oh my god

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2004)

`I hope this is as good as the Fellowship'. That was my initial thought when I sat down to watch The Two Towers' at the cinema on the 18th December 2002. Thankfully this lived up to my expectations as much as the first movie did. Mr Jackson, like the plot, had continued where he had left off in Fellowship'. The Two Towers looks & feels perfect. The pace is quick, but never rushed, the acting is excellent & is never allowed to become to camp or hammy' & it all looks beautiful, thanks to the use of New Zealand as Middle Earth & some of the greatest visual effects ever seen on celluloid. The plot continues where the first film left us. Frodo & Sam (Elijah Wood & Sean Astin) have gone off alone to Mordor to try to destroy the Ring & Aragorn, Gimli & Legolas (Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys Davies & Orlando Bloom) have decided to pursue the Uruk Hai who have captured Merry & Pippin (Dominic Monoghan & Billy Boyd) & are taking them to see good wizard gone bad Saruman (Christopher Lee). Along the way we are introduced to more characters, some good, King Theoden of Rohan (Bernard Hill) his niece Eowen (Miranda Otto) & her brother Eomer (Karl Urban) & Faramir of Gondor (David Wenham) who is the brother the now dead Boromir. We also meet the scheming Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) & Gollum/Smeagol (Andy Serkis). We also meet new fantastical creatures such as Ents (giant walking trees) & fell beasts (flying lizards that the Nazgul now ride). The film has a plethora of wonderful set-pieces that take your breath away. There are the wonderfully imagined Ents, 2 fantastic skirmishes between Riders of Rohan & Orcs, one of which involved large wolf like creatures called Wargs. Then there is the battle at Helm's Deep (The fortress stronghold of the people of Gondor). This has to rank as one of the greatest battles ever seen on film. It truly does take your breath away when you see an army of 10,000 Orcs marching towards a fortress built into a mountain, manned by only 300 soldiers & 150 Elves. The battle scenes are intense, violent & fairly graphic, but thankfully the violence is never gratuitous.
But all of that is almost forgotten in comparison to the single greatest special effect ever to grace the silver screen. Gollum. Actually, to call Gollum a special effect is being unfair to Andy Serkis. Because, although what you see on screen is a computer generated image, Gollum is brought to life by the magnificent Serkis. His voice, movement & performance are what brought the best out of WETA when they were designing Gollum & without him they wouldn't have created this phenomenon. And this creation is so good that you forget the he is CGI. Not only this, he steals every scene he is in, whether he is the Gollum seen in the opening attack on Frodo & Sam to the cowering, snivelling subservient wretch that is Smeagol. He also provides the highlight of the film. When the personalities of Gollum & Smeagol come head to head in a moonlight confrontation, it is like being hit in the heart with a 500lb emotional sledge hammer. This is a film that deserves to be seen by everyone on the planet. My only gripe is that the magnificent Andy Serkis wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his powerhouse performance. See this film, I implore you all.