A disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (19 December 2002)

I loved The Fellowship movie and was eagerly anticipating The Two Towers, I own the DVD Collector's Edition. Differences between The Fellowship book and film I felt were minor and were understandable given time constraints, and allowing for creative expression of the director. I would not have been bothered by even more deviation from the book in the second movie, but it was excessive in my opinion. Some of the deviations were so extensive that characters made fundamentally different decisions in the movie than were made in the book. (Brand new scenes that were not in the book did not enhance the movie, so why bother? Some new scenes detracted heavily from the storyline because of the fundamental change required of the character(s).) I don't know why Peter Jackson felt he needed to make these changes unless he felt his vision made a better movie than literally following the book. However, I feel the changes he made detracted from rather than added to the movie. My son, aged 18, leaned over at one point and said "did they go there in the book?", and my answer was "no, and it is wrecking the movie!". After the movie the 5 of us discussed the movie and we all felt it was not nearly as good a movie as The Fellowship even though we all expected it to be even better given the major action sequences we expected. I am pretty tolerant of a movie being different from a book, but this was the closest I ever came to walking out of a movie. I have never been this disappointed in a movie, but that is probably partly due to my high level of anticipation. I sincerely hope the 3rd film is either closer to the book, or at least remains true to the personalities of the characters. (What a GREAT opening sequence ! )