A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)” (2003).
In their latest “Throwback” season, Everyman Cinemas in the UK are showing the Extended Editions of Peter Jackson’s classic LOTR films over three successive weeks. This week, I saw the second of these “The Two Towers”. This could have been a ‘difficult second album’ for Jackson, but it is again a triumph of storytelling and special effects. It is, however, slightly more uneven in the edit compared with “The Fellowship of the Ring“.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
Having parted from the Fellowship, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) has cut out towards Mordor with only Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) for company and support. But they are not alone on their journey in the wilderness! Meanwhile, the strength of Saruman in Isenguard is growing as he builds an army of 10,000 strong to march on Rohan and Gondor and extinguish the time of men.
Certification:
UK: 12; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Contains moderate violence and mild horror”.)
Talent:
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Marton Csokas, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, John Rhys-Davis, Liv Tyler, Hugo Weaving, Bernard Hill, Brad Dourif, Miranda Otto.
Directed by: Peter Jackson.
Written by: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson. (Based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkein).
Running Time: 3h 43m.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” Summary:
Positives:
- Again, the realisation of Tolkein’s Middle Earth is superb, extending the scope to here encompass Edoras in the kingdom of Rohan and the mountain stronghold of Helm’s Deep.
- The battle scenes at Helm’s Deep are extremely exciting and moving.
- Eowyn (Miranda Otto) brings in another, much-needed, female player and the love-triangle with Aragorn is well-done.
Negatives:
- The pacing of some portions of the film is uneven.
- Too much Rhys-Davis!
Review of “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”:
A superb sequel.
Peter Jackson’s “Fellowship“-sequel is again a fabulous watch on the big screen.
We pick off where the last film left off, following a brief flashback to Gandalf’s terrifying fall into the deep while fighting the Balrog. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are plowing their weary way towards Mordor, but joined by the shadowy figure of Gollum. This is one of the joys of this film in that whereas Fellowship was rather Gollum-lite, here we get a great dose of Andy Serkis’s sublime motion capture of the twisted and demented soul.
In the other major strand of the plot, we have Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davis) pursuing the Uruk-Hai hoard and the captured Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) across the plains of Rohan (to a beautifully jaunty new theme by Howard Shore). In Edoras we layer on additional story with the Saruman-beguiled King Theoden (a wonderful Bernard Hill) and his scheming ‘servant’ Wormtongue (Brad Dourif). This strand introduces some much needed additional girl-power to the story in the form of Eowyn (Miranda Otto), Theoden’s niece. The nice three-way love triangle developed between Aragorn, Eowyn and the distant, and possibly now unattainable, Arwen (Liv Tyler) is beautifully done and adds a completely different dimension to the story.
Helm’s Deep thrills.
The battle of Helm’s Deep is simply one of the best action/fantasy battle sequences ever put on film. The hoards of invading Orcs are brilliantly realised in the Weta special effects and scenes of the outer wall being blown up are still gasp-inducing 20 years later. The action is intersprersed with both humour (Gimli and Legolas’s tally counting) and real pathos (the mothers releasing both their old husbands/fathers and their young sons to take up arms) it is a mini-epic of a film in its own right.
Uneven Pacing.
The story has a lot to fit in, despite its 223-minute run-time. But the jolts in the edit between the ‘action-stuff’ and the ‘thoughtful-stuff’ are quite jarring. Most noticeably, we keep cutting-away from the adrenaline-fuelled action at Helm’s Deep to join Merry and Pippin “not being hasty” with Treebeard and the other Ents in Fangorn forest. (This is perhaps more noticeably in the extended version, as we have an awful lot of Ent content here.)
It also feels a mistake to end the film with Frodo and Sam trekking toward Mordor, since the film opened with them doing that! It rather gives a “oh, well that really was a filler-movie” response in my head.
Too much Rhys-Davis
Another minor gripe about this film is that John Rhys-Davis plays two of the roles. He plays Gimli the dwarf – to great comic effect I might add, particularly in the Helm’s Deep scenes which extend to shortist and dwarf-tossing gags! But he also voices the Ent Treebeard. Now, to me, once you know that you cannot not hear him in the Treebeard dialogue and that takes me right out of the film. With all of the army of voiceover artists on the books of “Backstage.com”, it seems weird to reuse the same actor for both parts.
Another brilliant astonishing soundtrack.
Howard Shore’s sequel soundtrack is completely up to snuff. As with “Fellowship” there are musical highpoints that give me goosebumps, for example, when the battered and bruised Aragorn first seens Helm’s Deep. As well as giving us the stirring Rohan theme, Shore introduces a sublimely wistful theme for Gollum and the film ends with a spine-tingling rendition of “Gollum’s Song”, sung in eerie fashion by the Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini. It’s superb and I have been whistling it all week.
Why didn’t this win ALL the Oscars for 2003 as well?
The film won just two Oscars in that year:
- Best Sound Editing
- Best Visual Effects
but it was also nominated for another four:
- Best Picture
- Best Art Direction
- Best Sound
- Best Film Editing
I think this was seen as a ‘fill-in’ in the trilogy, so didn’t garner quite as much Oscar buzz. It was to be “The Return of the King” before the Academy doled out its top award to the franchise.
Summary Thoughts on “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”
Another brilliant cinema outing and great to see on the big screen. Sadly, I am going to miss this Sunday’s showing of “The Return of the King” due to vacation. I have the extended cut on DVD, so I will need to arrange a home-cinema showing to bring my LOTR-trilogy to a conclusion.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbfMDwc4azU.
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