TWO TOWERS Reviews Storming In From Movie House Screening! So Why Does Everyone Want To Feed MTV To The Wargs'!

Hello Harry and everyone out there in Middle Earth. I had the glorious fortune tonight of catching an advance screening of The Two Towers with the MTV Moviehouse people. For those that may not know, Moviehouse is a show on MTV that tries to be a hip Access Hollywood. I think "tries" is the active word in that sentence. As an audience member for this screening we were asked to clap and cheer and look happy for the camera which was present at almost all times before during and after the movie. This was to say the least, highly annoying. I did not mind the cameras before...nor would I have minded them after.....but during....this would prove to be a HUGE, HUGE....bitchslap to us all in the end. Nightshot cameras? Fine....we can't see a light....but imagine this my fellow movie watchers..imagine getting ready for the battle of HELMS DEEP! The batlle which we have all heard so much about...imagine having your fists clenched in suspense, ready for the battle of orcs versus men that the film has been leading up to...imagine your heart beating with anticipation for the kick ass battle of all battles when......HERE COMES MTV INTO THE THEATER WITH A BLINDING FUCKING LIGHT AND A CAMERAMAN BLARING INTO YOUR EYES!!!!!! This followed by an interviewer ( the show host) holding his own tiny ass camera sitting down to do interviews with people while the battle wages on!!! Can you believe this? I was in complete dissarray....and this LIGHT and CAMERA which took image away from the screen due to it's harshness continued for the next 25 minutes non stop. Awful....just awful! MTV...you should be ashamed of yourself. If Peter Jackson were there....he would have strangled that cameraman right then and there yelling,"What the hell are you doing, I spent months on this freaking scene and you are ruining it!" Most in the theater covered the light with their hands...others clo! sed their eyes to it's brightness. Yeah...it was annnoying. Aaaaargh! Okay...okay.....I am a bit bitter due to this. But with that in mind...and all that off my chest....here is...finally....a review of The Two Towers.

I will start by saying this....The Two Towers is an amazing accomplishment. The battle scenes are gritty, raw, and feel very real. The sheer scope of the film is astonishing, truly epic, and yes, it does feel much bigger than Fellowship ever did. Everything here is much darker. Where Fellowship was green and earthy, The Two Towers is brown and muddy. The whole film has a very real intensity to it. Once again the world of Tolkien comes to life right before your very eyes.

And it really does take off right away.

From the first frame we are thrown right back into Middle Earth. We get to see exactly what happened to Gandalf in a mind bending fight down the endless corridors of Moria with the Balrog. We find out how he became Gandalf the White. From that we see Frodo and Sam....and for the first time Gollum. I was pretty impressed with how Gollum looked. It's pretty damn convincing. He is just like we all would picture and hope him to be....right down to the sweat, teeth, eyes, and skin.

He moves so smoothly....I forgot I was watching a CGI dude every once in a while. He wears these kickin' shorts through the film...if Gollum had hair i could see him with a surfboard hittin' waves. Blue Crush 2 maybe? Gollum is just cool. You gotta see it to believe it. I am glad the trailers hide him....he is worth the surprise.

So what about Aragorn? Gimli? Legolas? They all kick some serious ass in this movie. Aragorn as always weilding his sword...Legolas with those sweet dead on arrows...and Gimli....ha....Gimli is the comic relief in this movie. There are countless gags with Gimli that had me giggling like a child throughout. I missed those guys and was glad to see them again. Aragorn just feels so intense in every scene....so glad they got Viggo to do this role. He is perfect. His love for Arwen is brought into the foreground...and Eowyn ( not bad, could have chosen a prettier more intense actress) comes along to throw salt in his game.

There really is so much in this movie. Orcs on wolves battling our heroes, marsh graveyards with evil ghosts, Wormtongue and the sickened king, the ENTS revenge on Isengard, The Black Riders on flying horses...the Nazgul! Breathtaking. This is still an image I cannot get out of my head...Flying Nazgul....scary as hell, visually amazing stuff. The whole movie has this mood of forboding doom.

Merry and Pippin are a bit overlooked....they spend a lot of their time in a tree. And maybe that is why they are overlooked....the tree steals the damn show. Yeah, the ENTS are pretty awesome. Treebeard is an astonoshing creature to look at. The voice and eyes shook the room.

One thing that stands out as a reader of the book is the large amount of liberties that Jackson and company have taken. It didn't really bother me too much. However, I did feel that Sam and Frodo spent a little too much time under the custody of Faramir. Where in the book, I remember their meeting being very short lived...here it becomes a huge part of the journey. There is also much talked about addition of Arwen and Aragorn's love story which I felt was slightly out of place but also neccessary. It is something that was left unexplained in the books that i am glad exists here. Aragorn does end up at Helms Deep in a different manner. One big thing is the ending....no Shelob....no cliffhanger like the book. But after all is said and done it all seems to work.

The pace of the film is pretty damn brisk...moves right along as we go from each character's story back and forth. Just when you get bored with one thing you are off to another. From Frodo, to Merry and Pippin, to Aragorn and so on. Although it is three hours it moves right along.

The action is the true star of this movie. The battle of Helms Deep seemed to be very exciting and suspenseful to me (damn those MTV people). Whenever there is action this film is at it's best. I love the fact that a lot of the action is shot from far off vantage points. We really get to see the size of these scenes. Always a far off angle allowing us to get a sense of how HUGE things are. Jackson is great at doing shots without cuts that take us right in there! For instance...when those ENTS go into Isengard to show Saruman whose boss...we get a full on pulled back view of the anarchy and chaos.

On the downside...I felt the ending was a bit weak....it definitely would have been better with a cliffhanger ending. I wanted to leave that theater begging for the next chapter. Instead it ends like Fellowship....there goes Sam and Frodo to that scary Mordor place again...sigh. Would have been cooler to get us to Shelobs Lair. I wanted that Han Solo in carbonite ending... you know... goosebumps... fear.... all of that. I also think the effects here and there could have used more man hours. Maybe this print was grimy....maybe this was not a final cut print. Some of the wolves and gandalf scenes looked a bit rushed. But hey other than that....a great film. In my opinion, Fellowship is better just because it is a more emotional journey. This one does not bring us as close to Gandalf or Frodo, the approach is more cut and dry....let's kick some ass.

I will definitely be seeing this one again so that I may truly watch it. I cannot fairly judge that Helms Deep battle due to the MTV interruption. I will be pissed about that til' my dying day.

I know there is so much more I could say....and this has been a bit jumbled. But it all feels like a dream....like it happened to someone else....i still can't believe i saw the movie!!! I am totally out of it...too much Shire weed....ahhhh.

Well, until next time.

Call me

Goose

How about one more?

I'll use very few 'spoilers' in this review, nothing that will ruin anything truly important for anyone. Plus, the other reviews pretty much covered the plot. Oh, and I haven't read the books, and loved "The Fellowship of the Ring"

I caught a screening of "The Two Towers" in LA at The Bridge theater tonight, which was run by MTV for the TV show "Movie House." So throughout the screening they'd be walking up and down the aisles, asking people what they think of the movie, blasting their camera light all over, which was annoying as hell. Especially since they started doing it during the battle of Helm's Deep. Other than that, the screening went great. We even got nifty "Two Towers" shirts afterwords! And I mean nifty.

Having just seen the movie, my feelings about the film are very similar to those directly after my first viewing of "Fellowship" - I definitely liked it a lot, but there is so much to take in that it just requires a second viewing to catch everything and really love it. After my second screening of "Fellowship," it solidified the fact that it's a great movie, and I think the same will go for "The Two Towers."

I guess the major question people are asking is whether it holds up to the original. Since "The Two Towers" really doesn't have as clear-cut a opening or a closing as the first, it's kind of unfair to say it's "better" or "worse;" it's just a continuation of the story. Picking up directly where "Fellowship" leaves off, it feels like it's part of the same film, which is definitely a good thing. So, uh.. if I had to answer the question I would say "The Two Towers" is equal to "Fellowship"... both great in their own rights, but neither of them really better than the other. Judging the film by itself is like picking a favorite chapter from a book - you need to have read the book as a whole rather than just looking at certain chapters. And I think to properly judge "The Lord of the Rings," we'll need to see the whole trilogy.

If I had to point out any qualms I had with the film, I guess I missed some of the quieter moments from the first installment, like the Hobbiton sequence. But "The Two Towers" is a much darker chapter, so I can't say I would have liked it more if there were more of the cutesy moments in this film... I think I just missed them, if that makes sense. Actually, I suppose that's a good thing, since the film is so much colder in tone, we're supposed to miss such warm scenes. So never mind that.

But I did miss Gandalf the Grey. I loved McKellan's portrayal of Gandalf in the first... he was so likable, so subtle in his portrayal of the wizard, that you just can't help but miss the geezer in this one. While it's nice to see him alive in the form of Gandalf the White, his character plays a much smaller role in this film. But overall, I really had no noteworthy problems (Okay, maybe one -Samwise's speech near the end comes to mind, where he preaches for "the need to fight evil for the sake of good," which I found a tad too corny, even for a Hobbit. But still, it was brief...)

Gollum was amazing. This will probably become somewhat of a cliche to say, since you can't help but be blown away by Andy Serkis'/the CGI's (which isn't flawless, but works wonderfully well) performance. His struggle within, over whether he should lead the hobbits or kill them for 'his precious,' is fleshed out wonderfully. There is one scene where his two personalities clash that I found to be pretty much genius (reminiscent of Willem Defoe's mirror scene in "Spider-man," but far superior. Faaar superior). Gollum was just so multi-layered, and I felt for him so much, that he might just be my favorite part of the film (definitely the most memorable). There was that much to the ugly bastard.

Concerning the CGI, most of it was quite amazing. To nitpick, the Wargs (wolf things that orcs ride) looked pretty fake. It didn't detract from the scene (which was a great little battle), but they were the weakest point of the CGI in the film, if I had to choose. Other than that... I found the CGI on par with anything Industrial Light and Magic can put out.

The fact is, "The Two Towers" has no real problems that take away from the film, just maybe some niggling thingies here and there. (I really had no complaints about Arwen's scenes in the film, as an earlier reviewer did. I think it added depth and drive to Aragorn's character.) There is just so much to love in this movie. Your opinions of it will most likely mirror your feelings for "Fellowship."

"The Two Towers" is amazing. It may suffer a tad from being the middle movie, but once "Return of the King" comes out (which I'm positive will be great... no pressure, Mr. Jackson, it will be), it'll tie the three chapters together into one solid story. I think then the three films will really be seen as one, just as Tolkien intended with the novels.

Oh, Helm's Deep doesn't really require much description - it was just mind-blowing. And sorry if I say "amazing" too much . Ehh, once more: amazing. That one felt good.

-- Poop Mobile

And after all... if you can’t trust a man named Poop Mobile, then who CAN you trust?!

"Moriarty" out.