Being New Year’s Eve, I decided to hide away from some excessive partying and see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in central London.
The second cinematic instalment starts more or less at the point we left off with Frodo dreaming of Gandalf’s fall. I began by thinking we were in for a decent length of reworked footage from the first film, but, of course, I was wrong.
If you haven’t seen the first film and haven’t read the books, you will need to do one of them before seeing this film, for no concession is made to explain the previous tale. Thus, we must accept that the Fellowship is now split into three, and we have three stories.
Frodo and Sam’s tale gets darker as the film progresses, as Frodo comes under the influence of the ring. They are joined by Gollum, who is a superb character despite being a computer-generated image.
The second group, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, go in search of Merry and Pippin, only to find themselves rushing to the aid of King Theoden of Rohan and featuring some amazing battle sequences. Merry and Pippin themselves find the company of the Ents, whose role seems to have been played down in the film. The Ents are my favourite characters from the books, and I had been waiting to see if they could be brought to life convincingly on screen. Peter Jackson has done an amazing job with them, and I was only saddened that they didn’t appear more.
There are, perhaps predictably, few surprises in this second film. There is little to discover in the central characters and, with perhaps the exception of Gollum, very little seems to be learned about newer characters. However, it remains a stunning piece of cinema and one that I will certainly see again and again.
The Guardian has a summary of the main players. Other reviews can be found at Empire Online and Teletext.