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The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Full Screen Edition) Customer Reviews (40 - 42 of 52 Reviews)

This movie is at most mediocre as is The Fellowship. The acting is amazing and the music is beautiful, but everything else sucks.

The special effects are overwhelming and beat the simplistic storyline down into a bloody pulp. The biggest problem with these movies is the directing. It's tedious, and boring, scanning vast scenery slowly and mind numbingly; the beginning credits whoich lasted no more then three minutes felt like 20. And as for the movie's length at three hours, it felt like more like five, because of poor character developement.

The stupid dialogue is set as a volume so low a dog couldn't hear it, and the soundtrack is set so loud that someone could here it from one-hundred miles away. Whatever charm the books seemed to have have been erased with these movies. Personally, I find the whole concept stupid: a bunch of humans and mythical creatures trying to toss a supernatural ring into a volcano uncreatively called mount doom so that they can get rid of an all powerful autocrat and install their own all powerful autocrat. And what's more, the kid who risks his life and goes scytzophrenic to throw the stupid ring in mount doom doesn't even get to be king? I'd like to give each member of the Fellowship of the Ring an uzi, grenade launcher and MP5 and see what the dark forces of Sauron could do.

And back to the specifics to this movie. It and the Return of the King starts off with no backtracking and begins exatcly where the Fellowship left off, leaving people who aren't directly familiar with the storyline lost.

This movie is a Royal Bore. Don't waste your money.

The Two Towers at it's fullest,
The Two Towers is a very complicated story. Fitting it into three hours can make some scenes seem a little rushed to those who have read the book (such as myself). That is my only problem with the theatrical edition. I really don't care about any of the changes (except maybe Aragorn falling off the cliff) because I understand why the makers made the changes, unlike "Tolkien Purists" who have not a clue the challenge of transfering a huge book with such a complicated plot to a 3 hour movie. Anyway, to the point, it was around 30 minutes added to the Fellowship on the Extended Edition. But this year, we are in for a bigger treat as 43 minutes will be added on to The Two Towers in the Extended Version. This edition will make the movie so much better as it will feel less rushed. I will, however, rent the theatrical for all the features that will not be included in the extended extras.

The Two Towers
Two words can be used to describe this movie; absolutely amazing. Jackson's success with The Fellowship of the Ring had me wondering if he would be able to meet my high expectations for The Two Towers. Jackson didn't just meet my expectations, he greatly exceeded them. As before the basic plot remained close to Tolkien's story, however Jackson changed his movie to fit the preferences of many movie-goers today. The Two Towers is far more action-packed than its novel counterpart. The hobbits take more of a supportive role and spend most of their time away from the action while characters like Aragorn take the lead. These changes weren't bad however, this movie had practically everything; a great story line, great character development, spectacular special affects, and one of the most epic battles that was ever placed in a film. In addition to all these The Two Towers had some of the most amazing computer generated (CG) characters I've ever seen.
Gollum was absolutely amazing; he was incredibly life-like and well acted, arguably the best actor in the film. Gollum's is one of the most complex characters that I've seen played on film. On one side we have a goofy and faithful companion and on the other we have a cunning sneak who will do anything to recover the ring. The scene where Gollum argues with himself is well-acted, hilarious, and cleverly done. As Gollum talks the camera angle changes making it look like he's talking to a reflection of himself and showing his inner conflict. Gollum is the perfect example of all the consideration that was placed in this movie but Gollum wasn't the best part.
The most spectacular thing about this movie would have to be the battle of Helms Deep. It's nearly an hour of breath taking action and one of the biggest battles that has even been filmed. There is a difference between a major battle and a well filmed major battle. The battle wasn't all mindless carnage; there was an art to it. Not only was the battle filmed from far away showing the sheer numbers of the enemy and the mass melee, it was also filmed on an individual scale showing the great heroics of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the spectacular bowman ship of Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and the battle-crazy Gimly (John Rhys-Davies). This battle was also filled with great suspense. At one moment you think the battle's going well and soon after that you wonder how Aragorn and the others are going to survive. It's certain that this battle will have you on the edge of your seat; the action never stops, especially when there's more than one battle going on at once.
While the battle of Helms Deeps is taking place the Ents are also laying siege to Isengard, Saruman's (Christopher Lee) stronghold. It was a grand display of CG as all the Ents and many of the orcs were generated to produce this battle. Although it isn't on the same grand scale as Helms Deep, this battle is still well done and very entertaining. It's quite hilarious seeing a giant tree use an orc as a club. The last hour of the movie was one of the most exciting movie experiences I've ever had.
It's hard to say whether I liked this movie more than the first one. Without a doubt The Two Towers had far more action than The Fellowship of the Ring but it's hard to look at the two movies separately. However, the story as a whole is one of the best stories to ever hit the big screen. If Jackson is able to perform to the same level as he's done with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers then it's certain that the Lord of the Rings will go down in history as the best film trilogy ever.