The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

It's easy enough to agree that changes must be made to a book to preserve its essence in a film; after all, these are two different media, with different capabilities and impossibilities. But that easy agreement about essence obscures the fact that readers often don't read books the same way. One person's crucial scene can be another's disposable digression, and vice versa. The same derring-do can raise the hackles of one reader, inspire scholastic inquiry for another reader, and simply enthrall a third. Given these vast gulfs in how a text is read, how can we know what essence we're trying to preserve in the transition from paper to celluloid?

Such thoughts flitted through my mind after viewing the second installment of Peter Jackson's cinematic interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic novel trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Jackson filmed the three parts of his adapted trilogy in one marathon shoot, so it should be no surprise that the stunning virtues of last year's "The Fellowship of the Ring" come up big again in this year's "The Two Towers." Jackson's fantastic, visceral visual imagination again dominates the film, taking cues from Tolkien and expanding on the fantasy master's already-dark vision with proliferating subspecies of snarling malformed orcs, terrifying Nazgul on flying beasts whose wings flap with a doomful roar, a cameo return of the Balrog from the Mines of Moria, and that livid flaming eye still casting a deep shadow over Middle Earth.

Of course, Jackson gets a big assist from his native New Zealand landscape, which as explored by Jackson's camera provides a nightmarish, slate-gray, dead calm bog for Frodo, Sam and Gollum to traverse and suitably golden fields on which the horsemen of Rohan contend with the aforementioned snarling malformed orcs. And he gets further help from computer-generated imagery: Not only are the castles and fortresses here as imposing as those in "Fellowship," but Gollum comes into the light as both a believable visual creation — blue-veined, pallid, drawn, with wide-stretched eyes and decayed wisps of hair — and an absorbing character, as Andy Serkis voices the cavedweller in a desperate hiss that makes you draw back, sympathize and laugh at once.

Having appeared in "Fellowship" only in sidelong glances, Gollum is the most noteworthy newcomer to the saga, although this review would not be complete without noting that Miranda Otto, who plays Eowyn, has one of those faces that make your heart sigh if you are attracted to women, which your reviewer is. The returning thespians, not surprisingly, live up to the high standards they set in the first film.

But more so than "Fellowship," whose adaptation involved mostly compression and omission, "The Two Towers" makes substantial changes to the original novel's plot and characters. Arwen's romance with Aragorn, completely nonexistent in the book, continues unabated from "Fellowship," and Jackson and company even insert an extra calamity to ensure that it does. The Ents (those awesome giant moving trees) and Faramir, both faced with dilemmas, initially make decisions here that are polar opposites of what they decide in the book; they do reverse course upon being presented with further evidence, but in the process they display lesser moral qualities than Tolkien gives them.

One speech Sam makes to Frodo near the end of the film is larded with inspirational pap of a type completely foreign to Tolkien. And, as in the first film, Tolkien's carefully sustained, oddly beautiful archaicisms are lowered to a more contemporary register, with Gimli becoming something of a standard movie clown instead of a noble warrior.

Upon first viewing, these changes seemed to me to disrupt the spirit of the book, which taxes the casual reader but repays patience, which shows many of its finer sentiments in action rather than in word, which places high value on the type of honor and judgment the Ents and Faramir don't have to learn, which (for better or worse) shuns any hint of good old-fashioned lust. For me, these changes reeked of laziness, or pandering, rather than a dedicated attempt to adapt Tolkien for the screen.

On second viewing, however, Jackson's movie held up, because I realized that those changes to the narrative stem from Jackson's view of what Tolkien is and what he should be. On the basis of the two movies in front of us, Jackson wants to emphasize the trilogy's environmentalist message (especially as evidenced by Middle Earth's biodiversity) and the related and persistent equating of beauty with good (ladies love Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom!) and ugly with evil. He's not interested in the lore as such, the languages, the powerful armaments, the songs, the history, the kind of things that have sent generations of nerds scurrying to cubicles for further study, but rather the elements with wider appeal: the epic scale of the settings and events, the unstinting ferocity of the battle between the forces of freedom and the slaves of Mordor.

On the wider appeal score, he obviously wants to have more strong women in the films (even though Miranda Otto will make your blood run cold when, in a line straight from the book, Eowyn says the thing she fears most is a cage). And Jackson wants to teach lessons with moral development, watching our characters grow and feeling their inspiration, even when Tolkien's novel presents most people's virtues (except Gollum's!) as static.

In other words, Jackson read the book differently than I did. I can't help but be a little disappointed that Jackson doesn't share my view of Tolkien's works, but given the myriad reactions any text can inspire, it shouldn't be surprising that there's no one reading to rule them all. Jackson has made two amazing films based on his reading of the trilogy, and I and about $2 billion worth of other moviegoers thank him. And I'm eagerly awaiting "The Return of the King," even if I have to see it twice to appreciate it.

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