Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

by Glen Oliver

December 16, 2002 - Fans of director Peter Jackson's big screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring have been eagerly anticipating The Two Towers – its action-intensive follow-up – for a year. But even viewers in love with the first installment in this theatrical trilogy found it difficult not to ask a few very fair, very basic questions. Chief among them: "Can Jackson do it again, or will the whole shebang ultimately collapse under its own weight and excess, like so many other films of this nature have in the past?"

They need worry no longer: The Two Towers is an accomplishment equal to its predecessor, but it succeeds in very different arenas. Where Fellowship shocked viewers with its unrelenting focus on character development and dramatic truth, such qualities are sidelined here in favor of propulsion and sheer grandeur. With a two-hour and fifty-something minute running time, TTT is remarkably well paced, and is so texturally dense that several viewings may required just to take it all in. Those who felt the first film meandered a bit will find The Two Towers much more tightly focused and hard-driving. Those who felt Fellowship's greatest triumph lay in its depth and characterization may find TTT a bit remote – more distancing, and not as uninvolving.

But such deficits are counterbalanced by the sheer audacity of the spectacle before us. Rarely (if ever) in the history of cinema have sequences of such magnitude been brought to the screen: tens-of-thousands of soldier-creatures storm an imposing fortress called Helm's Deep, where human refugees are holding out in fight for survival and freedom – a fanciful riff on the legendary Alamo. Armies of talking tree creatures tear into villain Saruman's lair, exacting primal revenge against those who have abused their brethren. Orcs ride herds of horsy-sized helldogs into battle against our heroes. The list goes on – this thing is big.

Visual effects by WETA are generally top-notch, although observant viewers may catch a few pesky weaknesses suggesting the film's VFX team may have, simply, just run out of time. "Halo-ing" around character's hairlines (a little bit of green screen spill that makes for a sloppy composite) runs rampant here. "Animated" objects (such as the Ents – the walking, talking "tree creatures" mentioned above) sometimes look inorganic with their surroundings and backgrounds (the different "layers" of the effect are obvious), and even basic compositing sometimes makes characters seem "cut out", or "flat" against a background of different texture or depth. But for every shortcoming, there is a triumph. And, despite the giddy vastness of the sequences mentioned above, the greatest accomplishment of all is a guy named Gollum.

Interestingly enough, Gollum himself is imperfect: his digital nature is often betrayed by his choppy, squirrelly movements in long shots. But when we see his face, up-close, his is instantly believable, and thoroughly sympathetic and compelling. Taunted by a seemingly unceasing internal-conflict (he is constantly revealing his duality via a verbalized – and decidedly psychotic – inner monologue), Gollum gets more character development than anyone else in The Two Towers, and quickly puts Star Wars "writer"/"director" George Lucas' Jar Jar Binks to shame. Looking like an Ethiopian Steve Buscemi, Gollum may well be the first digital creature put on-screen who completely sells himself (itself?) as a character and personality worthy of inclusion in a "real world."

There's not much to say about the returning cast – they are all pretty-much what they were established to be in The Fellowship of the Ring, and rarely move beyond that. Newcomers include Bernard Hill (Captain of James Cameron's Titanic) as Theoden, ruler of a kingdom besieged by the forces of darkness; genre freakazoid Brad Dourif as the duplicitous Grima Wormtongue; Miranda Otto as Eowyn, who spends much of her time acting tough and pining for Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn; David Wenham as Faramir (brother of Sean Bean's Boromir, who checked-out in the first film. Although Wenham looks like...and pretty much acts like...Sean Bean, so I'm at a bit of a loss here); and Andy Serkis as the live-action motion template (and voice) of Gollum (both appeared briefly in Fellowship, but Gollum is a full-fledged character here).

Viewers who find the The Two Towers spiritually unengaging can take heart. In a recent interview with IGN FilmForce, Peter Jackson reveals that The Return of the King – the trilogy's final installment – is his favorite film, describing it as "incredibly emotional." Despite the more cursory nature of TTT, it's beginning to look like oddball Jackson may have accomplished the unimaginable, and knocked one of history's most challenging literature-to-film adaptations clean out of the park.

No matter what one ultimate feels about The Two Towers, one consideration shines brightly above the rest: it will show you things you've never seen before. And, in this day and age, that's not an accomplishment to be taken lightly.