7/26/2023 0 Comments Bright master smeagol![]() The wizard Saruman (with his tower, Orthanc), in the service of the dark lord Sauron (with his tower, Barad-dûr), is building an enormous army and going out of his way to destroy the environment in the process. The monsters themselves look fantastic in any lighting. Gimli brings some early comic relief, which lightens the mood without disrupting the pacing, and throughout the whole movie, he polishes this ability into an art form. ![]() The Hobbits Merry and Pippin find themselves in a dangerous situation where they could well end up on the menu–one goblin does, at the hands of his own “allies,” which we see to some extent–with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli trying to stay in pursuit. It’s just as well that Gollum takes an oath, whether he intends to hold to it or not: Frodo and Sam need a way to Mordor, and Gollum is the only real option they have. The pitiable creature swears to serve his “master” (the Ring-Bearer), taking an oath on his “precious.” While looking nothing like an ordinary person, Gollum is excellently animated, and his movements, expressions, and ways of speaking look completely realistic. On top of this, the creature Gollum–so deformed and shrunken that his spine is heavily visible–is utterly consumed by his desire for his “precious” ring, such that he struggles with his own temptations to kill Frodo and Sam and take it.įrodo has taken Gandalf’s message of pity to heart, and Frodo extends that pity to Gollum, whom Sam simply wants to tie up and allow to starve. Some early lines of dialogue establish the characters’ partial lack of control over their destiny, and the malevolent Ring of Power that Frodo bears is clearly taking a physical and emotional toll on him. The eponymous Fellowship has been scattered, with Frodo and Sam separated from their two Hobbit companions and from the rest of their group, not all of whom survived the first film. In another area, heroes Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee are traveling onward, alone. Locked in combat, the two fall enormous distances with Gandalf wielding a huge sword and plunging downward. Smartly assuming that viewers saw the first film, The Two Towers revisits one of the first film’s most visually and emotionally exciting scenes, in which the powerful wizard Gandalf faces the ancient, fiery demon known as a Balrog. Shall I describe it to you?Īfter the same haunting, slightly Godfather-esque melody that opened the first film plays, the movie begins over a beautiful snowcapped mountain, with the sound of a magical incantation in the distance. And I think my appreciation for this film has actually grown during the past decade. The Two Towers, the second installment, is thus given the job of living up to the first film’s high standards while also preparing the way for the third film, The Return of the King. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings stories, The Fellowship of the Ring, was a general triumph both in its storytelling and its movie-making, but the epic journey to destroy an enchanted ring and the evil creator Sauron with it has only just begun. The first installment in Peter Jackson’s three-part adaptation of J.
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