Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
#22 on my Top 100 List
I own all three Lord of the Rings films in both their original theatrical versions and their extended editions. I love both versions and it depends on my mood which one I watch. This time, I went with the extended. Normally I spread the extended editions out over a couple of days because they're so long, but it was cold, rainy day, so a 4-hour Tolkien extravaganza seemed in order. I think that this one gets forgotten sometimes and it does suffer from the middle-of-a-trilogy syndrome where there is no clear beginning or end, but this is the installment where everyone sort of grows up. Merry and Pippin begin to mature and sober up to the fact that their world really is in danger, Aragorn starts to embrace his Kingly side, and Frodo finally begins to see how dangerous and big his quest really is. Faramir, who is introduced in this volume, even undergoes his own transformation from jackass to noble warrior. Plus, there is Gandalf's rebirth as Gandalf the White. The nighttime, rainy battle of Helm's Deep is amazing to watch (and the added scene where the trees eat the surviving orcs is pretty spectacular) and the visualization of Gollum revolutionized the way CGI is used.
My Netflix rating: 5 stars
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