|
|
In the proud tradition of Part Twos in Trilogies, Peter Jackson's The Two Towers establishes some rather curious middle ground. It does not end on a cliffhanger (Empire Strikes Back, Evil Dead 2), and it could almost stand as an independent film without any of The Fellowship of the Ring's setup (The Godfather II). However, because Jackson is so adept at providing a visual medium for Tolkien's mythology (which can be best summed up as "There was a whole fuck of a lot that happened before we got here, so pay attention"), Towers can never stand completely on its own. It is a fragment of a larger tale, and it is a measure of the larger tale's success that Towers manages to hold our interest for as long as it does.
Towers does not move as steadily as Fellowship did, and that's where the film loses much of its punch. Jackson is wise enough to slam us right back into the middle of things: hobbits Frodo and Samwise (Elisha Wood and Sean Astin) are struggling through the mountains towards Mordor, land of Sauron, in order to destroy the One Ring when they are attacked and then aided by the ring's former possessor Gollum (Andy Serkis), a skin-and-bones creature that makes the Sloth victim in Seven look like a Subway diet outtake. Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monoghan, Billy Boyd), two other hobbits, are trapped in a forest full of Ents (tall, tree-like creatures), while Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli (Viggo Mortesen, Orlando Bloom and John Rhys-Davis, respectively) are out in Rohan mustering King Theoden (Bernard Hill) and his forces to fight against the oncoming Orc army.
Okay, first the positives. Where Fellowship only allowed us a peep at some of the darker elements of Middle Earth, Towers widens the view a bit more. There are more Orcs, for one thing, and they look better (which is to say God-awful--more disgusting, full of drool and bile, and with faces right out of a Clive Barker novel). Gollum is seamlessly integrated into both story and screen, and hiw appearance and characteristics swing effortlessly between pathetic and downright malevolent. The battle at Helm's Deep (the film's climax--you know about it, you saw it in the trailers), much of which is rushed through in the original text, is carried out to epic proportions. True, all the panoramics are CGI, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Jackson dumps us right in the middle of the action, and, left to scan scenery for blue screen shots and computer-generated effects, we are more than content to sit back and watch the heads get chopped off left and right.
And let's not forget McKellen as Gandalf--he can still cast spells in a voice that makes us jump in our seats, and his opening battle royale with the Balrog from the last film (carried out while plunging hundreds of miles into the bowels of the mountains) is almost a movie in itself.
Unfortunately, there are plenty o' faults here as well--in places, Jackson and screenwriters Frances Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, and Stephen Sinclair seem less interested in telling the tale than in making up additions of their own. Where Fellowship's story progressed, Towers' seems to almost stagnate. The film drags painfully through the middle third--there's an annoyingly long series of flashbacks detailing Aragorn's doomed romance with the Elf queen Arwen (Liv Tyler). King Theoden, newly released from the spells of his treacherous aide Grima (Brad Dourif), takes refuge in cowardice as he leads his people to safety in the mountains rather than stand and fight. Aragorn and Theoden's daughter Eowyn (Miranda Otto) flirt briefly...and pointlessly. Most of the action Merry and Pippin see is from the shoulders of a talking tree. It takes an hour and a half for Theoden's armies to go to war, and for every minute of that hour and a half, the only one who doesn't seem to realize there will be war after all is Theoden himself, making his quiet "And so it begins" upon facing the approaching army one of the film's more asinine moments. "About fucking time!" would have been my response, had I been standing next to him.
I could live with all that, perhaps. But every time we are set up to learn more about Gollum's past and what he was like before he finds the Ring (information which would perhaps make Frodo's growing deterioration more comprehensive), we are whisked away to something else. One can almost hear the clink as Jackson makes room in his money bag for the dough that will come rolling in once these Deleted Scenes are available on DVD.
Still, there is enough redeeming material to inspire interest and desire for the third chapter in the trilogy (The Return of the King, due December, 2003). Phrases like "eye candy" and "sword and sorcery" don't really to justice to Jackson's rendition of a tale that inspired the entire fantasy genre. "Epic" comes close, and although The Lord of the Rings stumbles a bit at this point, there's still room for it to pick itself up for a spectacular finish.
-Long
Copyright 2002 Tso Long Productions ©