Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Exorcisms? The Attack of Willard and the Giant Junkyard Rats? X-treme sports archery? Is this the The Two Towers that made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the ten best selling authors of the entire 1970's? Is this The Two Towers that forced a generation of gritics to admit that, yes, a book could be quality literature and entertaining at the same time? Is this The Two Towers sprung from the literary genius of Tolkien, whose towering imagination was fed by all that has been good in Western civilization, from Beowulf to the Bible to the heroism of Britain and the Allies in World War II? Answers: A) No. B) No. C) No. Peter Jackson is pretty much doing for Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings what Sherman did for the South. He continues his ravaging of this milestone of human imagination, begun in LOTR 1 The Fellowship of the Ring, in his second installment The Two Towers. A lot of folks over the years have been telling us that artistic inspiration and ... just simply don't mix. If there was ever any doubt, The Two Towers sweeps it away in a flood of aesthetically senseless plot tinkerings that serve only to give Liv Tyler some much-coveted face time that Tolkien's story wouldn't have given her. Aragorn is given a dream sequence with Liv that makes him look like he isn't man enough to sit on the throne in his own bathroom, let alone the throne of Gondor. And then the poor guy has to go wounded and MIA so that Liv can come to his side and kiss the boo-boos and make them better in an out-of-body experience sort of way. [...] Tolkien's mighty tree-folk come out looking like they are made of balsa wood. But [Dominic] Monaghan gets to deliver a sermon on inter-species unity that would have done Captain Kirk proud. Jackson expands on his portrait of Saruman as polluter extraordinaire. The White Wizard watches his his orcs tear down oak trees and gleefully exclaims, "Living things will fall to the forges of industry!" Geez, we don't need Gandalf here. We need Ted Turner's "Captain Planet"! One thing The Two Towers has done for me is help me better appreciate the subtlety in Tolkien's masterpiece. Jackson's comparative clumsiness most strongly shows itself in his treatment of Gollum. Tolkien's Gollum was sort of an Everyman with a penchant for super-fresh sushi. Tolkien was able to evoke simultaneously both Frodo's pity for the poor creature and Sam's disgust at the twisted little vermin. I don't know if any movie crew could transfer this dialectic to the silver screen, but Jackson apparently didn't even think it worth trying. Seizing on the proclivity Tolkien gave Gollum for talking to himself, Jackson decides Gollum is a victim of -- ... -- Multiple Personality Disorder courtesy the Power of the Ring. This is a terribly important misstep, because fundamental to Tolkien's story is the idea that the Ring has power over men, hobbits, whoever, only to the extent that it can call out to the greed, power lust, fear, or whatever that is already inside them. Tolkien's Gollum is a magnification of the human condition. Jackson's Gollum just needs a good dose of prozac. There were more than a couple of places where Jackson could have avoided overkill just by MAKING THE CONFOUNDED MOVIE THE WAY TOLKIEN WROTE IT!!! Jackson's most egregious transgression here comes when Nameless Character A (avoiding a spoiler here) has come under Saruman's influence and Nameless Character B is going to set things straight. In Tolkien's book, Character B fixes the problem by essentially taking Character A out to the woodshed. But no, that's not good enough for Jackson. He has decided that what Tolkien should have done was give us a full-fledged exorcism. "Come out of him, Saruman!" "If I go, he dies!" "You will not hurt him and you will not hurt me! Come out!" "Gyaaahhhh!" Why didn't Jackson just finish the job and put in a couple of head spins and a gallon of green lost lunch? Other "improvements" include Orcs riding big, nasty warf rats. And Elf Legolas shooting arrows as he SKATEBOARDS DOWN A STAIRWAY!!! It's the stuff that the D&Ders want to see, but it rips the ozone layer away from the atmosphere that Tolkien created. Why, oh why, does Peter Jackson need to "improve" on Tolkien? Look Pete, on the one hand we have you: capable director. On the other hand, we have J.R.R.: out-and-out literary genius. Capable. Genius. Capable. Genius. Which one of the two of you should be improving on the other? There are alot of fantasy fans who will love this movie and will think I am crazy for being so derogatory. I'll try to explain myself: Think about it, folks. The Lord of the Rings is still going strong after pert near fifty years. How much thought have you given to any of the fantasy serials that you were reading just three years ago? Doesn't that make you think that there was maybe some "magick" in it that your other little entertainments just don't have? In The Lord of the Rings you have yourself a bag full of diamonds. Don't treat it like a hackey sack!