I’ve got lots of good things to say about the extended edition of The Two Towers - and a fair bit that isn’t good.
Starting with the positive: Miranda Otto and Bernard Hill are both wonderful. I love how human Miranda Otto’s Éowyn is - I really feel like she nailed the character in all her complexity. And Bernard Hill’s Théoden feels like he was taken straight out of an Anglo-Saxon epic, which is of course very appropriate. To say nothing of Otto’s absolutely gut-wrenching lament for Théodred, and Hill’s line (ad-libbed, apparently) that “No parent should have to bury their child.” They’re both terrific.
Éomer’s horsehair crested helmet is just about the most awesome thing ever. Karl Urban got to keep it after filming wrapped. If I was Urban, I’d be wearing that thing all the time. Cooking dinner? Horsehair crested helmet. At the office? Horsehair crested helmet and a suit. Going jogging? Shorts, t-shirt, and horsehair crested helmet. Hot date? Horsehair crested helmet. Date comes home with you and asks you to take off the horsehair crested helmet before things really get going? Too bad!
Andy Serkis is just about perfect as Gollum. The scene where Gollum and Smeagol are arguing about whether or not to betray Frodo is amazing. And Brad Dourif as Wormtongue is another wonderful casting choice.
The scene where Aragorn first meets Éomer was just about perfect, which is great because it’s one of my favorite moments from the book.
The music is every bit as wonderful as in Fellowship. The Norwegian fiddle that plays the main part of the Rohan theme is haunting (fun facts learned from commentary!). Speaking of fun facts learned from commentary: the moment when Éowyn steps out from Edoras and the banner of Rohan is snapped off in the breeze to land in front of Gandalf & company wasn’t scripted. It was just really windy, and the actors and cameramen rolled with it.
Treebeard and the Ents I found strangely forgettable. In writing this review, I’ve had to keep reminding myself that the Ents were a thing in the movies.
Faramir was botched. Like, botched enough that it makes me angry. He’s supposed to be better than Boromir: wiser, nobler, and his equal in bravery. Instead he just comes across as a whiny pushover.
The fight with the Warg-riders is stupid. Painfully so. It serves no purpose whatsoever, nor does the whole thing with Aragorn going over the cliff. The only redeeming value in the whole affair is the sensible chuckle I got from watching Viggo Mortenson make out with the horse. Peter Jackson made that scene out of whole cloth, it interrupts the flow of things, it has no tension, the CGI wasn’t great (Legolas swinging up onto Arod’s neck is painfully fake-looking), and it just plain sucks. Seriously, why did he think this was a good idea?
I actually know the answer to that rhetorical question, and it leads into one of the coolest parts of the movie, which is also the biggest problem with it: Helm’s Deep.
The Battle of the Hornburg utterly dominates the second half of the movie, and it’s spectacular. The look of the Hornburg and the Deep is absolutely perfect, the flow of the battle masterfully done, Bernard Hill’s despair and determination spectacularly acted.
Too bad most of it isn’t necessary.
This is something that just leapt out at me when I got to “Helm’s Deep” in the Lord of the Rings read-along. It’s one chapter out of 21 in The Two Towers, and a rather short one. Very little happens in the way of character growth or anything of that sort.
Not that I don’t get the appeal: my battered old copy of TTT from my childhood (held together with duct tape and hope) falls open to the scene where Aragorn and Éomer charge the orcs with the battering ram, I read it so often. But Tolkien himself suggested it as a good thing to cut, as the battle is “incidental to the main story.”
To put all of this a different way: I don’t have any serious issues with the battle itself or how it was done. But I regret everything that had to make room for it.
Oddly, the Elves showing up doesn’t bother me. I remember having a “Really?!” reaction in the theatre when I first saw it, but I get the reasoning. Jackson & company wanted to show that it wasn’t just Gondor and Rohan fighting, and having the Elves fight at Helm’s Deep was a much more time-effective way of showing that they were doing their part instead of all the exposition that would have been needed to show the Battle Under the Trees or the Dwarves at the Siege of Erebor and Battle of Dale.
To sum up all of this: The Two Towers is at its best when Peter Jackson is being the least Peter Jackson-y he can manage. Unfortunately, as he got caught up in the project (and, by all accounts, got steadily more exhausted) he gave his action/horror movie director instincts free reign more and more. Those instincts were mostly held in check in Fellowship, the strongest of the three. They’re peeking out pretty strongly in The Two Towers, to the movie’s detriment.
On Friday, The Return of the King.
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