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The Two Towers

Released:  2002

Version: Film

Length: Approx. 179 minutes

Rated: PG-13

Main Cast: Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Astin, Ian McKellen,  Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett, Miranda Otto.

The second Lord of the Rings movie is out. I went with rather high expectations and as usual, that was a mistake. This movie is a disservice to Tolkien.

If you look at the movie overall and don't think of it as a part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then it's a good movie. There is little or no swearing; it has a "good versus evil" storyline; and it has some nice looking women--all of which is what all Americans seem to think makes a good movie. Well, except for the swearing part. It would seem that the more swearing, the better. But that's off the subject.

SPOILER WARNING: Read no further if your a fool that knows nothing about Tolkien's book or you'll learn stuff you didn't want to know...about both the movie and the film. HA!

The story goes that Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) is trying to rescue Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), two Hobbits that were captured by foul orcs in the last movie. He goes on the hunt with his two comrades, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), the dwarf, and Legolas (Orlando Bloom ), the elf. Before reaching the orcs however, the orcs get into a fight about eating the Hobbits and start killing one another. And then some Riders of Rohan come up and kill the rest of them whilst the Hobbits escape into an old forest.

Here we meet an Ent, named Treebeard who thinks the Hobbits are orcs. Here is where one of the major shifts in the storyline of the original takes place. Instead of taking the Hobbits to his cave, Treebeard takes them to Gandalf. Then he calls a meeting of Ents to discuss war, but instead they discuss whether or not the Hobbits are orcs. And finally they come to the conclusion that they can no longer understand what the trees are saying and thus don't know that many are being destroyed. Thusly, they think that going to war with Saruman is unwise and too hasty. Hello!? Where in the world does this idiot screenwriter come up with this stuff? Well, somehow the Hobbits know that Saruman (Christopher Lee) is having trees from this particular forest felled even though they've been on a journey with a fellowship for a few months. So they trick Treebeard into walking into a part of the forest that has been felled. How they knew it existed or where it was is not known. Maybe Hobbits can talk to trees better then Ents. That must be it!

Guess what happens then? Treebeard gets mad and decides to be hasty and go to war after all. This completely changes the personality of the Ents. They never do anything rash or quickly. And isn't it odd that when Treebeard makes a wail of anger/despair, it brings all the other Ents? Why would they all be in the same vicinity? No idea. It's just a way to speed up Tolkien's slow-paced book, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Aragorn, et al, have tracked the Hobbits to the forest and met the new Gandalf. They then go with Gandalf to Rohan's kingdom to warn Rohan's King Theoden of the coming danger of Saruman's orcs. After kicking a jerk named Wormtongue out of Rohan, the king decides to go hide in Helm's Deep with his entire kingdom. But wait, there's more to this story! Gandalf must first rid King Theoden of Saruman's hold on him. The way the movie makes it look is that Saruman stays in his tower staring into a crystal ball 24/7 so that he'll be able to control the king. It's kind of like a demon possession. But we all know that Saruman can't do that 24/7 because we've seen him chatting with orcs and shouting incantations and what not. So how does this work? I suppose it could be something like this:

When King Theoden is bothered by someone other then Wormtongue, a signal of some sort shoots out to Saruman...kind of like Spiderman's "spider-sense." "Buzzzz! The King is in 'trouble'!' Buzzz!" And then Saruman has to rush back to his ball. Why would I think such? Well, Gandalf starts yapping and waving his staff around and every time he thrusts it towards the king, Saruman gets smacked over in Isengard. Finally, Saruman is smacked so hard he is thrown across the room by the force of Gandalf's thrust. Uh, right...this is known as dramatic license. I call it dumbing down. But back to where I left off...

Thus the king  goes on his way to Helm's Deep, and they are accosted by orcs riding what look like a cross between wolves and weasels. This scene is cool, but it too has a dumb part. They have one of the beasties knock Aragorn off a cliff into a river far below. Why? Well, here's what I think the reason was:

Arwen (Liv Tyler), Aragorn's main squeeze isn't in the book much. So, my guess is that they foolishly signed on for three movies and then realized that she wouldn't have any scenes in this movie. To make up for that, they decided to smack Aragorn's head so he'd dream about her smooching him and thus wake him up. They also threw in a scene with her father telling her not to marry Aragorn and it seems to appear that she assents to what her father says. What utter bunk!

Back to the story, though. A bunch of Elves come to man's aid in Helm's Deep. This also doesn't happen in the book, but it's cool...and I'll comment more on this in a bit. Soon after their arrival, the orcs come along and the fighting begins. For some reason, they have explosives and end up blowing a big hole in the wall. A dumb part here is that even though there are tons of elves, they all of a sudden suck at shooting arrows.

Anyway, they fight a lot and when all is lost, what happens? No, they are NOT saved by a forest in the morning. They are saved by Gandalf riding with a bunch of Rohan men. Where did they come from? Well, their leader was banished by the king of Rohan earlier in the movie (also not in the book) and this leader's followers went with him. However, it looks like they went from a group of maybe 20-25 to a legion of 100-300 horsemen. And they are able to magically run through a wall of spears. Personally, I thought the idea of a forest sneaking up on the orcs was much more interesting. This other stuff was exciting, but predictable. Why didn't they use the forest? Because of the elves and the horsemen that they made up of course! It's much more fun to watch a bunch of slaughter then show a horde of orcs get frightened by trees and then run headlong into them. Besides, they spent a good portion of their budget on those idiotic scenes of Arwen, remember?

Well, after that (or perhaps we jumped back and forth between the two) we see the Ents tearing apart Isengard, home of Saruman. This is one of the best scenes in the movie, I think. Watch the movie to see this stuff.

Also go to it to see what happens with Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) as they meet Gollum. Some of Gollum's scenes are very cool. He's creepy and funny and even pathetic. Gollum gets captured by the two Hobbits and is forced to lead them to Mordor. On the way there, they get captured by Faramir, (Boromir's brother) and his troop from Gondor. 

Here we go again on some delusional writer's little cocaine trip. Since Boromir died in the last movie, they needed to resurrect him, so they made his brother into another jerk. Instead of being the cool, princely guy in the book who was quite wise, we get a power-hungry fool that takes the Hobbits to Minas Tirith so he can give the Ring to someone of power there. Here comes one of the major hallicinations that this dwonky writer came up with whilst writing under the influence: when a Nasgul comes winging along on a black flying dragon thing, Frodo runs onto a battlement wall to give it the Ring. Then instead of taking the Ring (and really screwing up the story), the writer decides to have the Nasgul just hover there and have a staring contest with Frodo until Sam knocks him down a flight of steps to stop the idiocy. Watch in horror as Frodo gets ready to kill Sam for this infraction! Stare spellbound as Faramir suddenly sees that the Hobbits should be freed because Frodo is delusional!!! Amazing stuff here! 

Why did they change Faramir for this movie? This is the 2nd instance where they changed a character's personality for no logical reason. Is this supposed to make it more dramatic somehow? Is this done so they wouldn't have enough money for cooler scenes, like the moving forest or the giant spider, Shelob??? We will probably never know exactly. However, we can probably get a good idea from the Special Edition DVD that will inevitably show up in the fall sometime.

The Good Stuff:

The Bad Stuff:

As I said at the beginning, this movie is good, if you haven't read Tolkien. If you have, then you'll probably be disappointed. This movie just takes the characters from the book and sets them in vaguely similar circumstances as the book. It's an adaptation at one of it's loosest. If you want to see how to adapt a book right, watch Harry Potter.

STORY: 

VIOLENCE:  (Lots of orcs without heads!!!)

SEXUAL CONTENT:   

SFX:   

LANGUAGE:  N/A  

BOOK-TO-MOVIE-ADAPTATION SCORE:

OVERALL SCORE:

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