The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Year: 2002
Dir: Peter Jackson
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, Peter Jackson

Stars: ELIJAH WOOD, SEAN ASTIN, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Andy Serkis, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Bernard Hill, John Rhys-Davies, David Wenham, Brad Dourif, Karl Urban, Bruce Hopkins, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Miranda Otto.

The Lord of The Rings saga continues to offer a delicious world of peril where good struggles mercilessly to prevail and hope is kept alive with the aid of breathtaking SFX, never before displayed on the big screen, well not quite like this!

Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and friends continue their journey with shaky resolve, albeit on separate paths, their ultimate goal just out of reach and the forces of evil not too far behind.

If newspapers existed in JRR Tolkien’s world of Middle-earth, Hobbits, Elfs and Orcs, the story of The Two Towers would naturally make the morning’s front page, with headlines perhaps like “Wizard confirms the days of Men are numbered” or “Trees to break thousand year silence!”

As with all great stories it takes its cue from fairy tale, fantasies and fable, with its universal theme of good versus evil. Apart from this, the validity of its theme translates well into today’s reality. You have your evil dictators, weapons of mass destruction, and the bravery of simple folk.

The cinema going public of a post September 11th world can relate without much prompting to the messages aimed at them from a much darker edged and more defined movie than its predecessor. The world envisaged by Tolkien, and the one Peter Jackson brings us, not only manages to enthral but has a mastery all of its own.

You are witness not only to a story that is enchanting enough to persuade you to wait for the next instalment, whether you have read the books or not. You are still convinced that it is a true mythology, akin to that of the King Arthur legend, the journey of Odysseus or the Norse gods. Undoubtedly, The Lord of the Rings saga remains king above all films in its genre.