should be on the worst 100 list

Rating: 1/10 (22 June 2003)

This movie had a difficult task; to bridge the gap between the introductory "Fellowship of the Rings" and the conclusive "Return of the Kings." But that doesn't take it off the hook for delivering a decent product. Tolkien's trilogy is an incredibly written story with a multitude of intricately woven plots and subplots. The films have dumbed all of this down into a simple fight between good and evil. Even the Star Wars trilogy had more depth to the relationship between the warring sides, the hero, Luke, was the son of the biggest, baddest guy of them all. And in the end we see how affected Darth Vader was by the fight for his son's Jedi power. "The Empire Strikes Back" ought to replace "The Two Towers as number 11 on this list. Every film-goer will acknowledge how difficult it must be to adapt a book, but when the book is so good, the worst thing the movie can do is make the story and experience of it mediocre. The Two Towers did worse than that; it degraded the struggle for Middle Earth to a few love interests, a wicked spell overturned by a gleaming white savior and two long hours of brutal violence. Perhaps the brightest part of the movie, or its dimlight, was Gollum's inner struggle between temptation for the ring and desire to do what is right. The other characters, indeed Mr. Tolkien's story itself, deserve to be developed with as much vigor as Gollum's has been.