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Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, TheThe wisdom of shooting all three The Lord Of The Rings films back-to-back becomes immediately apparent as you settle into The Two Towers. The continuity is so smooth you could be picking up a book you put aside a year earlier. On the return to Middle-earth, we find it darker, heavier, with a plot that forks along three paths, and as such is more satisfying than the linear fight-march-fight-march of The Fellowship Of The Ring.
On their quest to Mordor, hobbits Frodo (Wood) and Sam (Astin) encounter the stinking Gollum (Serkis), whose soul has been twisted and divided by the malign aura of the Ring. The tale demands and gets a substantial performance from this new character, conjured out of CGI and voiced superbly by Serkis (who also performed the role on set as a guide for the animators). Meanwhile, Aragorn (Mortensen), Legolas the elf (Bloom) and Gimli the dwarf (Rhys-Davies) are helping the people of Rohan prepare for an assault by the forces of evil wizard Sauruman (Lee). Having just escaped their Uruk-hai captors, the third part of the fellowship, Merry (Monaghan) and Pippin (Boyd), hang out up an ancient living tree, called Treebeard (voiced by Rhys-Davies).
Out of these three strands, it is the troubles of Rohan that dominate our attention, as King Th?©oden (Hill) moves his people to the mountain fortress of Helm's Deep, where soon over 10,000 of Sauruman's monstrous Uruk-hai warriors and other hideous Orcs will lay siege, providing the epic battle that closes the film.
While many contemporary blockbusters leave a stink in your skull, as if an entire marketing department has dumped in your brain, The Lord Of The Rings films have been crafted by Peter Jackson as works of integrity that deepen as they unfold. The Fellowship Of The Ring was impressive, but it could not be accused of profundity. The Two Towers is genuinely moving, however. The courage of King Th?©oden and his followers in the battle of Helm's Deep, the women and children cowering in the caves as the Uruks stamp and bellow outside, will swell your tear ducts.
Jackson has also added welcome comic moments to this dark tale, most of them coming from dwarf Gimli, who at one point has to be tossed into battle. His repartee with elf Legolas is warming up nicely; having run for three days and three nights in pursuit of the Uruk-hai who have taken Merry and Pippin, he mutters "Dwarves are wasted on cross-country, we're natural sprinters you know". Also, the Orcs have now got cockney accents, a great touch.
Also, where Fellowship Of The Ring was glorious but felt strangely irrelevant, sealed off in its own little world, The Two Towers connects with the present day, and not merely because of its unfortunate title. Tolkien's concerns with industrialisation sweeping away the old rural life are also more apparent here. Saruman says "the old world shall burn in the fire of industry". Also, the tree people, the ancient Ents, are stirred from their indifference by the destruction of their woodland ("There is no curse in Elfish, Entish or all the tongues of man for this treachery," he says when faced by the wasteland Saruman has created from a once great forest). Essentially, the war of Middle-earth is a struggle of diverse peoples to survive under the cosh of mass production, a theme that inspires long after the special effects have faded from view.
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