The Two Towers:
A Plot Prece by the Author of the Worst Case Scenarios...
The Best Case Scenario?
The story starts with Peter Jackson desperate to show that Caradhras is not the only pointy mountain that was in the company's way. "Look" he says, "all these mountains were pointy too, so there."
He leads us through the rock back to the fight with the Balrog. Gandalf falls, but this time we see his fight with the plummeting demon. The Balrog, despite being about 75 feet tall and possessed of giant claws, seems unable to fight back against the tiny bearded wizard on the grounds that it has lost its sword. This whimpiness is backed up when we find, after Gandalf plunges his sword into the Balrog, that the demon is entirely filled with whipped cream, which comes spurting out….
This is all revealed to be a dream of shy hobbit Frodo, who is still walking about the pointy rocks. Sam makes a dreadful weather related pun, so Frodo gets up and tries to run away.
Gollum (played by Kate Moss) attacks. Frodo defeats her by confusing him/her ("You've seen this sword before" he says when, according to the first film, he almost certainly hasn't), and Kate is so bewildered that she agrees to help the hobbits, and her first concession is to slightly moderate her voice so that the audience can actually understand her.
We cut to Merry and Pippin. Merry has had his face hit so hard it has gone back into shape. Pippin, who has not been fed by the Orcs, tries to eat the leaf from his cloak. Unfortunately, it is metal, and he spits it out.
Aragorn finds it. It provides useful evidence that they are following the footprints of the correct horde of marauding Uruk Hai. Gimli whinges and falls behind but, very cleverly, is always lagging by exactly the same amount, which actually means that he is running at the same speed of the other two. Magic. Legolas trips over.
We see scenes of the Rohirrim being attacked by rampaging hordes of violent monsters. The problems of living near a First Division Football Ground are revealed again. Theodred, son of the King, has been horrible wounded, but in a very, very handsome way. He gets prettily taken to his bedroom, where he proceeds to photogenically expire. We meet his father, Theoden, who is being played by Harry Enfield (in "Old Git" mode) and Grima the Giant Frogman. Theoden's nephew, Eomer, is banished for crimes against moustaches. His niece Eowyn pouts, also prettily.
The action catches up with the cast of East Enders, who appear to have been signed to play the Uruk Hai. Peter Jackson, ever keen to respect the intelligence of both his audience and his source material, boils down the complex interplay between breeds of Orc and the suggestion of disloyalty by Saruman into an argument about eating people's legs. Hurrah! The highly trained killer Orcs fail to notice the Hobbits walking off, except one, who grabs them and informs them that although they may scream, the big Orcs who just killed other Orcs in order to preserve the hobbits as per their orders, strangely won't come to their rescue. In this way Jackson tells us that we may never understand Orc kind. Fortunately, the Orcs are attacked by horsemen, who first display their ability to sneak up on people (discussed next).
Legolas, who is supposed to be the "eyes and ears" of the Fellowship, completely fails to notice two-thousand horses bearing down on them from over a hill top. Although it seems to the casual observer to be due to his habit of staring into space and muttering pretentious claptrap about red dawns, this is actually because of the Rohirrim's stealth mode. Although two-thousand horsemen apparently ride over the hill and accost the company (according to Aragorn), we only actually see two hundred of them. This is because the remaining 1800 are still 'cloaked'. Whether this shows ancient links with the Lady of the Golden Wood (whose people may have carefully knitted full-body horse stockings) we never find out.
Eomer, on his way into exile, lends them horses (visible ones - perhaps spell only works when ridden?), then leads his two hundred visible horses and 1,800 invisible horses away north.
The company follow the trail to borders of Fangorn Forest, a forest so strange and cunning it can transform from a pine forest to a spooky deciduous wood between shots. Aragorn wastes time kicking Orcs helmets around before actually trying to find evidence of the hobbits, which he duly does in a about two seconds. His tracking skills reveal the following: a) Merry and Pippin weigh a lot more than they look. b) the Rohirrim carefully cut the grass with a flymo after attacking so that there was grass all over a rope that had been cut only a few hours earlier and c) that they quite obvious ran in utter terror and in fear of their lives from a battle with hideous monsters, leading Gimli to ask the intelligent question "Fangorn - what madness drew them in there??" Meanwhile, Merry & Pippin are rescued from the chasing Orc by Treebeard. This would be a good thing, except we immediately see that Film Treebeard is considerably less hasty on the uptake than Book Treebeard, and continues to think they are Orcs even after he has looked into their faces and heard their voices. There's obviously quite a few things that he cannot remember (Gandalf's name for example) but on this occasion the hobbits obviously do not remind Film Treebeard of them. He delivers them to Gandalf, but due to aforementioned forgetfulness, the three people in the audience who haven't read the Book think that Saruman has them.
Finally we rejoin Frodo & Sam. Sam is suffering from a terrible cold, so he doesn't notice the bog until he steps in it, and later the same cold plays havoc with his accent. Frodo ignores Kate Moss' advice about looking in the Marshes, and gets sucked in, and attacked by ghouls. Thankfully, the ghouls come from the Lurtz school of procrastinated attacking, and they posture around looking a bit manky long enough for Kate to save Frodo.
Frodo challenges Kate Moss about how she got so thin, but their conversation is interrupted by a Black Rider. The seven children with trumpets are unable to fly, so now that the Black Riders ride bloody great big dragony things, the only noise they make is a big whomping sound. One tends to notice that a certain female warrior will have to hit really very hard to slice off the head of that fell beast. Just a thought.
The company get reacquainted with Gandalf, who has returned as an impressionist. He starts with an impersonation of Christopher Lee, but then shifts to a really convincing rendition of one of the Amish from 'Witness' (perhaps to help Viggo Mortensen feel at home). Gandalf informs them that they must hurry to speak to King Theoden, but nearly spoils this plan by summoning a slow motion horse. Legolas continues to demonstrate his knowledge of local wildlife by announcing "that is one of the Mearas, unless my eyes are cheated by some spell" - this statement needs some scrutiny, since it implies that Legolas is aware of an evil power on earth intent on making elves' hallucinate slow-moving horses. Sauron truly is a wicked being.
Gollum leads Frodo and Sam to the Black Gate. There they witness some Easterlings performing a military tattoo. The viewing platform breaks because of Sam's fatness, and they fall down. Two Health & Safety experts from the Easterling force spot this and investigate. Fortunately, the two Easterlings do not notice the huge six-inch gap between Frodo's magic camouflage cloak and the ground, so Sam and his master go unnoticed. A distressed Kate Moss offers to show them a new and secret way.
Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and the old Amish man meet Theoden, and a fellow called Hama, who is rather likeable. Gandalf embarrasses the evil spirit out of Theoden by saying rubbish lines at him. In gratitude to Gandalf for saving him from being a character in a BBC sketch show, Theoden… does absolutely nothing. Except lead his people to hide.
That Hama seems like a nice chap though.
Gandalf, having only just come back, leaves. Let's face it - he's got form for it.
Aragorn, meanwhile, confuses the genealogists by telling Eowyn that she is a daughter of Kings. Which, of course, she isn't. And how many Kings could she be a daughter of anyway? Is there some kind of genetic experiment going on that we haven't been informed about?
Frodo, meanwhile, is determined to cure Kate Moss' anorexia. "I have to believe she can become fat" he explains to Sam.
Kate watches over the Hobbits while they sleep, but is torn between the two sides of her personality - the nice Smeagol character and the bitch supermodel Gollum. Gollum reminds her that they only survive the fierce world of fashion because of Gollum's hard edge, but Kate decides that Frodo is her friend and banishes her evil side.
Despite this sudden loyalty to Frodo, it must be noticed that at the earliest opportunity, Kate runs off and leaves them. Lacking a warning from Gollum, Frodo and Sam are captured by an evil Wight masquerading as Faramir son of Denethor.
Aragorn has a dream about Arwen. At least we think it's a dream. Or possibly he's remembering something. Because then he starts dreaming about Elrond, and it all gets horribly confusing. Perhaps he's in love with both of them?
That nice man Hama is leading the people of Rohan to their hiding place. He spots something suspicious, and has his head bitten off by a giant Hyena. Being eaten by a giant Hyena is obviously an act of great shame in Rohan, since no one makes any reference to Hama ever again. The Hyenas continue the tradition of procrastinated attack, which in this case saves Gimli's life. Eru forbid they should ever encounter a foe that just kills you.
Aragorn gets thrown off a cliff. Perhaps we will find out what purpose this serves later on.
At this point Galadriel kindly explains what's going on, just in case anyone had to nip out to the loo.
Evil Faramir interrogates Frodo and Sam. He is quite tough on Frodo, but goes easy on Sam as a reward for delivering the funniest line in the film. Evil Faramir spots Kate Moss cavorting in the Forbidden Pool, and despite believing Frodo to be an evil spy who killed his brother, bows to Frodo's request not to shoot Kate. At this stage we believe that the evil Wight is in fact possessing the real Faramir's body, and that Faramir is fighting back. This leads to sudden and apparently motiveless moments of reasonable behaviour amongst the meanness.
Kate, despite being the one who buggered off and left Frodo, feels a little betrayed when Frodo saves her by arranging her capture. The evil Gollum (based on Naomi Campbell) is invited back to act as her agent again.
Faramir finds out about the ring, and speaks of a chance to show his quality. Instead, he just has a chance to show that he's a bit loopy.
Aragorn turns up at Helm's Deep, where we learn that he fell down a huge cliff purely to allow Legolas an amusing line (note: this is actually more Important than it sounds, since poor Legolas was close to death from terminal pomposity). This act of salvation completed, Aragorn helps Theoden order the defences of Helm's Deep. Some children pick up huge swords and don't fall over.
Elves turn up under the command of Camp Haldir. Surprisingly, there's nothing very funny to say about them. Fortunately, Gimli lightens the mood by being hilariously short.
The battle begins. There is little point mentioning the fact that frequently Orcs attack our heroes one at a time, or delay striking when they could have finished them off, or indeed generally move from being huge scary monsters to half-blind morons who couldn't fid their bottoms with both hands. We can pretty much take it as read.
Evil Faramir takes Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath, which must mean that the Wight has reasserted its power, since book Faramir never does this. Sam notices the problem with their location when he says "by rights we shouldn't even be here". Frodo almost falls victim to the power of the ring (again), but Sam saves him with an emotional speech. The Evil Wight is so horrified by the gushing sentiment that it abandons Faramir and takes cover. Faramir, who now knows what it is like to be enslaved by an evil force, tells Frodo that "at last we understand each other". Members of the audience are entitled to put their hands up at this point as say "yes, but we don't".
Things aren't going well at the battle of Helm's Deep. Fortunately, in the nick of time, Gandalf reappears, bringing with him Eomer and his invisible cavalry. The horseman charge down the hill, and finish off the remaining 8,000 Orcs. This obviously happens terribly quickly, because the director devotes no time to it at all. Perhaps all the fighting was done by the invisible horsemen.
Back in Fangorn, Merry and Pippin have been working very hard to convince Senile Treebeard and his Disney Ents to attack Isengard. The Ents initially refuse, but Pippin comes up with a special ruse, and tricks the shepherd of the trees into finding out that half his forest has been cut down, despite the fact there was no way that Pippin could possibly have known that it had been. The Disney Ents, who had been following Treebeard in order to listen to his fascinating story about fieldmice, share his anger, and burst forth. They "smash Isengard into splinters, and crack its walls to rubble", which doesn't take very long, because Film Isengard doesn't actually have any buildings. But they do invent ten pin bowling, adding to Golf to become the second sport based on killing Orcs. Saruman, despite having variously controlled the weather and possessed people's brains, decides his best policy is to run away.
Frodo and Sam have been released by the now Good Faramir, and look amazingly cheerful for people about to enter the Land of Shadow. Unfortunately, Kate Moss has decided that the Hobbits must die in order to prevent them from getting any more sentimental, and plans to lead them into danger by singing a James Bond theme song. It's better than "Die Another Day", though.
THE END.