A valiant attempt, but falls a little short in my i's

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

I loved Tolkien's literary craftsmanship. His depth with words and languages was truly a gift to the world as presented in the LOTR masterpiece. A hindrance this presents itself as, in Jacksons LOTR: The Two Towers. In reviewing this movie it is very important for me to detach myself from having read the fantasy novel.
That said, the stand-alone film is FILLED with tons of eye candy which is done very well... par for course, however, with today's technology and it is as good as anything out there. The cinematography didn't catch my eye as much as Fellowship did... Yes the Two Towers looks very nice, but I felt that Fellowship captured Tolkien's world a bit better in my eyes.
Many new characters are introduced into the story very quickly and their brevity on-screen may have non-readers of the novel leaving the theater scratching their heads... A few examples: Wormtongue (cheesy I thought), Faramir (big deal, he's Boromir's brother, who excuses the captured hobbits before you find out too much about him), the Oliphant (in the movie, as I recall, the first time we see it is when Sam says "Look the Oliphant"... who cares). A way this could have been done better in my opinion, would have been to introduce things properly and give them a little time to grow on the screen. This would add a little time to the film, but some heli-cam shots from afar could easily be edited out in an effort to develop the characters a little bit better. Character development could be tightened.
And Gollum, cheesy in my eyes. As cool as Yoda was in Episode 2. Oh and Gollum, he's probably the best villain in modern literature... Because he evokes sympathy among viewers/readers... A human emotion that we can all relate to. He represents the dark side of man... Addiction and acting upon that addiction. Not sure that the filmakers captured that concept.
All aside, if you've read the novel, you should not like the ending of this film as I don't. :)