My Review of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)"

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) is a new take on the movie that came out in 2002. It gives us around forty five minutes of extended scenes on what was originally already a three hour movie. I know that can sound really exhausting to some and at points it really is. You have to be a true fan to really dive this deep into the movie. Unfortunately for me I think I'm becoming one of those fans.

The movie starts off right after the end of the The Fellowship of the Ring. In that movie, we have the fellowship split apart into different factions. On one team we have; Frodo and Sam heading to Mordor so that they can destroy the ring, then we have Mary and Pippen who have been captured by the evil orcs, Gandalf had been sucked into a void with a crazy demon called Balrog, Boromir had died in battle and finally we have Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli who are trying to rescue Mary and Pippin.

Along the way Frodo and Sam finally meet Gollum. He's this creature that was consumed with the ring for a number of years. Frodo knows that he used to be a hobbit just like him back in the day so there's a bit of connection between the two. They both know the feeling of the ring and the burden that comes with it. Sam wants the best for Frodo and obviously doesn't trust Gollum. The problem is that they need Gollum to find safe passage to Mordor.

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have a lot of traveling to do. They're on the trails of Mary and Pippin. In their search for the two hobbits they're learning much about what had happened to them. At the same time they're also learning of the impending attack that Saruman has set up for the people of Gondor.

Mary and Pippin are constantly in danger and eventually meet a mystical tree creature better known as Treebeard. The three of them go on an adventure to find the tree creatures known as Ents. They're pretty isolated and don't want anything to do with the outside world so no one knows what come out of this conversation.

I found it particularly interesting that they would have everything in threes. All the groups somehow end up as a group of three. In some ways I think it's sort of relates to Freud's id, ego and super ego hypothesis. There seems to be two extremes with one rational decision maker in each scenario. Most other movies divide their groups into 2 individuals. It's a welcome change of pace.

As I mentioned before there are a lot of new scenes in this movie. Some of them are quite subtle and then there are some that don't seem to fit in with the tone of the movie. There's this one scene where Eowyn makes some soup and asks Aragorn to try it out. Apparently the soup doesn't taste very good and Aragorn tries to hold it in and pretend he likes it. Scenes like that are, I guess comedic, but don't really fit the tone of the rest of the movie.

There are a lot more light hearted scenes in this movie than the fellowship. I see that they nicely balanced a lot of tense stressful scenes with comedy and jumps to more calm and soothing scenes. It's a nice juxtaposition that helps the viewers remain calm before the next exciting scene. I can see how some people won't like this balance though.

For the mass majority of the extended scenes, it pretty much plays off like the Fellowship. They're extra scenes that help foreshadow things to come, better explain character motivations and at times dive a little deeper into the mythology of the Lord of the Rings.

Most of the Fellowship extras really added a new depth to that film but I don't feel quite the same with the two towers. I think that the theatrical release was done pretty well as it was in this case.

Overall, I still thoroughly enjoyed this version of the movie. I know it starts off a little slow but the payoff at the end is definitely worth it. When they hit I totally forgot how epic the battle scenes were. Still after 20 years I don't think anyone has made a movie with such epic battles as you see in Lord of the Rings. I have to give this movie a 7.5 out of 10. It's still a very good movie but only fans should check out the extended version.