Rather boring, just like its predecessor.

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2003)

Spoilers.
After watching the first Lord of the Rings, I wasn't expecting too much from its sequel. Thank goodness, because I didn't get much. These two movies have much in common. For instance, they're both extremely boring in parts and way too long.
Sometimes I really enjoy long movies. But at times like these, when the movie is extremely slow, I want to fall asleep.
The Two Towers has an extravagant beginning, though, in which Gandalf battles the gigantic behemoth Balrog. This scene was probably the most impressive in the entire movie, matched only by the battle of the Ents toward the end.
The characters have all split up, and so the movie jumps from one to the next to the next without really following any particular pattern. It's almost random, and at times I was getting a little confused. One time I was wondering where the heck Gandalf had gone, but then I remembered that about an hour ago he rode off on a horse. Such is the way of The Lord of the Rings, and I'm beginning to believe that this series will never change.
I am also quickly tiring of the way these movies try to `trick' the audience into believing a certain character is dead or has died, when its obvious that it hasn't happened. Aragorn goes over a cliff (but fell into a river and survived), and Merry (or was it Pippin?) is `trampled' by a horse (nope, we find out ten minutes later that he actually rolled out of the way!). But it's all in good fun, and I guess it's supposed to keep the movie tense. Which doesn't really work.
The plot is the same as the first, but this time Frodo and Sam have aid in the form of Gollum. Within the first few minutes, I was tired of Gollum. He is a sickly little character, with an interesting schizophrenic personality, but an annoying and poorly generated character nonetheless.
Story line is, of course, different than The Fellowship of the Ring, but I found it just as boring. There is so much going on, yet the movie somehow manages to nearly put me to sleep.
The music is absolutely awful. I no longer appreciate Howard Shore's work. In the first movie, he thought up some excellent themes and I was impressed. However, in The Two Towers, several themes play over and over nonstop, which is EXTREMELY annoying. No new themes are created in this movie; instead, Shore takes snips of pieces from the first movie and puts them in this one, which makes for a lousy soundtrack. Sickeningly lousy. I can really say it hit rock bottom.
Despite all these flaws, The Two Towers does have some excellent battle scenes, although they, too, are stretched far too long sometimes. Gimli, the dwarf, provides some excellent comic relief, and he basically pulled me through the movie. Character development is still poor, but better than the first.
All in all, The Two Towers is exactly what I expected. Much like the first, it is a major disappointment because it is so boring, lacking in a good storyline, and just too flawed.