Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) by Patricia W — 09 Sep 2017

The middle of a trilogy is always a difficult balance to achieve, you have to build and develop existing characters from the first film and also create enough intrigue and excitement for the final film whilst being an enjoyable and action packed entity of it's own and The Two Towers completely pulls it off.

We follow the fellowship that has now broken off into 3 distinct groups, Frodo and Sam head towards Mordor, Merry and Pippin have been taken by the Uruk Hai and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have set off on foot to rescue their hobbit friends.

We're also introduced to quite a few new characters, the most interesting of which are Theoden, played by Bernard Hill and Gollum/Sméagol, played by Andy Serkis. Gollum is one of the most astounding achievements of this film, the mixture of motion capture, cgi and Andy Serkis' performance creates a character that is so engaging, pitiful and complicated that he steals every scene that he's in and shows the audience what could happen to Frodo if his mission fails.

The Two Towers also ratchets up the fight scenes from the previous film with the attack on Isengard and the battle for Helm's Deep, the latter or which has an excellent balance of tension, humour, action and real heart to it as our heroes are heavily outnumbered by the enemy.

Just as good as the The Fellowship of the Ring, if not better, Peter Jackson continues to push the boundaries of filmmaking in scale and excellence.