The Two Towers - A Review

"The Two Towers" features extraordinary adventures across the treacherous landscape of Middle-earth and reveals how the power of friendship, love, and courage can hold the Forces of Darkness at bay. Being the second movie in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Two Towers" has a much more dramatic story-line than "The Fellowship of the Ring". "The Two Towers" ends with a huge and fierce battle, which gives the movie the effect of opening a bottle of champagne. The intensity and excitement grows more and more and with the final battle the cork flies away, leaving the audience astonished and amazed.

"The Two Towers" is set in New Zealand but compared to "The Fellowship of the Ring", it doesn't feature that beautiful landscape. Many scenes take place on the territory of Mordor, where there isn't much of what can be described as nature there. That is why, when Aragorn along with Legolas and Gimli searches for Merry and Pippin, they travel mostly through mountainous terrain or vast plains, covered with long grass.

"The Two Towers" introduces some new faces like the King of Rohan Theoden, his niece Eowyn, the elf Haldir and the mystic giant race of the Ents. They all play an important role in "The Two Towers", at least Eowyn and Theoden. The King and his daughter are the rulers of Helm's deep where the battle is fought, Haldir is also of importance of course, but he dies and doesn't leave a sincerely big mark afterwards. The Ents are a fascinating race, of awfully kind and warm-hearted folk. They are later responsible for the surrender of Saruman with their attack on Isengard. Aragorn's relationship with Eowyn and Gandalf's battle for the King's wealth is what takes up the real interest until the battle begins. Needless to say that the movie's big star is still Gollum, it is he who leads Frodo and Sam towards the Black Gate, and his struggle between himself and his evil thoughts is something that makes you hold your breath and attentively follow the plot.

The music of "The Two Towers" has gotten somehow a bit more mystic and calm compared to "The Fellowship of the Ring". Probably, the mystic tones are inspired by Gollum and the calm ones - by the relationship between Aragorn and Eowyn, otherwise there are few things to connect it with. The rest of the music, which is strong and mighty, is of course made for the battles and marches of the Uruk-hai.

Now looking on the differences between the movie and the book, my first thought comes to how the Ents decided to attack Saruman and his hordes. In the books, they discussed the attack for many days and finally decided to march to Saruman's lands and attack the tower. In the movie, however, they discuss it quite a long time and finally come with the decision not to attack Saruman. So, why do they attack him later, then? I wonder why these changes are made. I can't say that they help the plot in the movie much, maybe it's made not to bore the fans too much as they would in that case know the exact story of the whole movie? Another small change is when Aragorn falls into the river and dreams about Arwen. Was that really so necessary?