2 TOWERS: Vast improvement over Fellowship

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2002)

With the Fellowship of the Ring, I felt I got my money's worth in effects and action, but the characters and emotions lagged behind all the scene-changing. With the Two Towers, the balance has been restored. Unlike the Fellowship, which feels like a very incomplete though incredibly epic film, the Two Towers has a certain beginning and end to it. Also, the characterizations are well worth watching. Strangely enough, though, the characters to watch are NOT those of the Fellowship: the two TOWERING performances here are those of Bernard Hill as King Theodain, and Andy Sperkis as Gollum, perhaps the strongest, most riveting and humanistic CG/actor creation since Yoda.
The nighttime mono/dialogue in the forest between Gollum's two selves had me bent forward into my seat, peering with wonder as I only remember doing about 2 years back, hearing for the first time Leonard Shelby's bedside monologue in Memento about wondering how he can ever heal if he "can't feel time." Meanwhile, King Theodain's slow and quite believable rise from a vegetable on a throne to a true warrior was just as inspiring, and Hill brings both subtlety and honor to his acting. People in the theater wept as he wept, and cheered as he rode into battle.
The story advances briskly, and though both Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett are given short shrift, Frodo's relation to the ring is further developed. I said in my review last year that Frodo needed to get a little angry, and uh...I got my wish. The action sequences are incredible, but so are the little moments.
In short, this film IS what EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was to STAR WARS, a dose of extra adrenaline, humanity, darkness, character, wonder, and complexity to what was up until then a fairy tale. I HOPE THE THIRD CHAPTER FOLLOWS IN ITS FOOTSTEPS!