There are long stretches of "The Two Towers" in which we are looking at mostly animation on the screen. Aragorn joins bravely in the fray, but the real heroes are the computer effects, which create the castle, landscape, armies and most of the action. To compress the labyrinthine story into a sentence or two, the enemy is Saruman ( Christopher Lee), who commands a vast army of Uruk-Hai warriors against the fortress of Theoden ( Bernard Hill). The film opens with a brief reprise of the great battle between Gandalf ( Ian McKellen) and Balrog, the monster made of fire and smoke, and is faithful to the ancient tradition of movie serials by showing us that victory is snatched from certain death, as Gandalf extinguishes the creature and becomes in the process Gandalf the White. I would have guessed that a walking, talking tree would look silly and break the spell of the movie, but no, there is a certain majesty in this mossy old creature. The film introduces another computer-generated character, Treebeard, a member of the most ancient race in Middle-Earth, a tree that walks and talks and takes a very long time to make up its mind, explaining to Merry and Pippin that slowness is a virtue. His body language is a choreography of ingratiation and distortion. The Gollum was long in possession of the Ring, now entrusted to Frodo, and misses it ("my precious") most painfully but he has a split personality and (in between spells when his dark side takes over) serves as a guide and companion for Frodo ( Elijah Wood) and Sam ( Sean Astin). It also gives us, in a character named the Gollum, one of the most engaging and convincing CGI creatures I've seen. "The Two Towers" is a rousing adventure, a skillful marriage of special effects and computer animation, and it contains sequences of breathtaking beauty. I complained in my review of the first film that the hobbits had been short-changed, but with this second film I must accept that as a given, and go on from there. "The Two Towers" is one of the most spectacular swashbucklers ever made, and, given current audience tastes in violence, may well be more popular than the first installment, "The Fellowship of the Ring." It is not faithful to the spirit of Tolkien and misplaces much of the charm and whimsy of the books, but it stands on its own as a visionary thriller. The task of the critic is to decide whether this shift damages the movie. The last third of the movie is dominated by an epic battle scene that would no doubt startle the gentle medievalist J.R.R. The star is now clearly Aragorn ( Viggo Mortensen), and the hobbits spend much of the movie away from the action. Not only is this movie solid from beginning to end, but it has some of my favorite moments in cinema history (SPOILER WARNING): the shot of Aragorn leading the undead army into battle, Faramir's troops charging into battle with Pippen singing in the background, and, of course, "You bow to no one.With "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," it's clear that director Peter Jackson has tilted the balance decisively against the hobbits and in favor of the traditional action heroes of the Tolkien trilogy. Yes, there are 3 or 4 end scenes in the last 20 minutes, but I look at that as a celebration of the accomplishments of this series. What sets this movie apart from the others is the finality of it all. It has the same strengths as its predecessors - powerful film score, solid performances across the board from an ensemble cast, and incredible visual effects that still hold up to this day. Return of the King is my personal favorite of the LOTR franchise. He asked me "Why is your generation so obsessed with the fantasy movie genre?" This is why. As I was watching a NBA Playoffs game with my dad the other night, a commercial for the Warcraft movie came on.
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