The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - a review by Dave Fischer
The Two Towers is an epic portrayal of a classic fantasy story, with incredible imagery and effects that bring this exotic world of elves and monsters vividly to life. Unfortunately, parts of the (extremely complex) underlying plot have been handled in a somewhat clumsy fashion, leaving many ambiguities and dangling threads. There were a number of scenes that didn't make much sense - either in the context of the original story, or on their own:
Why is Mordor portrayed as a fertile valley region in the scene with Sauron's mother's wedding, but then portrayed as an arctic wasteland later on in the second battle scene? Or was that supposed to be symbolic? Did everyone see it that way, or just those two elves? This wasn't clear at all.
Why didn't we hear anything about Gandalf's brother back when Gandalf was alive? Why does he seem to already know everyone in the party?
Why does Aragorn betray the hobbits during the siege of Gondor, when it was already clear that Sauron had rejected his peace offering back in Osgiliath? It doesn't seem like he had anything to gain from either side at that point, and then he just disappears from the story! WTF?
Where did the dwarves go after exploring that cave the hobbits were too scared to enter?
When the Nazgul slew all of the rangers and took the ring, why didn't he just fly away then? If he hadn't sat there watching the ringwraiths torturing Frodo, Golum wouldn't have had a chance to steal it from him! (And why didn't the Nazgul turn invisible!?!?) And why does Golum *sell* the ring back to Pippin? Wasn't he completely twisted with obsession for the ring? I found Golum's redemption & hooking up with Arwen very unconvincing. (Treebeard's "big brother" role to Golum was interesting though.)
What was the point of having them return from Mt. Doom to find that the Shire's sudden economic growth has stalled due to runaway inflation? That wasn't in the book.