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A DVD Review of...
  
Images (C) New Line Cinema, 2002 |
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, Bernard Hill, Brad Dourif, Andy Serkis, David Wenham, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban
Synopsis: Second film of a $270 million budget trilogy of movies based on the classic fantasy story "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien. This part is based on the middle two books of the series, known as the novel "The Two Towers". Set in the mystical world of Middle Earth, an alliance of nine rather unusual people have set out across the land to destroy the Ring of Power before the Dark Lord Sauron can obtain it. Along the way Gandalf, the wizard who set the young Hobbit Frodo Baggins out on his quest, fell whilst saving their lives - yet the quest continues in the face of tragedy, indeed its only just begun.
The Fellowship is split, torn asunder by the decision of the ring bearer. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli continue in pursuit of the Uruk-Hai orcs who've taken Merry and Pippin. As the chase begins through the vast fields of the kingdom of Rohan to retrieve them, they're joined by someone they thought they'd lost and continue on to visit Rohan's King Theoden to seek his help in stopping the traitorous wizard Saruman and his ever increasing army of Orcs heading in their direction. It all comes to a head at Helm's Deep, an ancient fortress where the armies of Rohan try to hold the forces back. Merry and Pippin meanwhile escape their captors and end up in the ancient Fangorn Forest where they meet some rather unusual and magical allies to help in the battle to help stop Saruman and regain control of the Tower of Isengard.
Meanwhile Frodo and Sam continue on their path toward Mordor - across the jagged peaks of Emyn Muil, through the deadly marshes and along the mountain sides of the wasteland. Their only guide? The scheming creature Gollum who pledges to help them reach Mordor in exchange for his life, but continually plots to take back his Precious for himself. Along the way they'll encounter many horrific sites, visit the sinister Black Gates, be discovered by the men of Gondor and their General - the brother of the slain Boromir, and take a dire path into Mordor which leads only to tragedy, despair and death.
Film Review: "The Two Towers" proves that "Lord of the Rings" is not a trilogy, but rather one massive flick chopped into three parts. There's no "previously on..." and no hope for catching up if you skipped the first film, this three hour epic starts right where we left off at the end of the first movie and consequently ends with surprisingly little fanfare or progression in terms of its characters or plot. Yet, it works and works superbly. As all of these films were shot at the same time, pretty much all the compliments that applied to 'Fellowship' in my review apply here - acting from all involved is great, production design is just spectacular, the script is clever and the excellent FX are used to enhance plot rather than be the focus of it. Having the first film under their belts though, Jackson & crew seem to have a better sense of confidence when it comes to taking risks with the trilogy and overcoming what very minor problems of pacing and hokey dialogue that cropped up in the first film. Two Towers is a faster and more action-centric film with a bigger scale, less convolution of characters, and a clever interweaving of three seperate plots into one cohesive and engaging story. Its certainly more crowd-pleasing than the last film and those who found that 'Fellowship' failed to engage them or keep 'em awake will get into this a lot more.
That said personally I enjoyed 'Fellowship' and its key moments somewhat more. 'Fellowship' was a road movie with a lustrous look and varied environments ranging from the green fields of The Shire and the red fire of Moria to the blue magic of Lothlorien. 'Towers' on the other hand is uniformly grey and flat green with a lot of desolate rock climbing or fights in grass fields/muddy fortresses giving the whole film a more monotonous look. Its more a linearly plotted medieval war movie which builds up over two hours towards one big battle scene and when it finally arrives its impressive but the close-up sword fighting gets kind of tiring and repetitive after a while. On the opposite side the Merry & Pippin storyline, the weakest of the three subplots (the Frodo/Sam/Gollum stuff is the best), has the pair pretty much sitting in a talking Tim Burton-esque tree for 2.5 hours until the last 20 minutes where it turns into the 'Ent attack' - an FX spectacle that had my jaw literally on the floor in amazement.
The highlight of the film is Gollum, a CG character wonder who looks a little hokey at times due to poor CG, for the most part is just a wonder because its not just a flat visual creation but a true three-dimensional being that you both despise and pity - he's a character going through a major internal psychological struggle between his personalities and this is played out in the best scene in the film when he has a conversation with himself. Miranda Otto, John Noble, Karl Urban, David Wenham and Brad Dourif all deliver fine work as new characters even if Wenham in particular gets very little to do. That's the only real main complaint many will have with this film - the original movie's characters get somewhat of a short shrift this time out - Gandalf has much less screentime, Saruman & Elrond are far less interesting, Arwen and the romantic flashbacks bring out yawns, the Gimli character has become purely comic relief and even Frodo feels more of a supporting character this time out though gets some great scenes (the Dead Marshes sequence is very creepy). On the upside Legolas, Merry and Pippin all get more screentime - Aragorn pretty much dominates the movie, and Sam is fleshed out much more (despite a hokey ending speech).
The Two Towers won't get the kind of awards that Fellowship won or was nominated for, nor does it deserve to. 'Fellowship' was the most complicated and arguably least interesting of the books in the series yet Jackson turned it into an utterly brilliant film of wonder and magic. 'Towers' was easily the best book, and whilst the film makes a truly superb middle chapter to the series, and certainly one of the best films of the year, it doesn't stand alone on its own as well as the first film did - only by the slimmest of margins mind you. Note however that 'Two Towers' I enjoyed more on my first viewing than Fellowship (which took me 2-3 viewings before I really fell in love), so it may rise up more as I get more comfortable with it. Make no mistake though, the only faults are that some of the storylines do drag on and that some of the characters are given short shrift - Jackson's changes to the book (such as the delaying of the Shelob scene till Film #3) are disappointing only because we have to wait so damn long to see the result. The rest, like the first movie, remains utterly epic and brilliant filmmaking fantasy which is truly cinematic and will have you begging for Dec 2003 to role around as fast as it can.- Garth Franklin
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
2-Disc Edition DVD Details In Brief (Region 4)
Rating: M
Runtime: 179mins
Versions: 16:9 Enhanced Widescreen, 4:3 Letterboxed
Aspect Ratio: 2.35: 1
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Language & Sub-Titles: English, Spanish, French
Documentaries: "On The Set: Starz Encore" & "Return to Middle-Earth" TV Specials, "The Long and the Short of it" Short Film & BTS Piece, Net Documentary Shorts
Clips: Trailers, TV Spots, "Gollum's Song" Music Video
Other: 10-Minute "Return of the King" BTS Preview, 4-Disc TTT DVD preview, ROTK Video Game Preview
Region 1 vs. Region 4: Standard NTSC/PAL Differences. |
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DVD Review: Last year's marketing trick for 'Fellowship' with the separate two and four disc editions worked, but people aren't going to be fooled twice.
By now even the most un-savy of DVD watchers knows that an 'Extended Edition' of this superb film is coming in November so what's the point of getting this
release right? Admittedly there's not a compelling counter-argument to that logic. Short of the fact its a lot earlier and we see the film's theatrical cut,
what's here is essentially the movie, some trailers and some cable TV specials which'll look pretty pathetic compared to the behind-the-scenes
stuff on the four-disc set. Nevertheless and despite the reaction to this movie, not everyone is a diehard LOTR fan and much of the masses out there
will gladly settle for this two-disc set which is still better than your average disc release.
New Line knew if this transfer was screwed up there'd be hell to pay, so they've left it in the hands of their very best - and boy has it worked. The video print is flawless, and I mean reference quality throughout. Numerous darkly lit scenes all come out practically pitch perfect. There's no aliasing, perfect levels of sharpness and detail, not a sign of grain to be seen. The colours are gloriously rich where needs be and feel exactly like, if not better than their representation in theatres. Audio as well is excellent - this is a film that really knows how to use surround, dialogue does on occasion get slightly drowned out but is still clearer than the cinema presentation version I've seen of the film. This is one of the studio's absolute best, and is combined with some picturesque 'old manuscript' style menus and a nifty red plastic case.
Onto Disc Two and whilst for Fellowship it was a Sci-Fi channel special, this time its The WB's "Return to Middle-Earth" 41-minute doco on the production which is in fact a better than expected light-humoured but in-depth piece on the film's making with cast interviews and lots of on-set footage shot during the TTT reshoots which is quite cool. There's also some interesting personal stuff shown here from Orlando Bloom and Sean Astin's major injuries, to Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan's quite fun goofing off. The downside? A really cheesy voiceover and a condescending repetitive tone that "my god, some of these people gave up two years of their youth" for this. Not as good is Starz Encore! On-Set special which starts with the trailer and some sound bites, but at just under fifteen minutes doesn't have time to be much more than a rushed walk-through of the first third of the film or so - mostly its fun to see the cast's current looks from Billy's wacky hair to a significantly thinner John Rhys-Davies.
Astin does an intro to present his six-minute short film "The Long & The Short of It" and follows it with a short featurette that's actually longer than the film. Its a nice little labour of love, a one-joke operatic piece you'd expect to see in the likes of Tropfest, though it makes for a nice little cap to this disc. The eight Net docos, each about 2-3 minutes long look at different segments (eg. Edoras, Helm's Deep, Gollum, etc.). None are as insightful as the making of specials but as a quick reference guide to certain elements they are handy. Both theatrical trailers are here (though NOT the three-minute teaser shown attached to the first film's end, though that is hidden on the Extended Fellowship DVD), along with sixteen TV spots including the MTV commerical, and loads of 'review blurb' style ads. Emiliana Torren's "Gollum's Song" music video is a combination haunting orchestral piece and a rather odd Bjork-like song set to film footage.
Then comes the extra many have been waiting for - a 10-minute sneak peek at "The Return of the King". The extremely well put together featurette once again combines handicam footage of Jackson and others at work, behind-the-scenes video of the various shoots, interviews with cast & crew, and of course several minutes of footage - all of it never before seen but its also not too revealing as it keeps the action of Shelob, Mordor and much of the Battle of Pelannor Fields under wraps or shown in concept only. The six-minute look at the extended version disc set due out in November also has some great new footage of Boromir's flashback appearances and stuff with the Ents. Capping off the disc is a preview of a new tie-in EA game. All up despite this only being a preview for the real goods in November, its definitely a good buy anyhow. The film is genius, the transfer stunning, and the extras are all high quality and layed out easily.- Garth Franklin
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