I have to say, though, I was disappointed by The Two Towers, not only because most critics have said that it’s better than The Fellowship of the Ring and I don’t think it is, but on its own as a movie. Far from surpassing Fellowship, it’s actually a step or two behind. It’s by no means a bad movie – I enjoyed much of it, and the grand, Lawrence of Arabia-type scenes are stunning. But it’s more conventional than I remember Fellowship being; in places, it’s more concerned with pandering to the audience than with integrity of story or artistry. (I watched Fellowship on DVD a few nights ago so I’d be up to speed, but one of the joys of DVD is that you can skip right past all the boring, irritating stuff [e.g., dancing hobbits, Liv Tyler], so maybe I’m a little off in my recall. But I just chatted about the movie with a guy in a business meeting, who’s a big fan of the books and first movie, and he had the same reaction – he said that a lot of scenes weren’t in the book and seemed to be inserted as an excuse to show more Liv Tyler, “and there’s no call for that.”)
It’s surprising when you remember that all three movies were filmed at the same time; you’d expect that kind of reaction in a sequel filmed after the first movie was a hit, where it would exaggerate and beat to death the most crowd-pleasing bits (though Towers was edited and some scenes reshot after Fellowship’s release, so I’m sure there was some element of reaction). You know, too much broad humor, too much contemporary language (weirdly, from the Uruk-hai), and way too much smoochy-smoochy. I’d have liked to see all the icky-kissy stuff cut from the film, and not only because the female half is represented by Liv Tyler. Well, actually, that’s probably most of it, because if her role were played by, say, Cate Blanchett, I probably wouldn’t have minded so much. But I still think it’s extraneous and rather jarring. Granted, the smoochy appears in, like, two or three scenes in a three-hour film; it just feels like more.
The best scenes are those that make full use of the widescreen: the battles and the breath-taking panoramas of the stunning New Zealand landscape. Sometimes director Peter Jackson intentionally directs your attention away from the actors to the snow-capped mountain ranges; even when he didn’t, that’s where my eyes went most often (yes, even when Viggo Mortensen was on screen). It’s impressive to see the massive, computer-generated armies looking so realistic. One minor gripe: it’s the filmmakers’ own fault that I noticed this, but I was looking closely at the CGI warriors, because they supposedly make their own decisions, but I noticed a glitch they evidently haven’t worked out: in a scene where horses are ridden through a crowd and stepping on bodies, the horses’ legs weirdly kind of disappear into the bodies; they don’t jump or step over.
Frodo is actually the least interesting of the bunch; I’d have far rather stayed with the dashing, noble Aragorn and Legolas. And no, not because they’re handsome – not that that hurts – but because they’re always fighting and galloping and not looking queasy and faint (though it’s quite annoying to see the dwarf Gimli become comic relief instead of a real character – what, he’s short and fat and therefore fair game?). Hell, even the two previously annoying comic-relief hobbits are more entertaining to watch than Frodo and his lumpy, dullard friend Sam. At least the two other hobbits get to go off and make friends with trees (who then go off and attack the evil warlord who’s been chopping down their fellows – if I squinted, I could pretend the warlord’s tower was the Crawford ranch).
Aside from the ear-splitting shrieks and the Three Faces of Eve-on-crack personality switches, Gollum is pretty entertaining. Perhaps what endeared him to me most was that he looks like Bat Boy. Although I have to say that I have never been so glad in my life to see a loincloth, outside of the occasional Hercules movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000. (But for a guy who’s been living in a cave contemplating a shiny thing for the last several decades, he sure knows a lot about a lot – every mysterious thing that passes by, he knows what it is and where it’s going.)
The biggest victims of unscrupulous, expedient plot cheats or weaknesses – or else just an incredibly stupid people – are the Rohanites, ruled by a decrepit king who still looks younger and healthier than Strom Thurmond (I’m not kidding – did you see him in the clips of his 100th birthday party? It’s just unnatural that he’s still alive). First, if you hire someone named Grima Wormtongue to advise you, you really have no right to act surprised when he betrays you. Second, when threatened with a great danger, I think most people would agree that the thing not to do is take your entire kingdom to the same refuge you always go to, which happens to have no escape route, after allowing the aforementioned turncoat (who knows that you always go to the same place) to flee to his evil master. (One of the Rohanites, Éomer, looked familiar; I had to check the IMDB to realize he’s played by Karl Urban, who was in The Price of Milk.)
My vote for character I most want to see die is definitely Sam. Don’t you just want to smack him every time he says “Mr. Frodo”? Well, I do. And then there’s this ridiculous little speech he gives at the end – let me quote from the Time article about the movie:
“Last September, [cowriters Philippa] Boyens and [Fran] Walsh composed a monologue for Sam… in which he urges Frodo to stick with his mission. ‘There is good in the world, and it’s worth fighting for,’ says Sam. The writers first thought it was too corny. ‘Doesn’t that sound like something George Bush would say?’ says Boyens. It’s now one of the high points of the picture.”Let’s just say I differ from that assessment. I’d rather they hadn’t reacted to September 11th in a story that already has its own universe of good and evil (or, at least, I wish they hadn’t reacted so simplistically and dully), and I firmly believe that if you think to yourself that something sounds like something George Bush would say, you shouldn’t write it or speak it. (Speaking of which, I just heard about an anti-depressant that’s supposed to, among other things, enhance your cognitive functioning. I kid you not: the name of the drug is Abilify. My first thought was, “Doesn’t Bush have better things to do than think up names for drugs?”)
I don’t really mean this review to change anyone’s mind about the movie; I know you’re going to go if you want to, and hell, I’d have gone even if it hadn’t gotten such glowing reviews from other critics. And my disappointment with The Two Towers doesn’t lessen my desire to see the final installment of the trilogy, The Return of the King. But I don’t feel the same impatience waiting for it to arrive that I felt after The Fellowship of the Ring.
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