"Who now has the strength to stand against the armies of Isengard and Mordor?"
The Fellowship of the Ring was a monster hit for New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson. However, there were two movies left to go once the credits for Fellowship stopped rolling. Would The Two Towers be as much of a cinematic landmark as Fellowship was?
Well, no. It was even more so.
So, 2002 comes around and we have The Two Towers, certainly the most middle portion of the trilogy of three movies. It also, ironically enough, stops at about the same point that Ralph Bakshi's version did. To start us off, however, we have three separate stories going on. The Fellowship has broken apart a bit, all going for the same goal at different angles. While Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) head toward Mordor with Gollum (Andy Serkis) hot on their heels, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John-Rhys Davies) go after Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), who have been captured by Uruk-hai heading back to Isengard.
With Saruman (Christopher Lee) marked as a clear threat to the Fellowship and their goals, they definitely don't want the hobbits to fall into his hands. However, not all is as it seems for any of the Fellowship, in particular Frodo, who is slowly beginning to succumb to the corrupting influence of the One Ring. Will he succeed in his quest and destroy it, thus saving all of Middle-Earth?
You'll have to come back for part three.
Oh, and there's a subplot where Arwen (Liv Tyler) chooses to remain in Middle-Earth rather than go West with the Elves. I'll get to that in a bit.
The film does introduce a few new characters to the mix - in particular King Theoden of Rohan (Bernard Hill) and his nephew and niece Éomer (Karl Urban) and Éowyn (Miranda Otto). They're all pretty awesome, though Bernard Hill does some damn fine speeches as the King of Rohan.
Oh, and Brad Dourif takes on the role of Grima Wormtongue. He's Brad Dourif, which makes it automatically awesome!
End of statement.
On the other side of things, we have Treebeard. He's an Ent (a treant if you're a DnD player), who is voiced by John Rhys-Davies. Besides working with the returned Gandalf (Ian McKellen), he's also trying to remain neutral in the conflict enveloping Middle-Earth. Can Merry and Pippin convince him and the other Ents to raid Isengard?
. . .well, yeah, yeah they do.
Oh, c'mon, this isn't a spoiler. The movie is 18 years old.
. . .dear God, this movie is 18 years old.
Also, we have Faramir (David Wenham), the younger brother of Boromir. Boromir died in the last movie and Faramir's naturally pretty bummed about it. When Frodo and Sam fall into his custody, however, he sees an opportunity to earn a way into his father's good graces like he's always wanted to.
HOWEVER, I know that isn't what is on the minds of most people that will come to read this review (if they've even read this far). You have a single question: "What did you think of Helm's Deep?". Short answer: Awesome!
Long answer - A marvel for the eyes, done with a combination of sets, models, and CGI that blend together almost seamlessly and look pretty damn great even today. The fighting is pretty good, too, done with a large group the likes of which we hadn't seen in the first movie. The closest Fellowship got to it was the battle in the prologue or the fight in Moria. The Battle of Helm's Deep had about 500 extras, many of them as Uruk-hai. Very few shots were full CGI, actually bothering to incorporate it only when necessary for wider shots.
As far as the acting goes, I'd say that The Two Towers is even better. Andy Serkis could be entertaining standing in a room entirely by himself, and watching Elijah Wood portray Frodo's slow succumbing to the corrupting power of the Ring is entertaining and terrifying to watch. Sean Astin gives a really damn inspiring speech at the end to Frodo, who is at his event horizon, about how there is still good in the world and that the hope and belief in it is worth fighting for.
So with that. . .or, right. The Arwen thing. So, Peter Jackson made some variations from the book Tolkien wrote (one of them in particular gets a nod directly from him), and one of them was giving more prominence to the character of Arwen. She's the daughter of Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and is in love with Aragorn. It's a love that Elrond is rather contentious about and he spends most of the film trying to get her to let Aragorn go and go West.
She doesn't, which factors into The Return of the King for reasons that aren't exactly clear.
If you're a long-time reader, you know my Rule of Adaptation allows for this sort of thing. I just really wish Peter Jackson had bothered to make it make sense, honestly. Not that it ruins the film for me.
Unlike Fellowship, The Two Towers only one two of the awards it was nominated for: that being Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects (and it definitely deserves that second one - the flying Ringwraiths are just pure tasty Nightmare Fuel). On a budget of $94 million, it made over ten times that at the box office, and so things were on track for the third installment: The Return of the King.
The best was saved for last. . .mostly because everything that Peter Jackson did in Middle-Earth after was. . .well, let's not sully this.
Next time, The Return of the King!
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is brought to us by New Line Cinema and Wingnut Films.
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