Towers relies too heavily on its computer generated characters and special effects and not enough on the story and the abilities of its human actors. Legolas Greenleaf (Orlando Bloom) prances off boulders and dramatically flies onto a horse during battle, which elicits laughter during serious moments and detracts from Bloom's natural ability to play the part. The Fellowship of the Ring is not entirely void of these non-human creations, but the focus is on the nine-member Fellowship. The actors are responsible for the overall success or failure of each scene in the first film, but the exact opposite is true for the second film and pure spectacle does not afford cinematic greatness.
Jackson's talented cast is not as present in The Two Towers, but they make a valiant effort to carry the film even through too numerous sweeping landscape scenes. Still, few of the actors exhibit flawless or even nearly flawless performances. Wood and John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli, occasionally overreact with melodramatic reactions and facial expressions, though it is admittedly the exception to Wood's otherwise skillful and intriguing performance. Rhys-Davies is particularly guilty of this amateurish act, however, and these poor acting choices coupled with a script that portrays him as a fool cheapens the overall story and discredits the Fellowship. The most troubling acting problem, however, is the lack of chemistry between the lead male characters excluding the hobbits. Every single leader is captivating in his individual monologues and scenes, but their camaraderie seems forced and unauthentic. The camera does most of the work, and the actors rely on background music and other visual effects to compensate for their collective inefficiency. Thankfully, the believability of all other relationships balances this inadequacy, and newcomer Miranda Otto as Éowyn shines.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers lags behind its predecessor, but Jackson and his cast and crew have created another film well worth the price of a movie ticket. The story begs for more explanation and the actors are undermined by technology, but the special effects and computer generated characters will keep audience members content through the three hour duration. One Ring was forged to bind all creatures in the darkness of Mordor--despite the film's faults, don't be the only one to miss this continued journey that will determine if the dark prophecy will come true and send Middle Earth into catastrophic ruin.