Rousing Romantic Adventure

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2005)

"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" uses the best of contemporary and traditional movie magic for a rousing, romantic adventure tale of good vs. evil, loyalty and love.
From touches of Ray Harryhausen's "Jason and the Argonauts" that were among my favorite movie movements as a child as the Ents and a couple of the monsters are charmingly hokey, to the seamlessly multiplying armored, costumed, hairy, made-up extras to the actor/rotoscoped combined astonishment of the twisted Gollum/Smeagle, it's all at the service of the story.
Peter Jackson and company are wonderful at both closely hewing to the story yet skillfully cutting judiciously and adding clarifications that are in the spirit of the original, including using the appendix explanation of Aragorn's love affair with Arwen (incorrectly described as "doomed" by one critic -- well, if an eventual mortal life of 50 years together and four kids is "doomed" then many of us are doomed!)
The mutual attraction with Eowyn is fit nicely into the "to be continued" cliffhanger as I think the double X chromosome viewers are left as eagerly awaiting the conclusion of what happens to Arwen and Aragorn as what happens to the Ring.
David Wenham makes us almost forget Sean Bean as his late brother, and I just figured out that's Hugo Weaving with quite a hair weave as Arwen's disapproving dad. And of course excitingly heroic Viggo is absolutely hunky (and I've thought so since at least "Walk on the Moon").
I'll take this thrilling Battle of Helm's Deep over Saving Private Ryan for re-watching (with the second release of the DVD for the deleted scenes). No wonder there's now tours of the places in New Zealand the movie was shot because the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful, even if some of it is mattes.
That's Sheila Chandra vocalizing in the effective music.
(originally written 1/20/2003)