The Greatest of the Three Rings

Rating: 10/10 (6 March 2004)

Yes, it's true. Return of the King may have won more of the Oscars as the culmination of Peter Jackson's magnificent cinematic achievement, but history will in fact adjudge "The Two Towers" as the greatest of the three Rings. If Fellowship was a road movie and ROTK was a friendship film, then Two Towers is an unadulterated war movie of heroic proportions. Peter Jackson said he based it on "Zulu"- and we can see why. It has a dramatic intensity and flow which none of the other films quite share. Good against evil are so sharply contrasted that you could cut your fingers on them. TTT also has the best score Howard Shore has produced. And it has the best dialogue.
The screenplay explains (with barely disguised contemporary resonance) what we are protecting in Western civilisation when we defend ourselves against those who would wish to destroy it. When Sam tells Frodo that there are "some things worth fighting for", when Merry tells Pippin that there "won't be a Shire" unless they do something about it, when King Theoden laments that "the sun has gone down in the West" this film could be entitled not the "Two Towers" but "the Twin Towers". It is Miltonic in its scope. It is cinema as art.
Yes, one may quibble about certain Entish details, and I know that the Elves weren't supposed to be at Helm's Deem, and that Faramir is a little undeveloped, but does this matter? Not at all. The Extended version is better than the original, but does not need to make such a quantum leap as Fellowship managed with its EE. However it will be a film that is seen as a landmark in cinema. A trilogy which may never be bettered. And a reminder of what we are all here for