The third part of the tale concerns two jolly hobbits, played by Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd: Merry and Pippin - two pert names which show Tolkien's donnish desire to create an intensely English mythology I can just hear him and the other pipe-puffing Inklings approvingly rolling "Merry" and "Pippin" around their tongues. Dwarves are obviously the Gurkhas of the Tolkien world. Interestingly, the comic discrepancy in height between all these species is not emphasised as much as in the first film, with the exception of much knockabout fun at the expense of the bluff old soldier Gimli. In this they are helped by Gandalf (Ian McKellen) who has returned from the dead, dressed all in Persil white, and, like Saruman, now has Mary Hopkin tresses of snow-white hair too. Meanwhile, in another part of the imaginary universe, the inexpressibly hunky Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) together with his Fellows, the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the lovable and stout-hearted dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) come to the aid of the people of Rohan, battling the evil Saruman. Captured by the two Hobbits, Gollum agrees to lead them to Mordor if they will release him. They are pursued by the mysterious Gollum (Andy Serkis), a CGI-character with an unearthly resemblance to Dobby from Harry Potter. We begin with the two hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) journeying towards Mordor to dispose of the Ring for good and all. Jackson is forced to intercut between three separate plot-lines, a plate-spinning process which, though dexterously achieved, is inevitably laborious. The answer (which by the way is yes) lies in the fact that the classic values of clear, direct storytelling do not apply in the normal way. But this is a three-hour film we are talking about, and for long, long periods of time the nagging question is - does it have to be quite so boring? And at the apex of The Two Towers is a tremendous battle sequence which Jackson puts over with full-throated gusto: the half-hour siege at the very end as the Dark Lord Saruman's forces assault the people of the kingdom of Rohan, who have taken their last stand at the fortress of Helm's Deep. These persuasive elements strengthen what was always powerful about the first film: breathtaking use and creative modification of the New Zealand landscape, standing in for Middle Earth. The Two Towers unarguably makes a powerful impression, and with this second movie the simple accretion of mass, together with director Peter Jackson's maintenance of its unflagging energy and his fanatical attention to detail, mean that the epic is taking some sort of shape. Do grown-ups need to worry their heads about Frodo and Bilbo, I asked - at which point the Tolkies mounted a very effective counter-attack, assaulting the boring Prousties for banging on about the mythic backstories of Baron De Charlus and Robert Saint-Loup. I have had late-night arguments with pro-Tolkien friends, triggered off by rashly calling their need to establish an emotional relationship to this intricate but sterile world a symptom of regressive disorder. Well, L Ron Hubbard's writings became the basis of a bona fide religion, so perhaps JRR Tolkien's will too, and this sort of raillery will indeed become incorrect. Some seriously claimed that "Tolkie" was an offensive slur. Like a couple of other writers on this paper, I was deluged with hate mail. When The Fellowship of the Ring came out last year I gave grave and unrecallable offence to the Tolkie fanbase with disobliging remarks about how the whole middlebrow mythology was dull and overrated, and how this admittedly beautifully designed children's movie was treated with baffling reverence by adults showing a misplaced, sentimental loyalty to their earlier, 12-year-old selves. Warning! Film contains intense combat and fantasy horror scenes, long-haired men smoking unfeasibly long pipes, women with pointy ears, and lots and lots of interminable nerdish nonsense. It's time to drop the needle on the second disc in the biggest double-gatefold concept album in history: the next instalment in the Lord of the Rings saga, entitled The Two Towers.
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