The Lord of the Rings
The Two
Towers
The second part of Peter Jackson's
adaptation is the most eagerly awaited film of the year (much more so
than "Attack of the Clones", at least in my case) and has a lot to live
up to, not the least of which is the near $900m that "The Fellowhip of
the Ring" has so far grossed worldwide. And fans of the film (and many
of the book too) will be glad to know that it rises to the
occasion.
The story picks up right where it left off, before
actually, with a short flashback to Moria and Gandalf falling from the
bridge. Except this time we see it from the wizard's perspective. The
action then jumps between Frodo and Sam, trying to find their way down
from the Emyn Muil (with some company), Merry and Pippin as they're
carried away by orcs, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli as they track them
across the country of Rohan. What really struck me was how different a
film this is from The Fellowship. Where the first story takes place over
a few months, here everything happens in the space of a few days, and
this works better on film.
And for the most part, I liked this
even more than the first. Fans of the film get to see more character
devopment with the likes of Merry & Pippin and Legolas & Gimli getting
more screen time, and book fans will like the fact that it is even more
loyal to the book (with some glaring exceptions - one bit with Aragorn
was just made up for no reason, as far as I can see). The new
characters are for the most part three-dimensional and played very
well (Theoden, Eomer, Eowyn, Wormtongue etc). The Two Towers
also has the best computer effects I have seen on screen to date. Forget
Jar-Jar, he's just a bad distant memory. Gollum is so frighteningly
realistic in both look and sound that I found myself forgetting that he
was actually computer generated. Treebeard is also brilliantly realised,
if a little Disney. The highlight and climax of the plot is the battle
at Helm's Deep, where the muster of Rohan try to hold out against evil
wizard Saruman's 10,000 strong army of Uruk-Hai. This is spectacular and
deftly handled by Jackson - me smells another Oscar nomination, my
precious.
Overall a really enjoyable movie, and that makes two
out of three. The Two Towers is in practically every cinema for the next
few months,
probably :-)
The official
movie website |
New Line Cinema
Dir: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen,
Viggo Mortenson, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Liv Tyler,
Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving
Cert: 12a |
