Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Directed by Peter Jackson
2003 PG 13/12A
Lord of the Rings -
The
Two Towers is a scintillating cracker
of a movie. As if I need to explain,
The
Two Towers is the movie of the second
book of the Tolkien's
Lord of the
Rings trilogy. You've probably at
least seen the first movie by now, so you know
more or less what to expect, but expect something
even better!
This movie is stunning, as gobsmacking today
as the
Star Wars
movies were yesterday. Just one of the astonishing
aspects of
The Two Towers are
the intricate battle sequences. These are innovative
and absolutely astonishing. The special effects
depicted here have not been done before on this
scale: aside from the key members of the cast,
the battle warriors were computer generated,
and controlled by artificial intelligence. And
the CG Gollum (voice and motion capture by actor
Andy Serkis) was further proof that WETA, not
ILM are the special effects kings.
Another phenomenon that makes this three-hour
minor masterpiece so pleasing is the absence
of misjudgments. There is relatively little
clichéd dialogue. Not once did anyone
cry, "Let's get outta here!" The only cliché
in this movie that made me cringe was when Legolas
felled a bad guy who was behind him with that
annoyingly gimmicky punch with the upper arm
right-angled to his body and his forearm and
fist upright. This reduced the scene to Buffy
The Vampire Slayer tackiness. But it was a fleeting
travesty, a speck of a fly in an Olympic swimming
pool of godly ointment.
The director did everything masterfully. The
music was good; the cinematography sublime:
even the darkest, ugliest scenes were captivating
to ogle. The pacing of
The Two Towers
was supernatural. To keep the tension mounting
so well over three hours was uncanny. There
is one scene where the most unlikely warriors
held a council of war. The council was in interminable
indecision over whether to fight. I was silently
screaming at them: fight!
Fight! FIGHT!
The scene was ingenious and so was the resolution.
I have not felt such childlike, joyous, unselfconscious
excitement watching a Hollywood movie for a
long, long time. But is this really a Hollywood
movie? I am not sure it is. And thank God!
The acting (except perhaps for the, shall we
say,
difficult hobbits) was just fantastic.
Saruman, the figurehead of evil, was a tour
de force of menace, even though he only had
a few scenes. The genius of Christopher Lee
is that he only *
needs* a few scenes!
That is the mark of a great actor: the ability
to be there when you are not. Likewise, Grima
Wormtongue is a fantastically slippery villain;
he made you squirm every time he appeared. The
good guys were equally up to the job. Increasingly
I find myself unsympathetic to heroes, especially
if portrayed by Keanu Reeves and his ilk. However
Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli et al - even
the hobbits - are truly glorious heroes and
there is not a smidgeon of ambivalence in my
allegiance!
The sense of evil is compelling. The genius
of Tolkien is that you do not really see the
real evil, it is simply a disembodied vision
of a terrible eye. This is exactly why Islamic
terrorism is so sinister. The evil is there,
but it has no nation to represent it. It is
merely an evil aspect of a religion.
Islamic terrorism threatens the physical and
mental health, and even the lives of everybody
on the planet. Like Sauron, Islamic terrorists
do not care who they murder. They threaten women
and children as surely as men of arms.
Another force of evil, as I increasingly perceive
it, is that of the sinister mega-corporations,
which are chiefly American, Japanese or European,
but really are international entities. Although
they are more visible than Islamic forces, they
are equally unaccountable for their actions.
They pollute the planet, erode our privacy,
destroy our freedoms. They hire nasty organisations
like the WTO, RIAA and MPA/MPAA. Take the entertainment
industry (aptly, as this
is a movie
review), the RIAA and MPAA like to attack people's
rights to freedoms to use their corporate products
(for example our right to legitimately copy
major label CDs as back-ups). Want to play your
CD or DVD on a computer? Sorry, they will not
let you do that. Nobody wants such threats to
our freedoms except the greedy ultra-rich, they
are the evil clowns who buy politicians and
threaten us. As Eowen in
The Two Towers
so excellently put it, "
I do not fear pain
or death". "
What do
you fear?"
enquires Aragorn. "
I fear a cage,"
she replies.
The real world is even worse off than Tolkien's
Middle Earth in the sense that we are being
crushed between two evils: murderous Islamic
terrorism and the burgeoning invasion of our
freedoms by unstoppable corporate powers. And
those evils fuel each other: Islamic Terrorists
hate corporate culture and step up their attacks,
and the corporate powers cynically manipulate
people's fear of terrorism to pass anti-privacy
laws to help them spy on us, with the intention
of selling more of their products; to control
our use of their products; or to silence our
criticism of their behaviour.
The
The Two Towers invokes other
subconscious fears: are the infestations of
countless orcs synonymous with the floods of
millions of third world immigrants into the
west, bringing unwanted religions and escalating
burglaries, rape, muggings, riots and other
crime?
Maybe, like Middle Earth, our world is on the
brink of global war. Maybe war is upon us too.
As you see, the portrayal in
The
Two Towers of good versus evil
invokes almost paranoid thoughts about the conflicts
in real life. It awakens fears that affect many
of us about the way the world is changing, and
not for the better.
The Lord of the Rings
is a ludicrously good fantasy; the idea that
good can win absolutely is compelling.
Casting aside such dismal ruminations, I should
point out that
The Two Towers is great fun as well as awesome.
I talk about some of the great scenes of
The Two Towers
in the Spoilers section, but see this amazing
movie first :)
It is my hunch that the excellence of this movie
is down to a visionary director having complete
control. Talented dictators, not focus groups
and committees, create the best works of art.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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The pacifist ents were fantastic. When
Treebeard said that they only say something
if it takes a long time to say it, a million
nightmare meetings at work flashed through
my mind. It was a thrilling moment when
at long last the sleepy ents were stirred
into battle. Those ents were strong bastards
too, able to resist a flash flood from
the dam. Watching them stomp on orcs was
strangely life-affirming.
There were many great moments in The
Two Towers: Smeagol was betrayed
by the hobbits and became evil Gollum
again; he was a masterpiece of the pathetic
and the pitiful. The dilemma of Arwen,
having to chose between lover and mortality
and father and immortality; Elrond raged
at his daughter, and yet somehow betrayed
feelings of guilt at forsaking Middle
Earth for the Elfin counterpart of paradise.
Poignant shots of women and kids fleeing
burning villages and later shuddering
in terror at the hideous drumming of the
Uruk Hai army. The transition of Gandalf
the Grey to Gandalf the White: Ian McKellen
manages to bring an almost infinite presence
and dignity. The transition of Theoden
from haggard dotard to sane warrior: he
came alive from the dead in front of our
eyes. The radiance in the face of the
daughter was just astonishingly joyous.
Theoden and Aragorn fighting side by side,
scything through Uruks. Eowen's face when
seeing the presumed dead Aragorn alive,
then remembering that he loved another;
the mixture of agony and elation in her
face (but why was "noble" Aragorn
flirting with the vulnerable lass in the
first place?) The wonderful Gimli trapped
under a huge wolf beast only to be accosted
by an ascending sequence of perils: this
was one of the finest comic moments of
cinema I have seen. And so on, The
Two Towers was a movie full of
amazing scenes and all those parts gelled
together sublimely.
To nitpick like a bastard, there were
some awkward moments though: it was peculiar
to see interstellar space from the point
of view of Gandalf's spirit. What the
hell is a galaxy doing in a Tolkien adventure?
That was one special effect too far. It
was equally horrific (to English ears)
having orcs chatter away in cockney barrow-boy
accents. And as for Aragorn perfectly
detecting the actions of the hobbits from
a few smudges in the battlefield mud,
it was a great way of forwarding the story,
but it stretched plausibility a bit far.
Even fantasy must be internally consistent,
and for the most part, The Two Towers
is just that. Also rather disturbing,
as well as funny, was Gimli's request
of aragorn to "toss me". If you
are conversant with English double entendres,
you'll know exactly what I mean. Fortunately
for all, Aragorn interpreted Gimli's objective
correctly.
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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Gandalf magically transforms the hobbits into
marshmallow
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| From: |
Crozzer | Subject: | 2003-01-02 05:26:47 |
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| From: |
Talon | Subject: | 2003-01-17 16:27:39 |
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| From: |
cosmicstargoat | Subject: | 2003-08-27 08:20:39 |
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| From: |
Mark Radburn | Subject: | 2004-11-05 22:23:19 |
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| From: |
zeeshan zaman | Subject: | 2005-03-07 07:28:35 |
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| From: |
Jim Eadon (review-author) | Subject: | 2005-03-07 08:43:27 |
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