The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Widescreen Theatrical Edition)
by Peter Jackson
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DVD details
Actor: Elijah Wood, Ian Mckellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Viggo MortensenDirector: Peter Jackson
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Producer: Barrie M. Osborne
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Published), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 179 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-26
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: New Line Home Entertainment
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Anamorphic; Color; Dolby; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Widescreen Theatrical Edition)
DVD Review: The Best LOTR movie IMO
Summary: 5 Stars
Everything that came as a shock last December, when ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' was released, we're ready for now: the surging, unfamiliar New Zealand landscapes that serve so well as Middle-earth, the way director Peter Jackson creates a privileged aura of legend while propelling the story forward, the preposterous rightness of Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and - really, who knew? - Liv Tyler as Arwen.
The miracle is that ''The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'' is better: tighter, smarter, funnier, and graced with a more realized sense of epochs shifting on the actions of smallish individuals. It builds cleanly toward the climactic battle of Helm's Deep instead of constantly pausing, as ''Fellowship'' did, for a series of donnybrooks. And it introduces a character who, in Jackson's imagining of him, provides the one thing Tolkien never had much use for: dramatic irony.
That character is Gollum, and he catches up with Frodo and Sam (Sean Astin) early on in the new movie. Since the Fellowship abruptly splintered at the end of the last installment, ''Towers'' shuttles back and forth between the group's constituent parts. Pressing into the country of Rohan to confront the armies of bad-seed wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) are the three warriors: human Aragorn (Mortensen, eye candy for the ladies), elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom, ditto for the teenage girls), and dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies, comic relief for everyone else).
Spare-wheel hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) are captives of Saruman's orcs until they are rescued by Treebeard the Ent, who is perhaps best described as the apple tree from ''The Wizard of Oz'' minus the sociopathic urges. Frodo and Sam, of course, are bound for Mordor to drop Sauron's one true Ring of power into the fires in which it was forged. Since AAAdoesn't exactly provide a Triptik for this sort of thing, the two are forced to rely on the guidance of Gollum, the slimy, devolved flapdoodle who lost the Ring to Frodo's Uncle Bilbo back in ''The Hobbit'' and who has been lusting slurpily after his ''precious'' ever since.
Gollum is a computer-generated character, and your heart may sink when he first waddles into sight: with his perfectly mottled skin, street-lamp eyes, and deftly rendered strands of lank hair, he pulls the film in the direction of a high-end video game. But the kindness with which Frodo treats Gollum short-circuits the creature's rage and leads to some marvelously bipolar dialogues between his good and evil sides. Gollum's voice and movements are provided by Andy Serkis, and it's a tribute to the actor that by the time ''Towers'' comes crashing to a close, we've accepted Gollum as a full-time member of the crew - and by far the most interestingly conflicted.
True to Tolkien, everyone else is stalwart in heart and deed, and thus a bit of a stick. Characters don't speak in ''Lord of the Rings,'' they declaim, and all that earnestness might pall if the scope of ''Towers'' weren't so convincingly epic. The audience jaws start dropping from the very first scene, which rewinds to Gandalf's battle with the Balrog from ''Fellowship'' but this time plunges over the cliff with the combatants as they wrassle and smite in midair.
It's a sequence most movies would save as a capper; Jackson serving it up before the opening credits roll is just his waggish way of reminding you who's boss.
The main action in ''Towers'' centers on the kingdom of Rohan, which is being assaulted by the combined armies of Sauron and Saruman as a prelude to a full-on conquest of Middle-earth. King Theoden (Bernard Hill) is under the spell of evil adviser Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) - do you deserve to be king if you hire an adviser named Grima Wormtongue? - the prince is dead, his cousin Eomer (Karl Urban) exiled, and Eomer's tough-but-tender sister Eowyn (Miranda Otto) besieged by Grima's unwanted attentions.
When Aragorn and the others arrive to buck up the Rohanians' esprit de corps, he and Eowyn exchange a few heavy-lidded looks - and a good thing, too, since Otto is the most warm-blooded actress to wander into these movies yet. Aragorn's heart, though, remains with faraway elf princess Arwen, and, anyway, who has time for first dates when the armies of the night are approaching in all their terrible computer-generated splendor?
Jackson is one of the very few directors able to fluently combine live-action footage and digital animation, and he has a gift for pop-Wagnerian grandeur that reclaims cinema's primal power. The skirmish midway through between the heroes and Saruman's hyena-riding troops rivals Kurosawa's desperate choreography, and the Helm's Deep wrap-up is as clear as a military diagram and a frightening, panicky chaos.
It's all hooey, of course - unless you're an adolescent or a Tolkien addict, you have to admit this - but it's hooey with conviction, muscle, and wit, and for the film's three hours you're raised up into the kind of exalted storytelling that the ''Star Wars'' and ''Harry Potter'' movies only feebly promise. George Lucas should watch this and hang his head in shame.
A final thought: ''Towers'' is a war film when all is said and done and some will take that all the way to the metaphorical bank. Is it a coincidence that the movie appears as America tries to reinvent itself as a lean, mean aggression machine? Well, yes, it is. In point of fact, ''The Lord of the Rings'' makes a lousy recruiting poster, devoted as it is to the notion that war is hell on Middle-earth.
Anyway, the major structural problem with the story has always been that its archvillain, Sauron, is a smoke-and-mirrors bugaboo - a barely anthropomorphized stand-in for whatever you think is wrong with the world. Some have decoded him as Hitler, while others believe Tolkien's gripe is against the modern industrialist state. If you want to see Saddam Hussein in that fiery eye of Mordor, be my guest - if you squint, Christopher Lee's Saruman might even pass for Osama bin Laden - but keep in mind that it would be just as easy for someone else to see George W. Bush.
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Description of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Widescreen Theatrical Edition)
Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship continue their quest to destroy the One Ring and stand against the evil of the dark lord Sauron. The Fellowship has divided and now find themselves taking different paths to defeating Sauron and his allies. Their destinies now lie at two towers - Orthanc Tower in Isengard, where the corrupted wizard Saruman waits and Sauron's fortress at Baraddur, deep within the dark lands of Mordor.DVD Features:
DVD ROM Features:Exclusive online content
Documentaries:2 in-depth programs that reveal the secrets behind the production of this epic adventure, including: "On the set - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (Starz/Encore special) "Return to Middle-earth" (WB special)
Featurette:8 featurettes originally created for lordoftherings.net: Forces of Darkness Sounds of Middle-earth) Edoras & Rohan Culture Creatures Gandalf the White Arms & Armor Helm's Deep Gollum: Andy Serkis, Bay Raitt
Interactive Menus
Music Video:Emiliana Torrini "Gollum Song" music video
Other:Exclusive 10-minute behind-the-scenes preview of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Short film by Sean Astin "The Long and Short of It" + making of Preview of Electronic Arts' video game, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King An inside look at the Special Extended DVD Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Theatrical Trailer:Original theatrical trailers and TV spots
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a seamless continuation of Peter Jackson's epic fantasy based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. After the breaking of the Fellowship, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) journey to Mordor to destroy the One Ring of Power with the creature Gollum as their guide. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) join in the defense of the people of Rohan, who are the first target in the eradication of the race of Men by the renegade wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) and the dark lord Sauron. Fantastic creatures, astounding visual effects, and a climactic battle at the fortress of Helm's Deep make The Two Towers a worthy successor to The Fellowship of the Ring, grander in scale but retaining the story's emotional intimacy. These two films are perhaps the greatest fantasy films ever made, but they're merely a prelude to the cataclysmic events of The Return of the King. --David Horiuchi
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