Peter Jackson's "The Two Towers" Film
But a funny thing happens on your mission: despite making meticulous catalogues of all the media we intended to catch up on once home, by the end there, most of us found that our general attitudes towards film had coalesced into indifference. For those two years, we had lived life too directly, too purely, too deliberately, for us to be impressed by mere escapist fantasy anymore. What were the formulaic inventions of Hollywood hacks compared to the passions of real lives really lived, in all their grief, power, and intensity? What were the artifice of CGI or even live-sets compared to the hot sun on our skin, the glare in our eyes, the sweat on our face, the noise of the streets, the palms in the breeze, the broken-concrete under our feet? Well do I remember going to the theater a month after my mission and becoming hyper-aware, for the first time ever, that all I was watching were projections upon a screen, nothing more. When my old High School friends presented me with stacks of DVDs and CDs to catch-up on, I looked upon it as less a relief than a chore.
For me, that whole disorienting homecoming experience was doubly compounded by the fact that my Mom was literally on her deathbed when I came home, in the terminal stages of cancer, so those stacks of DVDs felt especially puerile. The Singles Ward, The RM, The Hometeachers, and other LDS schlock had just come out, which compared to my lived experience as an LDS missionary felt not only asinine but actively offensive in their banality--especially with my mother withering away on the couch behind me, unconscious and breathing heavily.
All of this is just long preamble to say that, when I finally saw Peter Jackson's The Two Towers for the first time, on DVD a week home from my mission, I was the least primed I could possibly have ever been to be impressed with it at all. In a sense, mine is the exact inverse trajectory of Ben and Erics': rather than being blown away by the spectacle initially only to eventually grow bored with the whole ordeal later, I instead was bored with it from the beginning, and it has only been in the years since that I have grown to appreciate certain of its virtues.
Because my mission is now officially awhile ago, and I have long since re-acclimated myself to movie watching, for better and for worse. So the question I faced as I rewatched The Two Towers last night, for the first time in many years, is how would I engage with the film now, so free of all the swirling hype that demanded I should love it back when I was least disposed to? Would I find myself nodding off, nodding along in solemn agreement with Ben and Eric that the whole thing is just an interminable slog?
That The Two Towers is slow and sure takes its sweet time is surely self-evident, perhaps even its defining characteristic. But I also found myself musing if that is necessarily a bad thing. One of my favorite, most thought-provoking films from my youth is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that movie moves slow as molasses--and good thing, too, because the film needs all that room to breath. One cannot get a sense at all for the vastness, the loneliness, the breadth, depth, and expansiveness of the cosmos, without that glacial pace to expand your consciosness. Similarly, the Battle of Helm's Deep, I've come to the conclusion, really needs that extended running time--the battle really needs to feel so interminable, the hopelessness so profound, the darkness so complete, such that when the sun rises and the victory finally comes, you really feel it. It was a most curious sensation I experienced near the end of the Battle of Helm's Deep last night...I felt...moved...in a manner like I have felt in only fits and spurts throughout my entire adult film-watching existence.
Part of it too, I dare say, is I am now a little older, a little more mature, and am therefore more willing to take my time with experiences, to soak it all in. Also, between this *ahem* interminable election cycle, and the latest spate of senseless mass shootings, along with my extended memories of the Iraq War and the long legacy of the Bush administration we're still living through (including the rise of ISIS), I have a much keener sense of just how long these bloody conflicts can last, how much it can weary the mind and the soul to feel all your values besieged from all sides. "What can men do against such reckless hate?" wonders King Theoden aloud in the film, and the line resonates with me far more now than when I was 21, because it's a question I have caught myself asking more than once lately, as well. That just makes the victory feel all the sweeter by the end--it feels earned, not merely escapist or fantasy wish-fulfillment. I really felt like I needed to watch The Two Towers last night.
This is not to say I think the film is flawless. At all. I fully agree with Ben that Faramir (though the actor does the best he can with the material) is grossly mishandled by Jackson, and that his resolution with Frodo doesn't even make sense, neither internally nor in relation to the book. I also think that Grima Wormtongue (though again, I think the actor does the best he can with what he's given) was likewise mis-portrayed--if the whole point of his character is that he is seductive with his words, shouldn't he be a little more, well, seductive? As it stands in the film, he is just such a creep, it's strains credulity that anyone falls for his spell at all. By way of comparison, in the books, when Frodo first meets Strider, he says he believed him cause he thought the agents of Mordor would "seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand." But Jackson's Wormtongue never seems fair at all--he is visibly, objectively foul from beginning to end. It feels like a missed opportunity to comment upon the seductiveness of evil, rather than falling into the easy, ridiculous ugly=evil/pretty=good binary that still makes us all so susceptible to salesmen.
But that is getting off topic; I would just like to conclude by saying that though The Two Towers really is slow, that is not intrinsically a bad thing--there is good slow and bad slow, like everything else. For evidence, consider Peter Jackson's The Hobbit films, also interminable slogs, and ask yourself: would you rather rewatch those, or The Two Towers? There is just something qualitatively different, definitively better, about the slow-pace of The Two Towers, a magic that Jackson completely lost by the time Warner Bro. twisted his arm into directing The Hobbits.
Until The Return of the King my friends.
Ben's Thoughts (6/28/16)
I've probably seen this film the most out of Peter Jackson's trilogy. This is one of those films for which my enjoyment has been something of an inverse bell curve. Allow me to explain.
When I first saw the film, I remember enjoying it. The centerpiece of the film, the battle at Helm's Deep, was a truly awe-inspiring sequence upon first watch. The sheer scope of the battle, with all the computer-generated orcs swarming the imposing fortress, the ingenious siege devices that the book alludes to but doesn't fully describe, the destruction of the wall by suicide-orc -- it's all appropriately epic in scale. So I really think I did enjoy it upon first blush. But I remember the film left me with some nagging disappointments, and these feelings only grew and grew upon further viewings. The epic and terrifying battle scenes grew tedious for me. The initial chase sequences by Aragorn & Co., at first so exhilarating to see on screen for the first time (what Bakshi cartoon?), became boring. And those Ents -- oh, those Ents. Every time they show up on screen, barring the final "destruction of Isengard" sequence, the pace of the film just slows to a snail's pace. Interesting on the page, especially when we get a chapter of it all packed in and then a lengthy break, but ravaging to the pace of an action/adventure movie. I remember in college the university sponsoring a back-to-back showing of all three films and a friend recommending we give it a try. I had to walk out of "Two Towers" about five minutes in because I just couldn't take it any more. This nadir is the bottom of the bell curve for me.
So when I watched "Two Towers" with my wife in preparation for this blog post, I didn't launch into it with high expectations, even though it had probably been seven or eight years since I'd seen the film. Knowing that my tolerance for its digital excesses was low, we decided to split the viewing into three one-hour sessions spread out over a couple of nights, turning the film more into a mini-series than a marathon viewing. And you know what? The results were entirely positive. Oh, the film still has flaws, which I'll touch on in a minute, but even taking those into account, this is a really fun movie.
Broken into two parts, the action sequences at Helm's Deep are not nearly so tedious. Although they still have their ridiculous moments (Legolas skateboarding down the stairs on a shield leaps to mind, and Aragorn randomly jumping thirty feet from the top of a wall into the midst of the orc army is still eye-rollingly stupid), they are very effective at communicating the chaos, tragedy, and insensibility of battle. I love the fact that Theoden's grand moment of "drawing his sword" and heading to the gate is immediately truncated by the fact that he's stabbed by an orc spear within the first thirty seconds of fighting and has to pull back. Or the moment when he bars the gate on Aragorn and Gimli because they're not fast enough to get through before the entrance is sealed. Of course, Our Heroes (TM) are still protected by plot armor, but a cheerier film would have had them rush through before the gate was sealed, because they're individually more important than a hundred random soldiers. Or the scene where Haldir is dying and surveys the landscape of dead Elves, no doubt wondering about the futility or effectiveness of his participation in the battle. War sucks. "For death and glory?" Theoden asks Aragorn, when the latter proposes they ride out together into the fray. "For Rohan," Aragorn replies. "For your people." Give them a chance to escape through the tunnels; make your death have some meaning not just for you, but for the future.
You'll notice I've referenced Theoden a number of times already. Basically Bernard Hill and his portrayal of the Rohirrim king is the best part of the film. I always had pictured Theoden as a really old man with a long, silky white beard (probably because of that darn Bakshi cartoon, there it goes creeping in again), but Bernard Hill really inhabits the role. Some (Eric) may scoff at the scene where Theoden is donning his armor and reciting the Eorlingas verse, framed by the setting sun and intercut with images of the marching Uruk-hai closing in on the citadel, but man, that scene packs a punch every time for me. Theoden's ever-increasing sense of helplessness in the face of indomitable orcish advance ("What can men do against such reckless hate?" -- a line not in the books, but probably Jackson's most memorable original from all three films) rings true to me, because there really is so much inexplicable hate in the world (some housed within ourselves). What can we do? Face it, says Aragorn, and Bernard Hill beautifully captures the change within the king as he realizes that standing for something serves a purpose beyond simple "death and glory".
What else is great about the film? Gollum -- although the motion-capture CGI, which I thought still served well after all these years in "Fellowship", did not hold up as well in some of the scenes with Gollum -- but much has been said about Jackson's framing of the creature's internal and psychological struggles, and Andy Serkis' portrayal of said struggles elsewhere, so I will abstain. They're still great. Gandalf -- although I can't agree with the cosmetic choice to give him a fashionable shoulder-bob haircut (I much prefer long greasy-haired Gandalf the Grey) -- Ian McKellen continues to inhabit the character and convey the appropriate gravitas and power. The supporting Rohirrim cast members, especially Eomer and Eowyn.
What's not so good? The handling of the rest of the Fellowship.
Legolas is reduced to outrageously bad action sequences and pensive looks. Gimli is nothing more than eye-rolling comic relief. Merry and Pippin are ten times more annoying in this movie than in the last one, and even so the script still has to hit Treebeard with the idiot bat so that the hobbits can seem like they're moving and shaking that plotline instead of just being carried around by a boring tree. Aragorn suffers from the bland love story flashbacks with Arwen and is forced to kiss a horse (this elicited chuckles from the theater audiences I originally saw the film with, I recall, but for me this scene and several others in the movie always generated within me that uncomfortable feeling of being embarrassed for the film I was watching). And Frodo and Sam. Oh, Frodo and Sam.
I realize that Peter Jackson felt like he had to spice that storyline up a little to make it more palatable for rapacious and critical audiences. But man, it feels like it's overboard. Frodo falls headfirst into the Dead Marshes. Sam falls over the cliff at the Morannon. The Black Rider's not just off in the distance, he's directly overhead. The oliphant is coming right at Sam and Faramir's tiny arrow manages to divert it. Faramir also saves Frodo from the Nazgul with his mighty Bow of Power (TM) when he shoots the flying creature it rides, then Sam tackles Frodo off the roof and they fall four stories onto the ground where Frodo draws his sword on Sam. Gag me.
I've already complained about the butchering of Faramir's character in the film. I'll never forgive Jackson for it, just for the sake of padding the movie a bit (and so much of the film feels like padding -- Frodo's tumble into the marshes, some of the Helm's Deep action, the warg attack and its aftermath). Instead of "showing his quality," Faramir tumbles off the deep end and seizes Frodo for Gondor. Then somehow they are transported from the orc-controlled east bank of the river to the west back with the rest of the Gondor forces; there's some fol-de-rol with the Nazgul, Faramir shoots it, and suddenly (and entirely inexplicably) he comes to his senses and Frodo and Sam are magically back on the east side of the river, going about their merry way. What?! And what, exactly, changes Faramir's mind? He's just seen Frodo go binky-bonkers and climb up on top of a tower, ready to hand the Ring over to the first Nazgul who calls to it, and has to be tackled by his pudgy servant in order to snap out of it. That's enough to say "at last, we understand each other" and turn him loose? No witnessing Frodo's magnanimity with respect to Gollum; no revelations about Boromir; no discussions of Faramir's hopes and dreams with respect to his country and Gondor. Nope, just a silly action sequence and then, bam, it's all resolved, plotline concluded. Ugh, it's just terrible.
My complaints could continue, but I'll cease and desist. I really did enjoy the film this time around; it's just very flawed. I have the haziest memory of "Return of the King"; I'm actually looking forward to seeing how Jackson resolves his epic film trilogy. "Two Towers" is definitely the weakest of the two, by all recollection, but even it has its moments of majesty. Certainly worth a watch every five to ten years!
Eric's Thoughts (2/3/18)
A re-watch of the the Two Towers film basically met my expectations -- an okay film overall but too long. It's certainly not as engaging as the Fellowship of the Ring.
The star of the film of course is the computer generated Smeagol. Even though the CGI looked a bit dated, the portrayal and voice acting is fantastic. One of best ideas of this whole film was how they shot the split personality of Gollum -- changing camera angles so it looked like he was having a conversation with himself. It's funny and tragic at the same time . . . and a great way to capture an inner monologue on film.
What disappointed me most on the re-watch was how one-dimensional Faramir is. The book paints Faramir as a dichotomy of his brother, with the will to reject the call to the ring. Instead, in the film, Faramir seems like a brooding bully. Jackson would have done better to stick to the source material. Instead of dragging the hobbits to Gondor (the film), Faramir should have given up his claim to the ring when he learned what it was (the book). I think Jackson's approach was a mistake.
The subplot then plods along so that the hobbits and Faramir are being attacked by Nazgul. Drawn by the call of the Nazgul, Frodo approaches the Nazgul and hands out the ring for the taking. Perhaps this subplot was developed so that there was better trailer eye-candy? Whatever the reason, Sam knocks Frodo down just in time, and the Nazgul misses. Phew. That is intensity.
Not really, especially because as soon as Sam interrupts Frodo's attempted betrayal, Faramir approaches the hobbits and says: "I think we now understand each other, Mr. Baggins. I'm now going to let you go to Mordor."
WHAT???? If anything, Faramir should have all the more reason to take Frodo to Gondor. From Faramir's perspective (without the benefit of having read the trilogy like we have), he has all the more reason to prevent these hobbits from going into the land of the enemy so they can just hand the ring over to Sauron. There is no reason for Faramir to suddenly "understand" what the freak just happened. What a contrived subplot!!!
On the Theoden / Aragorn side, Theoden does a nice job of painting a king watching the downfall of his kingdom. Like Jacob, I actually found his hopeless battle against reckless hate a compelling metaphor for the times. Lines like "What can a man do against such reckless hate," which rang cheesy while I was younger, seem particularly relevant now.
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