The Ubiquitous The Two Towers Review
Another midnight premiere, another year wait to come.
There is really nothing I can say at this point that won’t be echoed in a million blogs and quickly become another Accepted Commandment of Fan-Geek Orthodoxy…but it’s impossible to remain completely silent.
Saying that this film is as good as or better than the first installment doesn’t sound quite right. It’s somehow not right to use phrases like “the first installment”…With the release of THE TWO TOWERS, it becomes more evident that THE LORD OF THE RINGS, like Tolkien’s novel, is a uniform work–a single film broken by neccessity into three releases. This doesn’t feel like “the second film” or “part 2”. This feels like more of the same–and in the best way possible.
Everything you’ve heard is true. Helms Deep is incredible, the production design for the Rohirrim is breathtaking, the Ents are believable, and if the Academy doesn’t nominate Andy Serkis and the WETA digital team a combined nomination for Best Supporting Actor then something is seriously wrong with the world.
The editing is a bit awkward at times, leading to some uneven pacing…but given the structure of the original novel, Jackson & Co. have done an amazing job with what they’ve had to work with. The script falls down occasionally as well, most notably with an over-reliance on Gimli as comic relief and some speeches which are just a bit too self-aware (notably Sam’s “great stories” monologue)–but really, pointing out these faults leaves the bad taste of nit-picking in my mouth, because everything else in the film works so perfectly.
Only another 11 months and 29 days to go.