Posted: 12/21/2002

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Truth is, the second three hours is even better than the first.

The Two Towers, the continuation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy opened Wednesday night and, judging by the amount of people at the 10:10 showing, will do tremendous boxoffice as all of the lovers of things Middle Earth trudge into the theaters to see the 2nd installment of the JRR Tolkien classic book series.

I’ve had some writer’s trepidation (not BLOCK - I never have writer’s block) on this review on this one because I seem to be in the minority opinion on The Two Towers. I went back to read my first review to see if it would help (The Fellowship of the Ring). Uh oh - I really loved the first one, didn’t I?

So here are the basics with the same questions from the first movie:

1. How closely did they follow the book? It doesn’t go along with the book in several cases. Frodo didn’t go to Gondor in the book, did he? And in the movie, we end about four chapters from the end. Which is a good stopping point, I suppose.

2 Would director Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth be similar to mine? Well, as far as I can tell, the book’s vision has not been changed in the films. The tower of Issengard is just as imposing. The Ents were dead on. The village of Rohan…okay, so I saw them a bit different, but here they were just fabulous.

3. What did they take out? Uh, the whole last several chapters. Not much else. This is the “working” book. It really has to move the story a long way with the characters getting to their jump off spots for the big finish. So what’s missing are all the poetry and singing and stuff…. Still, no big loss.

4. What did they change? If you didn’t read the books or see the first one….you’re pretty well screwed for knowing what’s going on here. You’d be absolutely lost. Characters pop in and out from the first one (I still want to know what Liv Tyler is doing in this thing) with no explanation as to who they are.

5. How do you compare the two films? In The Two Towers, they barely touch on the events of the first movie, whereas at the beginning of Fellowship there is an excellent blending of The Hobbit book into that film. Don’t expect the filmmakers to help you catch up; if you have a hard time remembering, then re-view the first film. Also, the battle scenes are a little….. long. We could have had more story and less fighting.

Did I like it? Well, yea, I did. I was kept interested the entire way along. I think that after the first one the “magic” of creating Middle Earth seemed normal to me - I knew what to expect. I should also mention that of the four books, this one was my least favorite, so my guess is that my review is shaded that way. Just need to be honest with you all.

The creation of Gollum as a completely digital character is brilliant - and it comes off wonderfully. The acting is still top notch - but since the three movies were all done at one time, I didn’t expect that to change much. If you saw the first one, make the investment in the second, because I can promise you a big finish for the third movie next Christmas.

Hank Yuloff is our guy in Los Angeles. He thinks he’s dated a few elves.

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