Well it’s been a little while now, slightly less than two days (by a margin of about 6 hours) ago I walked out of Showcase Cinemas Maumee having just taken in the most awesome spectacle of fantasy film making that is The Two Towers. I won’t say anything other than all of these crucial plot points and spoilers:

– The beginning is really freaking sweet… it picks up at a very nice point

– Gollum is the most real CGI character I have ever laid eyes on… and he is played to 100% perfection

– Treebeard is also incredible… being a living breathing tree I’m very pleased with how he turned out

– The story deviates from the book considerably in many places… but it holds true to the essence of the book and doesn’t leave out the most important stuff.

– The action in the movie is brilliant… wait until Helm’s Deep and the Spoiling of Isengard.

– The cliff-hanger ending is at once better, swifter and far far more agonizingly worse than Fellowship’s was. The reason? I’ll let you see it for yourself.

Of note is the fact that this film has it’s own voice. It doesn’t have the same tone as Fellowship did, and it holds its own, even while continuing the story set forth by the first film. See, TTT is even more ambitious, brave, and humongous than Fellowship was. Perhaps the voice of the book is lost somewhat in the rising tide of action and battles, but it is an admirable bunch of battles indeed, among the finest sequences ever made.

P.S. Don’t listen to Roger Ebert, he’ll tell you that everything in the movie is computer generated, which shows how much of a whiz he is… most of the effects are done with COMPOSITING, this means that many layers of miniature sets, real sets, actors and scenery are put together into an awesome shot. Only the huge armies, Treebeard and Gollum are strictly CGI creations…. well them AND a few other creatures you’ll be surprised and freaked out by when you see them.

Well, I’m off to bake some fudge… bye bye for now.

Oh yeah, check out Heidi’s Blog for some really interesting stories of her (and my) life.

– Joel