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The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)

List price:	~~$39.99~~
Our price:	$29.99 that is 25% off!
Media:	DVD
Directed by:
Starring:	Elijah Wood
Release date:	18 November, 2003

Average user rating: Average user rating: 4.5

Better than the first. Still part of single great work.

`The Two Towers' is the second of the three movies capturing the novel, `Lord of the Rings' by philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. This is one of the most influential popular novels of the 20th century. Other bases of big motion pictures such as `Ben-Hur' and `Gone With the Wind' can't hold a candle to it as it had an influence far beyond its role as the basis for a movie script. For starters, `Lord of the Rings' has had a large and growing readership from its original publication in the mid 1950s to the present, while I suspect practically no one reads Lew Wallace's `Ben-Hur' any more and few people have recently read Margaret Mitchell's `Gone With the Wind'. Another `Lord of the Rings' offspring is the whole `Dungeons and Dragons' role playing games phenomenon. This game originally appeared a few years after the second blooming of `Lord of the Rings' popularity in 1965, when the books were published in paperback by Houghton Mifflin in response to a pirated copy published by Ace. This is when I first became enraptured by the stories of Middle Earth.

It is impossible to speak of any one of the three movies by themselves as they do not in the usual sense of the word form a trilogy of three independent films related by common characters, location, and history. `The Lord of the Rings' was a single novel which was serialized in three volumes published over two and a half years in the mid 1950's. When the three titles are published in a single volume, it is not hard to see that the work is really not much longer than `Gone With the Wind' and it is certainly shorter than some notable novels such as `Atlas Shrugged'. One virtue we did get from the division into three titles by Tolkien is that Peter Jackson had a valid basis on which to split a single story into three long movies totaling close to 10 hours of viewing time.

Unlike the movies of the first and third books, almost every major scene of the book `The Two Towers', is captured in the movie. The chapters of Merry and Pippin with Treebeard and the Ents are shortened a bit. Seems as if the Ents are much too slow for 21st century cinema. One thing the movie did get wrong in its promotional artwork is the suggestion that the two towers of the title were Orthanc and Baradur, the fortress of Sauron. Actually, the second tower of the title is Minas Morgul, the city of Gondor, originally named Minas Ithil, but renamed when the Nazgul captured it several years before the start of the events in `Lord of the Rings'. Minas Morgul plays a much bigger role in the middle of the story than does Sauron's stronghold. Part of this change of tower may be due to the fact that some of the action involving Minas Morgul was moved to the third movie, `The Return of the King'.

The only piece of action I really miss is the role of Fangorn in the defeat of the besiegers of the Hornburg. And, in one of the very rare Peter Jackson additions to the story, I thought the skirmish between the Rohrrim / Aragorn and Saruman's warg riders was great cinema action, but just too much of a replay of Gandalf at the bridge in Moria, where a principle character is thought to have been killed and lost.

I have read `The Lord of the Rings' at least 10 times, and the story of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli from the banks of the Anduin to the victory at the Hornburg is by far one of my favorite parts of the novel. Treebeard comes in a close second, as he is a part of the same ancient history of Middle Earth to which only the faintest hints are given in the stories of Fangorn, The Old Forest by the Shire, and Tom Bombadil. Basically, Bombadil and the Ents stand for what is most worth saving from the evil of Sauron. This innocence is something that is tainted even in the sheltered lives of the Hobbits.

In contrast, after about the third or fourth reading, I often became anxious to get through the chapters about Frodo, Sam, and Gollum as quickly as possible. One of the greatest of Jackson's accomplishments in the films was to breath life into the characterization of Frodo Baggins, who always seemed to be to be something of a wimp, drawn along by the inexorable hand of fate. Sam, on the other hand, was pursuing the quest entirely out of love and grit. Another great service of the movie was the realization of Gollum. I think that Gollum's implementation may be about as close as we will come for a long time in seeing a computer generated character be nominated for an Academy Award for acting.

Even though `The Two Towers' is the middle third of a very long three part movie, it really has a much more satisfying ending than `The Fellowship of the Ring'. One starts to see how it may be possible to defeat the great evil challanging all the good guys in the story, but of course, the difficulty of Saruman's defeat is just a way of showing that defeating Sauron will be just that much more difficult.

The second of the great three part classic!

The book is better

But this said, I believe that there couldn't be a better movie. It captures the epic sweep and the pain and turmoil as Frodo and Sam approach the cracks of doom. It was fantastic. The filming was beyond scope. The characters were perfect.

Once again Jackson captures the brilliance of Tolkien

THe Two Towers is the second part of Peter Jackson's acclaimed adaption of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The Journey continues in this movie. Beginning with beautiful scenic shots of the moutains of the Middle-Earth, the Two Towers has climactic battles, struggles of will, moments of pure joy and beauty. Frodo and Sam continue to scratch their way to Mordor, pursued not just by agents of the Dark Lord but by Gollum, slave to the lust of the ring. Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin have been captured by Uruk-Hai and are hunted by Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. The hunt takes Merry and Pippin to the center of Fanghorn Forrest in the company of the Ent Treebeard, a 14 foot tall walking talking tree. The 3 hunters fall in the Rhohirram under the command of Eomer (Karl Urban), a culture of horse lords threatened by the evil wizard Saruman, with their king Theoden (Bernard Hill) enchanted by Saruman's agent Wormtongue (Brad Dourif). Now on horseback, the 3 hunters encounter a resurrected Gandalf the White, now with power over Saruman. They ride to free Theoden, where they encounter Theoden's beautiful and strong niece Eowyn (Miranda Otto). Taking his people to the safety of Helm's Deep, Saruman sends his hordes after the king and in an impressive night battle, the Rohirram are aided by a contingent of Elven warriors (the biggest deviation by Jackson from the book). Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam encounter Faramir, the brother of Boromir on their way to Mordor led by Gollum. While our heroes triumph at Helm's Deep, and Saruman is defeated, the menace of Mordor grows greater as Sam and Frodo move closer to the fulfillment of their quest. I found The Two Towers to be a beautiful and profoundly moving film. The affects were amazing and the ability of Peter Jackson to combine live action, computer graphics and minature shots make this a great film. Once again, this movie should have won an Academy Award and the fact that it didn't is almost a crime.