Pre-Screening Sips
- When The Two Towers crosses my mind, I immediately think about the Ents because I relate to them on so many levels: one, they are so tall; two, they are so slow; three, they spend an entire day just saying hello; and four, they don’t like being set on fire.
Post-Screening Snippets
- Gandalf vs the Balrog is the Big Prologue Energy every film sequel needs
- I know Sam and Frodo complain about eating Lembas bread, but as someone who is on a no-carb diet, that Lembas bread be looking pretty fine
- Twenty years later, Gollum still holds up as the standard for motion-capture CGI
- Really The Two Towers is all about the Uruk-hai: they have lines of dialogue now, there is more than just one, and we get to watch them be birthed out of poo
- Gimli is the perfect amount of comic relief – take notes, all other blockbusters
- Treebeard the Ent is the most underappreciated character of this series; Treebeard cracks jokes, he knows how to rock a green ensemble, and he has some political things to say about deforestation
- Fun fact: The Two Towers was filmed in New Zealand, except the death swap sequence, which was filmed on location in Florida
- Scratch what I said in Episode 1 about entering rooms like Arwen, I will now be entering all rooms as Gandalf does when resurrected
- The one shot of this movie that feels completely out of place is the slow-motion entrance of Gandalf’s horse that looks straight out of an early music video
- When Theoden is released from his trance, he turns to Eowyn and says, “I know this face” – I can confirm that saying this to your sister every time you see her is also a good way to annoy your sibling
- The conversation Gollum has between his good and evil selves is the exact one I have before I order a double order of mozzarella sticks
- Let’s be real, the most boring part of this series is the Rohan stuff – as we established in the Galadriel prologue of part one, the species of man is a snoozefest
- You think Sauron is the main villain of these movies, but if you really think about it, the antagonist that seems to trip up our heroes the most is a steep cliff
- No one has ever been hotter on a skateboard than Radical Legolas on a shieldboard
- “Toss me” is one of Gimli’s best lines
- Between the kill-off between Gimli and Legolas, the Ents smackdowning Saruman, and Gandalf ex machina, the Battle of Helm’s Deep is one of the most thrilling events of the series
The Final Pint
The (Uruk-hai) Poo Towers cannot help feeling like a bridge between two fuller films. The Battle of Helm’s Deep and rich character development make up for some of the duller elements of part two, but it doesn’t excite quite as much as part one. Also, I wanted more Ents.
GRADE: A
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