The Two Towers is my favourite of the trilogy. The fellowship have gone their separate ways and we are introduced to Théoden played brilliantly by Bernard Hill and Wormtounge played by the equally brilliant Brad Dourif. I think that my movie knowledge was so poor in 2002 that I think this might have been the first Dourif film I had ever seen (his X-Files episode doesn't count). The first part of the film sees the hold that Saruman has over and then the action moves over to Helms Deep. Meanwhile Frodo and Sam come across one of the greatest monster creations ever and one that has probably kept Andy Serkis in work for 25 years….Gollum. The character has a mixed personality and the way they manage to make the two seem different even when they are being said by the same person is quite well done.
The battle of Helms Deep is a brilliant portion of the film and when the bomb goes off and the wall goes flying in the air is just as impressive in 2026 as it was when I saw it 24 years ago. I hate to sound like an old man but if this were made today then they would have used CGI and there would be no weight or heft to what we were seeing. Also the fact that it takes place at night and yet we can see what is going on because of the cinematography and also the fact the camera is shaking about at a ridiculous level. I do like how the friendship between Legolas and Gimli has developed so quickly. In fact the trio of Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn adds some levity to what is quite a downbeat and dark portion of the film.
Middle films in a trilogy are always the difficult ones to do because you have to carry on from what came before and feed into what follows so like Peter Jackson says in his introduction video, it has no start and no finish and yet it is still a damn good film. Despite this there is a cliffhanger of sorts when Gollum talks about letting ‘her’ deal with Frodo and Sam. Now I knew (from a friend) that there was a big spider involved so in 2002 I knew I would have to wait an entire year to find out how this was going to be resolved. This is when you know a film has worked when you cant wait for the next installment to come out. The action scenes are brilliant even by today’s standards and even if people don't agree with me that this is the best, I don't mind because the quality of the other two make them equally as good but for purely the Helms Deep portion of the film makes this the top of a very good pile.
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