The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

When making a sequel to a film, one of the hardest things to do is fight the urge to turn something into a trilogy (3 films), as three films is usually the golden number a franchise would want to have in order to stand out even if the script and storytelling can’t accommodate it. More often than not, you can tell when a movie wasn’t designed to have sequels in mind when they don’t feel like they add anything meaningful to the overall picture, but this occurrence can even happen in planned-out trilogies. In most cases, the middle movie is usually where the least amount of story progression occurs and is usually the breathing period to clarify character and wrap-up secondary plot threads before the final plunge that comes with the final entry. Even when trilogies are planned out, the middle movie can usually be the one that is the most slow and uneventful and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers slightly suffers from this. Picking up after the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, the movie follows three concurrent stories; Frodo and Sam (played again by Elijah Wood and Sean Astin) continue their trek to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and are being led by Gollum (played by Andy Serkis), a victim of the ring (or ‘his precious’) that has tailed the team in an attempt to retrieve it, and is now assisting them in their travels while debating within himself whether to kill them to get his prize, or try to actually help them. Merry and Pippin (played again by Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan) are saved from orcs by a giant tree-like creature named Treebeard and are forced to wait and see if he and his kind known as Ents are willing to help in this war against Sauron. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli (played again by Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom and John Rhys Davis) travel to a new kingdom in which Saruman has taken control of through Wormtongue (played by Brad Dourif), a henchman who has allowed the king to fall under Saruman’s will, and with an army of orcs big enough to destroy all of man coming to their doorsteps, the group will have to move the kingdom and face this battle for man at a fort known as Helm’s Deep.  Still receiving the same amount of praise as its previous, The Two Towers, on its own, is still a very impressive movie and does a pretty good job with most of the stuff it juggles. However, when looking at what many consider to be one of the greatest trilogies ever made, this one is definitely the least of the three.

The Lord of the Rings franchise is known for its remarkably long length (even before the extended cut introduced more scenes), but it feels appropriate considering the amount of scope and content that J. R. R. Tolkien put into his stories. Despite what problems plague this movie, it was a smart decision to make it three films as it would’ve been incredibly difficult digesting all this material in only two films. With that said, The Two Towers was apparently the hardest one for the team behind-the-screens to adapt because it lacked a concrete beginning or end (even the opening of the film used a lot of material meant for the end of Fellowship). Their attempts at trying to make this story its own separate entity can really be felt when watching it, as it’s the only movie where nothing substantial happens to the over-arching plot. A lot of stuff gets done within this story, and you have to give credit to screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair and returning director, Peter Jackson, for being able to shape this into any form of stable story line, but little to none of it furthers the goal of destroying the ring, so it’s kind of just feels like filler fluff. The stuff with Sam, Frodo and Gollum is the easily the best stuff overall as it does feature elements that needed establishing for the next movie and its effectively built-up, paced, directed, and acted. The stuff with Aragorn’s crew and this new kingdom of Edoras is handled perfectly fine, but in the grand scheme of things, the only true purpose behind this location is to establish Saruman’s grip over humanity as well as establish an army to later fight in the coming war, but it didn’t need a full film to establish that, and a majority of section is mainly build-up to the climax fight. The battle at Helms Deep is often lauded as one of the biggest cinematic fights ever put to screen, and you can tell the film is banking on this set piece to make the entire film feel like it contains something momentous. It looks pretty decent on a technical level, but the realms of reality are stretched a little too often in this fight to the point where it starts to take you out of the moment. For a battle that should and was built up to feel like life and death, it never really feels like the main characters are in danger as they constantly threw themselves into life-threatening situations and never got scratched. Even still, it ends on a nice note that leaves it open for a lot of great things to be done in the final movie. The side story with Merry and Pippin is also done okay but has even less of a purpose next to Helm’s Deep, so it really doesn’t leave that much of an impression and the reintroduction of an old character is welcomed but handled in such a strange way that makes the audience question why it was done like it was in the first place.

Overall, the handling of the characters is one of the reasons the direction this film takes doesn’t fully work. These middle movies are best at doing character development because it’s the one where the story stops moving and allows for things to breath after a pretty plot-heavy opener. Most of the new characters like Gollum and a new female character named Eowyn (played by Miranda Otto) work with this as their characters and motivations are very quickly and easily understood, but most of the old characters aren’t tied to any sense of strong character arc of development outside of this singular event and it’s the journey that influences these changes, not the people themselves. So, when the story is at a stand-still, the characters aren’t going to be changing during this middle period, so not a ton is affected by this middle period in terms of how they change. Again, the story-line with Sam, Frodo and Gollum is the exception as each character dynamic has something new to offer; Gollum (or his real name Smeagol) going back and forth within himself about whether to help or kill the hobbits leads to some great scenes and overall he’s great at being both creepy and sympathetic at the same time, Frodo’s reactions to him are a nice understanding of what he could turn into through the ring, and Sam is forced to leap into a leadership role while dealing with a struggling Frodo and a manipulative Gollum. Merry and Pippin technically have moments of development, but its again so minimal that it isn’t too interesting to see occur. The stuff with Aragorn isn’t that interesting despite having a decent set-up with his whole purpose being about becoming a king of the realm and interacting with a struggling kingdom would be a good place for that kind of development, but it’s mostly thrown aside for the romance between him and Liv Tyler’s character, which is also not very interesting. Gimli and Legolas have become cartoonishly basic and reverted into one-note tropes instead of feeling like actual people; Legolas just feels like an overpowered untouchable god and Gimli is just the butt of any stupid joke the movie can throw out.

The movie’s technicals are still as impressive as they were in the previous movie but are given more times to shine thanks to more action-oriented situations. The Battle at Helm’s Deep on a technical level is very impressive; the build-up to the battle is very impressive, the cinematography throughout does a good job on the larger shots as well as the close-quarters moments, the music is a bit overly polished and not fitting for a war battle of this type but it’s not bad by any means, and even though it definitely feels more like a Hollywood-constructed battle as opposed to a realistic assault, it still has some cool fighting moments that would’ve gotten audiences at the time pretty exciting and into the action. The really impressive effect however comes from Gollum; throughout the entirety of this movie, it never feels distracting to look at him, he looks completely realistic for the entire movie. With Andy Serkis providing a lot of the character’s movements for motion-capture as well as the computer animator using his 2D animation experience to construct something with more detailed life, it provides one of the best CGI effects of cinematic history. This film was the one that made it clear that the weakest element of this trilogy was the pandering dialogue and its modern tone. Anytime it wants to be funny, it more often than not fails because it comes at a horribly inappropriate moment and ruins the tension or feels like a line that doesn’t match the style and atmosphere this world creates. The environment should be large, fantastical, and epic, very medieval and filled with grand speaking people, but the necessity to add in pandering lines that don’t fit ruin the world it wants to create.

The Two Towers isn’t a bad movie by any sense of the word; it has its fair share of great scenes within its running time (including a very cool opening), but it does feel like the weakest in comparison to its first and its third in the trilogy. The pace of the overall plot stops dead-centre for this movie and a majority of the stuff included isn’t pushing it forward in any sense, a lot of the characters don’t progress (and some even turned worse) and there is a strong sense of Hollywood-ism that hinders this movie’s tone greatly. But what made Fellowship work still works here; the actors are still really good, despite it being pointless, the story isn’t told badly per say, the effects look pretty good especially for their time, and it does keep you invested for what’s going to happen next. For a less than perfect film to be a part of a very influential trilogy, it’s nothing that can’t be overlooked when watching them back-to-back. The one with the most problems, but that still leaves behind a pretty good movie, check it out and see which one is the most precious to you.