The Two Towers “certifiable epic”

Peter Jackson’s film The Two Towers has been praised as a much better one than The Fellowship of the Ring, in the first review of it.
“The Two Towers surpasses all levels of expectation, and in the process it makes everything that The Fellowship of the Ring achieved look tame by comparison,” gushed glossy British movie magazine Hotdog. The magazine gave the film, to be shown in New Zealand from December 19, a five-star rating.

The review says the two significant achievements in the second of The Lord of the Rings films are the character Gollum and a 45-minute battle sequence.
Gollum was created using computer animation and “it’s the most impressive use of (computer animation) characterisation ever seen”.

The battle sequence at Helm’s Deep – mostly filmed at a quarry next to Haywards Hill in the Hutt Valley – is “a full-on frontal assault on audiences, leaving them reeling with disbelief at what they are witnessing”.

The Two Towers also wastes little time explaining what happened in the first film, the magazine says. “(It) just rockets forward, firing on all cylinders with no shred of material you could accuse of being superfluous, let alone boring, on screen”.

JRR Tolkien purists were likely to be unhappy that some sections from the book had been left out, it says. “Still, none of this really matters when it comes down to the fact that The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a certifiable epic.”

Source: Stuff.co.nz