The earlier film was a disgrace; this one is even more of a disgrace.

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 2003)

One hears a lot about the overwhelming majority of people who think otherwise (as if overwhelming majorities cannot be wrong), but I don't believe that this majority exists. Many of the people I talk to know full well how bad Jackson's films are, and most of the rest are ambivalent; moreover, as I watch the people walking out of "The Two Towers", few are genuinely excited. Most of them look as though they've been bludgeoned into submission by crude overkill and sheer boredom. I'm sure many of these poor souls come to THINK they liked the film, but I think they're wrong even on this point.
Before I launch into my attack (the film itself did nothing but attack ME for three hours; now it's my turn to attack IT), I'm obliged to point out that it does improve on "The Fellowship of the Ring" in some respects. It looks better. Rohan really looks like Rohan, or if not like Rohan, at least like some place in particular (in the original, Jackson mixed unrelated and mostly unattractive locations with wild abandon), the CGI is marginally less offensive, and there is one (1) effective use of imagery: the bit in which Frodo's elven cloak makes him look like a rock. This is not to say that the film is on balance a visual success. The camera still swoops around too much (reminding one of a British Airways ad, and composer Howard Shore has obligingly written music to complete the effect), and the endless hordes of Nintendo creatures in the interminable battle scenes fail to look one tenth as thrilling as a real shot of a handful of real people standing on a real hill (when the camera stays still enough to let us get a good look at either, which isn't often).
But let's look at some of the changes Jackson has made to the story and the characters. I'd like to make it clear: I don't object to changes per se. The day I say "The Two Towers" I also saw "Treasure Planet", which (disappointment though it was) was a far more intelligent adaptation of an original work  it moved the entire sequence of events centuries ahead and into outer space, yes, but it neither made complete nonsense of nor wilfully misunderstood its own story. It's the NATURE of Jackson's changes, not the mere fact that changes were made, that show us just how inept a film-maker he really is. Consider (spoilers ahead)
(1) Faramir in the book finds out about the ring in a private conference between himself, Frodo, and Sam, and has the wisdom to let it be then and there; Faramir in the film decides to pounce on the ring immediately as extras run around behind, in front of and between the various parties, and he even binds the hobbits and drags them to Gondorso that we are forced to sit through YET ANOTHER tedious "action" sequence before he changes his mind. One wonders: what's the point in even hiring two actors to play Boromir and Faramir, rather than one, if their characters are identical? And why not have Tolkein's quiet moment of truth in private, when we've already sat through more than enough sword-clashing? Not content by this blunder, Jackson compounds it, by letting us know that not just Faramir, not just the underlings he carelessly discusses state secrets in front of, but everyone of any consequence in Gondor, knows all about the ring. We're told that Faramir is LEGALLY BOUND to seize that ring, and that his life will be forfeit if he does not. "Then it's forfeit," he says, thrusting out his chest and waiting for the curtain to fall. No doubt these words sound very fine to thirteen-year-old Dungeons and Dragons players, but if Boromir was merely obeying the law on pain of death when he tried to take the ring, doesn't this make COMPLETE NONSENSE of all the earlier characterisation, such as it was (and destroy any sense we may have of the way in which the Ring corrupts genuine goodness)? Indeed it does.
(2) The Ents, we are told, are "not hasty" (and the film is concerned to make sure that this trait is played for cheap laughs). They deliberate at great length before deciding to remain neutral. Then  at the sight of destruction they knew about anyway  it takes them FIVE SECONDS to change their mind and go to war. (Five seconds is the time it takes all of them, collectively, to mount an invasion. Individual minds switch track more quickly still.) Does Jackson have the SLIGHTEST CLUE what he is doing?
I could multiply examples easily: the contrived suspense of Aragorn's "death", the intrusion of elves into those parts of the story where their intrusion makes no sense, the fact that the elves look like the kind of stormtroopers that vampires would have used if vampires had invented fascism, the bickering between Frodo and Sam and between Theoden and everyone. But it's not just the idiocy of these changes individually that worries me, but their effect collectively. Jackson says that his version of "The Two Towers" is "darker" than Tolkein's; for "darker", read bloodthirstier, more cynical, more redolent of right-wing nastiness, less variegated. HIS world is one in which people squabble constantly, in which nobody has an unprompted noble thought or impulse, in which the forces of good have little left worth saving and in which power has little left worth the trouble of corrupting. It's the small-minded and mean-spirited work of a director who (as we know from a thousand flat-footed errors) is unable to handle a large canvas  whose mind is unable to encompass a large world containing more than one kind of thing.
It's a disgrace.