Reviews
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Best Imaginable Second Chapter
For this movie, Peter Jackson was faced with a challenge: how to make a great stand-alone film when the beginning and ending are in separate movies? He did a magnificent job. Like the first one, this movie starts with a slam-bang battle; however, where the first film had armies, this film has a clash between two titans.
From there, the movie builds to the enormous set-piece siege. And, along the way, we meet one of the most interesting characters of this, or any movie: Gollum, the complex, torn, schitzophrenic slave to the will of the One Ring.
And, even more than the first film, the Ring is also a character: the viewer can see it wearing down Frodo, pushing him to the limit, tempting those around him. The encounter at Osgiliath, while not in the book, is a fascinating visual realization of more subtle themes in the book. I know that, when I walked out of the theatre, I knew that there was only one movie I was looking forward to during the next year, and that was Return of the King.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
My All Time Favorite
I had not read the books before I saw the movie the first time. I had no idea what to expect. I was absolutely floored by that first experience of viewing it in a theater. The prologue sets up the film at an epic scale, then the view of The Shire brings it down to a more personal, human (and Hobbits are really stand ins for average humans) scale.
This movie succeeds on all levels: as a small-scale adventure featuring a group of men (like The Seven Samurai), as an epic where the very fate of the world is involved, as a special-effects masterpiece. The special effects are not an end in themselves (like The Matrix), but serve the purpose of creating an alternate world where Elves and Balrogs are just as real as humans.
This movie inspired me to read the books and see the other two movies in theaters, all wonderful. Also, as a final note: I do have the DVD extended version, and it adds a couple of nuances which help fill in the details of Tolkien's wonderfully realized world. A fitting start to what became one of the most impressive accomplishments in the history of movies.