The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.99 You Save: $7.99 (62%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers
Movie Review: The battle begins
Summary: 5 Stars
When the first film in the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy thrilled fans and topped the box office for weeks, expectations rose even higher for the sequel, "The Two Towers." Would the follow-up be as beautifully crafted as the first?
Fortunately moviegoers only had to wait a year for the answer, when "The Two Towers" debuted in December 2002. The second part of Peter Jackson's astounding adaptation lacks the surprise of the first movie, but it continues the strong storytelling, amazing acting, and one of the greatest battles of the silver screen.
The fellowship has been split, and two members are dead. Now Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are pursuing a band of orcs who kidnapped Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd). But soon Merry and Pippin are rescued by an ancient treelike creature, and the others encounter an old friend -- Gandalf (Ian McKellen), reborn as the White Wizard.
Meanwhile, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are making their way towards Mordor, and soon Frodo realizes that they are being followed by Gollum (Andy Serkis), who once possessed the One Ring and still lusts after it. But Frodo begins to pity the degenerate creature, and agrees to let Gollum lead them to Mount Doom -- but Sam suspects that Gollum cannot be trusted.
"The Two Towers" is not really a sequel. Instead, it's just a continuation of the story that left off at the end of "Fellowship of the Ring," and the focus spreads past our little band of heroes to include all of Middle-Earth. It's not all about Frodo and the hobbits anymore, but about whole kingdoms being crushed by the bad guys.
This film is much darker than the first movie, although we still get some funny moments from Gollum and the hobbits, but some creepy ones as well. Gollum/Smeagol's argument with himself is absolutely chilling. To top his previous work, Jackson creates three simultaneous climaxes, including the grimy, rain-soaked battle of Helm's Deep.
But as he tells the epic stories, Jackson doesn't neglect the smaller stories, like the hobbits befriending treelike ents and battling a wizard. The scripting is impeccable, mixing the funny moments ("Don't talk to it! Don't encourage it!" Pippin wails when a "tree" speaks to them) with the dramatic speeches, and ending with a simple, powerful speech by Sam.
And WETA Workshop's CGI effects don't disappoint. Not only do they manage whole armies and battles, but they brought the gruesome Gollum to life. He's probably the first convincing CGI character, to the point where you can actually forget that this Ring junkie is just a bunch of pixels.
Elijah Wood continues his magnificent performance as Frodo Baggins, with the deep friendship, compassion and weariness that he started to show before. But his performance deepens to include some serious Ring-lust, which is warping our dear hobbit out of his own mind. Sean Astin's performance grows as well, as he does whatever it takes to protect Frodo -- from soldiers, Gollum, ringwraiths, whatever.
But the supporting cast gets plenty of attention too, including a love triangle involving Aragorn and the warrior-maid Eowyn, and Legolas and Gimli becoming best buddies (even competing to see who kills the most orcs). McKellen gets to play "Gandalf 2.0," a less grumpy and wiser Gandalf, and movie veteran Christopher Lee gets more juicy scenes as the warped wizard Saruman.
The journey continues in "The Two Towers," crammed with so much action and pathos that it never has time to suffer from "middle chapter syndrome." An amazing continuation.
Movie Review: The Two Towers - Extended Version
Summary: 5 Stars
This extended version is by far, the one extended version of the Lord of the Rings that made the most improvements to the original version. The theatrical Two Towers was not quite as good as the other two, but this version definitely brings it up too snuff with them. This version fleshes out the characters more, and makes the film itself more enjoyable. Now if you didn't like the film in the first place this probably won't make you like it anymore than before, but if you're a fan of "The Rings" then this is a must-see.Movie Review: The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers
Summary: 4 Stars
Beginning note: The reason I give this 4/5 stars is to put it in comparison too the other two.
Lord of the Rings is the greatest motion picture* of all time, no question about it. It's better than Alien, better than Star Wars, it's better than all of them. Though the movie I am currently reviewing is the weakest volume of the story. This by no means makes it a bad film, on the contrary it is among the best films I have ever seen, it's just not nearly as good as the other two. The reason for this is because this one edges into the realm of an action film, the ending is a 30 minute battle sequence, one of the best battle sequences ever filmed, but still a very long battle sequnce. Peter Jackson has done a magnificent job at molding a story in the middle of a battle, he proves that in this movie, but he does an even better job in the volume following this one, The Return of the King.
As I said before, the rating is just to put it in it's place with the rest of the series.
9/10 stars, two thumbs up, bravo.
*I put this in terms of one film because it's less like watching three films and more like watching 3 parts of one film
Movie Review: Nice
Summary: 5 Stars
I honestly do not feel the need to review this product. As anyone who truly wishes to see the full feature as it was intended to be viewed knows, seeing the standard theatrical version is not at all rewarding in comparison with the extended edition. I wasn't so concerned with the extra features, as quite often, for myself, they tend to take away from the film in some light. I tend to enjoy the commentary, but beyond that I prefer not to know the technicalities of how it was filmed. Thus I have not previewed all the additional footage on the other 2 discs included in this 4 disc set.Movie Review: BUYERS BEWARE! Buy the "Special Extended Version"!
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know how else to contact Amazon to correct a huge problem in regard to the LOTR films, but they BADLY need to separate the reviews on the various editions of these films (e.g., the widescreen, the full-screen, and the Special Extended Edition version).
The Special Extended Editions are BY FAR the superior choices for anyone wishing to watch these great films and they're well-worth the money, but a LOT of folks don't know about them. With the additional footage, the movies make infinitely more sense, especially to anyone who has never previously read the Trilogy. All three LOTRs films are available in this format, plus, each film is on two discs, due to the added footage. In addition to that, each one is presented in a nice cardboard case, has an informational booklet included, and offers two ADDITIONAL discs which are "special features" sort of information. This is essentially a "collectors' edition" but, as I have mentioned, the movie itself (for more casual viewers as well as for fans) greatly benefits from the additional film footage.
So, since once you've reviewed ANY version of LOTRs, one cannot review any other version (Amazon software sees this as a second review of the same product by the same person!), I am placing this information here to the prospective benefit of other Amazon customers (and victims!) *.*
Now, on to the story:
This is the second entry in the film-trilogy of The Lord of Rings. I'm rating each one separately to yield a more honest opinion of the entire series. I'm rating 'The Fellowship of the Ring' 4-stars, this one 5-stars, and, 'The Return of the King' 4-stars.
The film is a fantasy, fairy-tale sort of movie, to inform the uninitiated. The first of the three films tells of Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit of the Shire, and his quest, (along with a 'fellowship' of comrades), to save Middle Earth by destroying the ancient Ring of Power, which is in his possession. He can only do this by traveling to the Land of Mordor (a VERY nasty place) and tossing the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, whence the ring was originally forged by an evil wizard, Sauron, (who is still evil and still around, and who is seeking to locate his lost magical Ring of Power big-time).
In this entry, we find that Sauron (of Mordor) and another now-evil wizard, Saruman, (of Isengard) have teamed up to fight the remaining non-evil entities in an all-out power-grab for Middle Earth. Mordor and Isengard each boast a huge heavy-metal-type 'tower', hence the movie title. Of course, Frodo's difficult quest continues throughout the movie.
The fellowship, having gotten split at the end of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' now run into all manner of obstacles. Agendas also become mixed and there is much in-fighting amongst the various regional rulers which complicates defeating their common enemies, Sauron and Saruman. As a consequence of all this action, there is a LOT of jumping around in the film from place to place -- BUT, the director pulled off a coup: this story remains coherent, and pretty much stands on its own as a film. I would have thought this impossible and I wondered how they would ever do it successfully. But they did and I'm quite happy about it.
Now, the CINEMATOGRAPHY in all three of these films will knock you out -- superbly contrived, second to none. The COLOR SATURATION will bowl you over as well. The script and STORYLINE are not at all hokey and come off as quite coherent, which would have been a very difficult task as readers of the book(s) are well-aware.
I much appreciated the fact that the story remains close to the book(s), with few cuts and/or ommissions. Of course, this has made for a lengthy film, but one which will not bore you at all.
My final critique of the film is that the same primary theme composition is used for all three films -- man, I got REALLY tired of that filmscore, even though other facets of it are brilliant. It's the up-front french horn one that I'm speaking of.
In the end, this is a very fine film, not necessarily for smaller kids, but A-O-K for teens. A last comment, don't waste time or money watching the FULL-SCREEN edition -- I've watched it that way (all three films) and you lose 2-stars when you do! This one MUST be viewed in widescreen only!