Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Sam Cable, what are you talking about?
No movie protrayal can match a good book, but Jackson's attempt is the best ever effort in the history of movies. His team's enormous amount of research, attention to detail and love of the original literary work comes through. Yes, some plot lines are altered in minor ways to keep the off-screen characters part of the movie as it still has to serve an audience that didn't read the books, but overall anyone must admire their work. Yes, all of us Tolkien fanatics would love to see a movie of 139 hours in length that shows every scene and includes every line of dialog from the books, including Tom Bombadil and the everything else, exactly as written, but that obviously isn't going to happen.

Sam - please read the books again as many of your review details are wrong. Gollum does have an internal struggle of Smeagol vs. Gollum, it's right in the book. It is pretty obvious in the movie that Sam is disgusted by Gollum and Frodo is more pitying him, same as the book. There is the...

A New Standard In Filmmaking Excellence
It's hard to know where to begin in articulating a coherent summary of so spectacular an epic as Peter Jackson's rendering of Tolkein's masterpiece. Perhaps the most incisive comment I can make is that, having been a fan of "The Lord of the Rings" since I first read the trilogy nearly 35 years ago, I'm impressed by Jackson's fidelity to the spirit of the original literary work.

"The Two Towers" is a very different kind of film than its predecessor. Don't expect the intimacy of "The Fellowship of the Ring"; the evolution of the story precludes it. The dissolution of the Fellowship scattered the principal characters of the first film into three distinct sub-plots: Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), whose capture by the Uruk-Hai takes them into Fangorn Forest and their ultimate influence on the fate of Saruman (Christopher Lee); Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), and Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), who re-unite with a resurrected Gandalf (Ian McKellan) in the...

It's worth fighting for
Peter Jackson has done what could not be done. Deemed unfilmable for decades (with the terrible cartoons as an example of why), "The Lord of the Rings" took the audiences by storm when "Fellowship of the Ring" premiered in 2001. In 2002, anticipation was even higher, dread was lower -- and "Two Towers" is an outstanding continuation of the epic fantasy tale.

The movie picks up where "Fellowship" left off: Merry and Pippin have been captured by Uruk-hai, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are pursuing them. But they are sidetracked by an old friend: Gandalf, returned in a new form and with new powers, as Gandalf the White. He takes them to the kingdom of Rohan, whose king is bewitched by the evil Saruman. They barricade the people of Rohan in the fortress of Helm's Deep, for a final defiant stand against an army of Uruk-hai.

Sam and Frodo have left, to venture into Mordor alone so that Frodo can destroy the Ring in Mordor's Mount Doom. When the two hobbits become lost in Emyn Muil,...

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