An action movie based loosely in Tolkien's world.

Rating: 4/10 (19 December 2002)

First things first: before seeing this The Two Towers, you should rid yourself of the notion that it can compare to the novel. Film translations of novels rarely do, and this is no exception. Now that you have that out of the way, you can prepare to be visually stunned by one of the most magnificent motion pictures I've seen, and be disappointed by the script that ruins it.
Yes, that's right, the script that ruins it. The Fellowship of the Ring was ambitious. It was true to the text, as much as a film so "hollywood" could be. It was true to Tolkien. It wasn't about the Uruk'hai combination of Orcs and Goblins, or Aragorn swinging swords, or Legolas shooting arrows - it was about a delightful cast of characters, all united in a common goal. A fitting sequel to this film would be delightful. Instead, we have The Two Towers, an action movie in Middle Earth's world, with a story similar to Tolkien's text. Packed with one-liners, epic battles, special effects, and (believe it or not), explosions, The Two Towers is every war movie you've seen, set in a fantasy background, redeemed only by the most beautiful cinematography to grace the screen this year.
Andrew Lesnie saves this film, plain and simple. His camera shows perfectly how hopeless every character in this movie feels, or, are told they should feel. His frame is dark and dismal, in green, blue, and grey through the bulk of the three hours - a great contrast from the bright colors of Fellowship. In the first film, the characters showed us hope, and now, they show despair. The Helm's Deep battle is magnificent to look at, but really, the rest of the film builds to it. Lesnie probably should not get all of the credit for this, as Peter Jackson's directing is superb in its own right. Jackson is unafraid to use all of the screen, and with the use of sweeping airborne cameras, he uses sometimes three or four times the size of the screen.
The computer animation is first-rate, and there were times when I knew what I was looking at was false, but could not tell. Gollum's character is entirely computer animated, and provides the most interesting character in this film - in fact, one of only two. Gollum is a split personality - his entire being wishes to have the ring, if you'll recall from Fellowship, but half of him wishes to help Frodo and Sam, and the other half wants to take the ring for himself. I'm not sure if each personality has a name, but Frodo calls him Smeagol throughout the movie, so I would assume the good half is Smeagol, and the evil half is Gollum - the film is not clear on this subject. Either way, Gollum/Smeagol talking to himself, across personae, provides the single best scene in the film. Quite unfortunate that a host of human actors could not reach the emotional intensity of a series of zeroes and ones.
The other interesting character is Theodan, King of Rohan, played quite well by Bernard Hill. He is the only face in the film that truly captures how bleak the future is, epitomized in a scene before the epic Helm's Deep battle. Theoden realizes that his army has no chance of defending their last stronghold, but has no other options. His talent should have been served with better writing. That would truly be something.
The script is your standard action movie fare. Dialog is swift, contains few details, and is rushed along to the next action sequence. Elrond and Arwen, the elves, return for a short while in this chapter, which has little purpose in this film. No doubt their scenes are more poignant in the extended version, which will be released next Christmas season, and, no doubt, be the same drivel we've seen in this "shortened" version.
I look forward to the extended version of this film. I have low expectations, if the scenes we have here are the ones they decided not to delete, I'm not sure I want to see the ones they took out. However, where The Fellowship of the Ring earned three and a half stars from me, the extended version gets four. Maybe The Two Towers' extension will get three. I hope we're just being teased with The Two Towers, because I have high expectations for The Return of the King. It would be a shame to see a project that started so ambitiously fall to the formula of the trilogy.