MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Two Towers’ falls short–Grade B+
Just let me say right off the bat that I liked “Fellowship of the Ring” better. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like “The Two Towers,” because it was the best movie I saw over the holidays. It just means that it wasn’t equal to the first movie’s grandeur and magic.
“Towers” starts right where the first film left off. Frodo and Sam are headed for Mordor to destroy the ring, and are joined by Gollum, who guides them. Merry and Pippin escape from a band of orcs and end up leading a revolution of Ents (large, tree-like creatures) against Saruman. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli search for the missing hobbits until they meet Gandalf who sends them to help the race of men survive an attack by Saruman and his liege of Uruk-hai.
Here again are the sweeping camera views and over-the-top imagination that director Peter Jackson loves to use. The film is another visual triumph transporting its viewers to a burned-out city, a dense forest of angry trees, a bog of death and the endless plains of the Rohan.
Perhaps the largest success of the film both technically and performance-wise is the character Gollum. This computer-generated character’s look was described by his creators as a heroin addict, and with his stark ribs and wispy hair, he should scare every kid into never touching the drug.
He interacts with the characters to the point of grabbing their clothes and even brawling with them. Andy Serkis provides the voice for the character and gives maybe the best voice-acting performance I’ve ever heard. He also stood in during shooting to help give the character his realistic interactions with the other actors.
The centerpiece of the movie is the battle at Helm’s Deep. Although this sequence was thrilling and visually breathtaking, it was blown out of proportion. In the books, this sequence was only one chapter, and was not the grand turning point of the war Jackson makes it out to be. He just had a lot of new toys and effects he wanted to be able to play with. Trimming the battle sequence would have made room for some of the rich storylines with Merry, Pippin and Treebeard that were reduced to fillers between the scenes of Jackson’s playground of the Helm’s Deep battle.
Perhaps the most unnecessary and grating scenes were the ones added between Liv Tyler and Viggo Mortensen. These let’s-attract-the-female-audience-to-our-movie scenes were handcrafted by the screenwriters and were not true to the romance Tolkien crafted between these two noble characters.
However, just like its predecessor, “The Two Towers” is by far the best offering of the Christmas season.
Jared Sterzer is a senior majoring in business information systems. Comments can be sent to jwsterz@cc.usu.edu.