An excellent addition to the series

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2005)

Vote: 8.8 (rounded up to 9)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is an amazing movie that any Tolkien fan, adventure fan, or war fan should see. Acting: Elijah Wood as Frodo is amazing. He really captures the pain that the poor little hobbit must be going through. Ian McKellen as Gandalf is excellent,even though he has a much smaller role than in FOTR. Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn was another good choice and you could really experience what he must be going through. John Rys-Davies was really good as Gimli, but his jokes got really tiring before the end. Sean Astin as Sam fit the description of good old Sam well and also acted out the character perfectly. Bernard Hill as Theoden, Brad Dourif as Grima, Miranda Otto as Eowyn, Karl Urban as Eomer, David Wenham as Faramir and Liv Tyler as Arwen were all excellent actors. Gollum was really amazing. Andy Serkis deserves some award, for the perfect cat coughing up fur ball voice for Gollum, and kudos to the design team who made the motion capture suit. I wish we could have seen more of Christopher Lee as he is a superb actor. Orlando Bloom as Legolas, on the other hand, sucked. He had absolutely no emotion and if it wasn't for his fighting scenes then the character would have been totally wasted. Dominic Monaghan as Merry and Billy Boyd as Pippin were also good actors. Directing: Peter Jackson did another excellent job in this movie, though as i said in my FOTR review, his career as a horror movie maker hurt him. The scene where all the dead Orc bodies were piled up and one of their heads was on a pole wasn't really necessary (and then Gimli was going through the burning remains (hmmmm orc barbecue), and there was another stupid scene were you saw the Uruks being born out of mud sacs. Screenplay: Good, the only scene they needed was the one in the extended edition of the flashback between Faramir, Boromir and Denethor. That scene was really necessary to describe Faramirs character Special Effects: Too amazing for words. The Battle of Helms Deep was so perfect you couldn't tell what was CGI and what wasn't. Gollum didn't look like a fake. The battle of Isengard was also well done and when the ents broke the dam and Isengard was flooded i was reminded of a disaster flick. The special effects alone were worth the price of admission. Other: Again the cinematography was beautiful and just jaw-dropping gorgeous. Makes me really want to visit New Zealand just to see the places they filmed. Rohan, and Edoras especially were beautiful. Howard Shore's score was excellent. The Rohan theme song fit the beautiful scenery perfectly. Overall: An excellent movie worth seeing. If the filmmakers weren't so stuck up about themselves this movie would be even better.