In this Fozzolog: My impressions of Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. There may be some spoilers here, so beware.

Simply Amazing

Yes, it was simply amazing. It's rare to see a sequel outdo its original film. But, that's not a fair assertion. The Two Towers isn't a sequel, it's a continuation. When you think of a sequel, you're usually referring to a new story, a new premise, but with the same characters as in a previous film. It's another story with the same people. The Two Towers is not a new story, it's another piece of the same story.

So, it's not a sequel.

It is amazing.

Peter Jackson— the director of the film— said in a recent CNN article they pulled apart the book to make the film, so it doesn't flow the same as the book, but it doesn't lose any of the plot elements. I read that before I saw the film and can confirm it. It was a wise decision to break the three plotlines into smaller chunks. I remember being frustrated while reading The Two Towers because I wondered what was going on with the other characters, but I didn't want to wait for the second half of the book to find out.

The battle scenes at Helms Deep were just amazing. Just about every review I've read has mentioned how spectacular that was. It's amazing how much of the original story Jackson preserved in the film. For example, the orc-slaying competition between Gimli and Legolas during the battle. The only thing I would have changed about this battle would have been to make it dirtier and darker. When I read the book, I imagined something more filthy dirty like the trenches at the Do Lung Bridge in Apocalypse Now where Captain Willard goes looking for someone “in charge”.

The battle was certainly every bit as frantic and chaotic as I remember it from the book and more so. The use of the MASSIVE software to animate a realistic crowd of 10,000+ orc soldiers was very well done.

The audience in the theater went wild when the Ents converged on Isengard to enact retribution on Saruman for deforesting their friends. It was obvious a lot of people were pleased with how the Ents were realized in the film.

That's all for now. Christine went with me and she enjoyed it a lot too. I'm looking forward to seeing the film again.