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boring, but had to watch it, since i watched the other ones before this one.

after seeing the first one and how long it dragged .. i was not looking forward to the next two but, boy was i surprised! LOVE the last two! Frodo gets on my nerves though lol

The best out of all three for me

My favourite of the trilogy. I've watched this film like over 30 times by now <3 i want smeagol as my pet :D

Incredible movie, absolutely amazing.

720 pixels quality movie link added on videobb by sikiboy

Note: This review is nearly a year old. I'm backdating this so it falls into the journal chronologically.

PS. If I had the ability to rate the first half of The Two Towers independent of its second half, it would have recieved an eight or a nine. The second half....well....read on.

. . . . . . .

The Two Towers is my favourite of the three books--it has the most action and the best of Tolkein's storytelling occured here, in my not-so-humble opinion. And so I went to go see it with the mixed feelings of trepidation and eagerness. There are major spoilers here, so don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm not sure what to say. Well, that's not true. I said quite a few things, and nobody seemed to grasp my objections. You see, for the first half of the movie, I was QUITE willing to forgive Peter Jackson for the first movie--which in my opinion has several issues wrong with it, and gets a tad boring in spots. Peter was doing a swell job of mixing the three major dissected storylines, and while he was still mucking around with events--squishing them, compositing them, and even putting them out of order or context, he was still hitting what I felt was all the right notes. He had two moments where I felt properly wowed, both aesthetically and emotionally:

- Arwen's future laid out before her by her dad. Note: Definitely out of sequence from the book, and not a scene that happens except in the indices. Yet, I have few problems with this--it was beautifully done, and served to illustrate the rise of the kingdoms of men and the fading of elves from the world. Aesthetically it was one of the best shots in the series til now, and one of the genuine emotional points.

- King Theoden girding on his armour and preparing for war. Just really nicely shot in my opinion, and buffering all the carnage at Helm's Deep with a sense of meaning and purpose.

He even had the turmoil of Rohan encapsulated in what I felt was an acceptable way--yes, condensed. Yes, a few lines out of order chronologically. And yes, we saw the Hill people slightly ahead of schedule. Fine. Still pretty decent.

BUT....then we get to two of my favourite bits in the book--and they were drastically altered. Drastically. In ways that didn't really make sense.

Example One: Merry and Pippin's adventures with Fangorn. (Who? People keep asking this. Fangorn equals Treebeard. The forest of Fangorn is named for Treebeard--that's his proper name.) Treebeard the Ent creature. In the book, Merry and Pippin meet Fangorn, convince him that Saruman is cutting down trees and invading the forest right off and THEN he calls a council of Ents to decide what to do about it. He does tell them not to be hasty but the Ents make their decision after three days, and in the meantime, Merry and Pippin are being fed draughts of the Entwaters, which cause them to grow up much bigger and taller than other hobbits. They go, fight off Isengard, and wait at the destruction of Isengard for the men of Rohan to show up, which Gandalf assures them will happen. When the men of Rohan show up with Gandalf in tow, they interrogate Saruman and Grima from the base of the tower and Grima gets really pissed off and chucks the palantiri down, hoping to kill Theoden or somebody. Pippin looks into said palantiri, and precipitates an attack by Sauron on Gondor in conjunction with Aragorn, who claims the palantiri and looks into it as well. Merry makes friends with Theoden and becomes one of his unofficial riders and pages. (Very important for later.) All in all there were some nifty magical interludes in the forest of Fangorn which get totally left out of the movie. Maybe necessary for pacing. But it's inconsistent. Particularly if Gandalf has talked with Treebeard at all--because Treebeard should already know about Saruman's perfidy if he's taking Merry and Pippin before him to determine if they are okay or not. Treebeard should already know that Saruman has chopped down chunks of Fangorn Forest. It's inconsistent and badly adapted. Not as big an issue for me as what happens next though.

Because meanwhile, Frodo and Sam run into Faramir. And Faramir, instead of delivering the really noble speech that he gives in the book that marks him as a true man of Numenor (and which was responsible for my SECOND Lord of the Rings crush--the first being Pippin)--Faramir says, "Let's take the ring to Gondor."

WTF?????

What happened to the noble student of Gandalf, who knew that the true king would come someday? What did Peter Jackson do with the real Faramir (who should have flowing black hair by the way--see The Return of the King where Faramir stands with Eowyn outside the Houses of Healing and his black hair and her blond hair intermingle when they are blown by the wind). What happened to the guy who said, "If I found it on the road, I would not pick it up." Or words to that effect. What happened to the guy who told Frodo and Sam how to get to pass they were trying to get to? Who warned them about Gollum? (Gollum was pretty well done, by the way. No complaints there.) And what happened to the guy who knows the struggle of Boromir but DEFEATS it?????! Granted he finally gets round to it BEFORE the end of the movie, but if they hadn't taken so much unnecessary time in Gondor for an event that NEVER happened in the book, we might have had time to get to Shelob's lair and get a REAL cliff hanger. Like the one that happens in the book: Frodo gets bit by Shelob, and while poisoned and lying unconcious, is found by troop of orcs. And Sam, in order to protect the ring, has to take it up. The last you know of book two is that while the ring is safe, the ringbearer is for all intents and purposes in the hands of Sauron, and when he wakes up, or IF he wakes up, the first thing to happen to him will be torture and will he tell his torturers about the Ring and where it is and what the intent of the Fellowship was? Real suspense. Instead we have Sam and Frodo perfectly okay at the end of the movie, with Smeagol making noises about She or Her. (Shelob.) Oooo. Heap big suspense. In fact, for all intents and purposes, ALMOST where we left them at the end of the last movie.

I really do understand the concept that things must be squished in order to make a decently cohesive movie. Really I do. And sometimes you need to move and rearrange things a little. But that's not the issue. The issue is once again totally going against the actual grain of the real character. Totally changing them. Totally making up things that never happened in the book. Not removing or editting BUT totally changing. Peter Jackson might call it "adaptation" but I call it "fan fiction." What else do you call going against canon, switching out things you don't like or putting in things that you think would have made it cool?

Maybe it's stupid to be such a purist....but on the other hand, I feel like Peter Jackson totally screwed with my expectations. He totally screwed with two of my favourite characters, and I, watching the movie, have certain expectations, because it IS a book adaptation. If it had no source material, I'd be able to enjoy the movie. People say, "Well, don't read the books before you go." I can't do that. These are books I've read a zillion times. I used to be able to tell you all the names of Strider and his house, how he is called Telcontar, because that is Elvish for Strider. Elessar Elfstone. I haven't read the books in many months, and I can tell you little details about almost everything. In fact, in junior high I could even tell you on which page of my edition, they enter Lothlorien or when they sleep on the flet and Haldir scares of Gollum. I can't do that anymore, but I have a zillion details from these books burned into my brain. And while I don't demand that all of them be portrayed, it really irks me when some very major points are left out or altered so that Peter Jackson could do the Lord of the Rings his way. Maybe he never liked Faramir--I dunno--but I did, and I went to the movie, expecting to see Faramir's nobility and all that and I get, "Let's take the ring back to Gondor." So colour me pissed.

As for the elf boys...yay. Go elf boys. Lise is right. The only thing that helps me think about the second half of the Two Towers is considering it "elf porn". I can think about it like that and be fine with it. Or mostly fine. Just don't ask me to love and praise and worship at the altar of Peter Jackson for massacreing one of my favourite characters. That's all.

. . . . . . .

To summarize: Whenever I make a complaint about things deviating from storyline, inevitably the length of the movies is brought up. To counter this point, I could bring up the places where Peter Jackson appears to abandon perfectly good source material for circumstances which never happened. For example, if we had not been following the scene where Aragorn goes over the edge of a cliff, we might have room for things that actually happened in the books, like a proper version of the events in Fangorn forest.

I'm not a total purist, by the way. I have much less issue with the way the Arwen storyline was presented, although it certainly never occured quite that way in the books. (Check the appendices for the source material on Aragorn's death scene.)

xxxxx

Being one of the most anticipated sequels of its time, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers had tremendous expectations to live up to. It succeeded in living up to these expectations without a hitch. From the acting to the editing, this film is perfectly constructed and has a little bit of something for everyone.

Last time we saw the fellowship, Frodo and Sam were fleeing to Mordor, Merry and Pippin had been captured by Orcs, Gimili, Legolas, and Aragorn had agreed to pursue the Orcs, and poor Boromir had fallen. The plot has been divided into three avenues of adventure. Each group picks up some expected, and not so expected, companions along the way. We also meet one of literatures most piteous characters in ways Tolkien never could have imagined and we meet creatures originally intended only for dreams. This offering from the trilogy spans the larger part of the second book and takes you through the epic battle of Helm's Deep and reveals the stress of the burden Frodo bears as he nears Mordor. As for the conclusion of the tale, we will have to wait a few more months to see how Peter Jackson plays out the rest of this epic fantasy.

See what I think of this film at Smart-Popcorn.com