TMS 30 Greatest Movies: #26 The Two Towers

Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Year: 2002
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
Main Actors: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen
Ranked: Chaim #3, Brant #20

Synopsis
Christ, how do you summarize this movie? I could go all nerdy geek fanboy on you and use all the character names and terminology, thus losing some of you. Plus this is the second installment of the LotR trilogy and pretty much picks up right where the last one left off, so it's tough to describe without giving some backstory. Oh well, here it goes....

Basically the kid from the Good Son (not Macaulay Culkin) and Rudy are hobbits out on a quest to dispose of a ring that holds a powerful force, by throwing it into the fires of Mount Doom deep in the evil region of Mordor. Meanwhile a giant eye is after it and has banded with Count Dooku from Phantom Menace to create a giant army of orcs. Meanwhile the guy from Hidalgo, Will Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean and Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark are on their way to the kingdom of Rohan only to find that the king's mind has been taken over by Count Dooku, who is being aided by the doctor from Deadwood. Eventually Magneto shows up and breaks Dooku's control of the king. At this point though, Rohan is in ruins as Dooku's orcs have raided and pillaged the countryside. The king decides to take his people to the fortified keep at Helm's Deep to ward off the oncoming horde. While this is going on, two other hobbits played by Charlie from Lost and the lead singer of Beecake are in the forest talking to large trees in an effort to get them to fight against Dooku and the orcs. Also the Good Son and Rudy come across the creature Gollum who once held the ring in his possession and agrees to lead them to Mordor but also has plans to take the ring back for himself. Also Liv Tyler briefly appears in this installment along with her father V.

Reasons This Movie Kicks Ass
I'm about to commit what some may deem cinematic heresy, but here goes. The Lord of the Rings is the greatest movie trilogy of all time. Yes the original Star Wars trilogy is still great, but the prequels have deeply tainted them. Plus LotR had a much better story and much, much better acting overall.

The effects are breathtaking as well. While there is a fair share of CGI in the Two Towers as well as the other two movies, it's very well done. They used not just CGI but the combination of that with elaborate sets, scale models, the beautiful scenery of the New Zealand countryside and characters with costumes and makeup. The costumes and makeup is a huge deal to me. With so many movies opting to create characters completely by computer and having some actual humans acting entirely on a green screen, it was a real breath of fresh air to see that the orcs were played by actual people wearing makeup and many of the sets were tangible. Much more real looking then any lame ass squidmonkeyfish that George Lucas cooked up on his laptop. You hearing me Lucas? This is how this shit should be done! Michael Bay I'm looking at you as well.

Even when they did do motion capture and whatnot it was pretty phenomenal. The creature Gollum is lifelike at times you forget he's just a computer graphic and think he's an honest to god living person working with the other actors.

Monster Role
This one without a doubt has to be lead singer of Beecake, Billy Boyd. The finest Scottish actor this side of Billy Connolly.

Knock Your Dick in the Dirt Moment
Such an epic movie would have plenty of KYDD moments, and Two Towers is no exception. But if I had to pick the one single greatest KYDD moment, it had to be when Viggo Mortensen's character had rough, awkward sex on the staircase with Maria Bello.

Watch this movie if you like...
Living in your parents basement, dressing up for renaissance festivals, Cool Ranch Doritos, swords, Ian McKellan's sexual prowess.