8:00 PM, 5th June, 2003
No Guests
The fellowship of the ring has been broken. Frodo and Samwise continue north to Mordor in their quest to destroy The One Ring. Merry and Pippin are still captives of the Orc battle party. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli continue to track the captive Hobbits (Merry and Pippin).
The Two Towers literally continues from the point at which Fellowship of the Ring ended. Without going into laborious detail, in this chapter we are introduced to the Ents, the giant tree-people of Middle Earth; we witness the epic last stand of the people of Rohan at Helm's Deep; and we meet the warriors of Gondor.
Gollum, the tortured little fellow who had the ring before Bilbo, is awesome. Sure, Jar-Jar was the first fully digital character in a non-animated feature, but Gollum is the first one who was any good. I struggled to take my eyes off him when he was on screen. The Ents whooped arse too. In fact, visually, The Two Towers exceeded The Fellowship of the Ring, which says a lot.
I'm not going to get into the book vs movie debate any further than to say that the two are a little different, but in ways that are beneficial to telling the story on screen. The underlying story is not particularly different from that in the book. The Two Towers was my favourite of the three books, and I liked the way it was told on screen.
Odds are that this review will not change your mind as to whether or not you want see this instalment of the trilogy. Heck, if you were interested you'd probably have already seen it. Go see it again!
P.S. If you want to appreciate this movie and haven't seen Fellowship of the Ring, it's a good idea to see that first.
Adam Gould