Dir. Peter Jackson. Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Christopher Lee, Sean Astin, John Rhys Davies, Bernard Hill, Miranda Otto, Liv Tyler.
After massacring Harry Potter last year, in the quality stakes if not at the box office, Tolkien's epic returns to the big screen with the middle section of the perennial page-turner. Following directly on from Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers begins by taking up Gandalf's story after slipping down that ravine in Moria. Luckily, the laws of gravity do not apply to wizards, and the old trickster is happily back for the sequel, as we all knew he would be. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam, now going solo into Mordor, meet up with the One Ring's former owner, the nasty-looking CGI Gollum. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are soon drawn away from their pursuit of Pippin and Merry to take up arms big style against Saruman's Orc invasion of the human kingdom of Rohan.
The performances of all involved are again excellent. The hobbits are all non-annoying, McKellen and Lee chew scenery with admirable gusto, Mortensen is every inch the action hero, ably assisted by Rhys Davies as fine dwarf comic relief and Orlando Bloom as the arrow-spraying number one pin-up of Middle Earth. The new arrivals do not not dimish the quality. Hill is in fine form as King Theoden of Rohan, with the wonderful Miranda Otto a cut-above as the king's niece and Brad Dourif doing his slimy sub-villain thing to perfection. The computer generated characters come out of it pretty well, too. Gollum is extremely well done, with fine use of technology complimenting Andy Serkis' vocal/motion captured performance. If Jar Jar Binks put you off this technique forever, Gollum will make you think again. Less successful are the Ents, led by Treebeard (and voiced by the cannily fee-doubling Rhys Davies). These huge walking wood creatures are just a bit too cartoony to sit happily with the realistic tone of the rest of the movie, although by no means bad in themselves.
Whilst Fellowship was ultimately a quest movie, with a small band of adventures on a perilous journey, Two Towers largely abandons that tone in favour of a grander, miltaristic scale. There are some notable battle scenes, culminating in a lengthy set-piece siege of Helm's Deep by a vast host of genetically engineered super Orcs against a small force of heroic defenders. Whilst these are done with considerable panache, I personally preferred the more grounded, character-driven approach of the first film. There are still jaw-dropping moments in the sequel, but these tend to be outside the sword and arrow sequences. The best of these is probably the unlooked for arrival of the Elves when all hope is just about lost. Elsewhere in the movie, we're too often left with little to do but admire the technological achievement of the huge Orc war machine, brilliantly depicted.
In truth, Jackson has again done a fine job of realising Tolkien's vison, although he does hit a few more bum notes this time. His attempts to re-introduce the love story sub-plot between Aragorn and Arwen are clumsy at best, whilst some of the introspective moments that various characters indulge in frankly show up the deficiencies of the story in this area, rather than deepen it. The screenplay takes some liberties with the novel, as you would expect, but not all of these serve any discernible purpose. Most obvious of these is Faramir's inexplicable decision to drag Frodo back to Gondor, although the decision to keep the appearance of Shelob, the giant spider, back until the third film undoubtedly weakens what in the book is a breathtaking ending. When Return of the King comes along next Christmas I expect the purpose of the amendments will become clearer. I hope it works, and will certainly be first in the queue at the cinema to find out.
Chris Denton.
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