The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

This is an inferior movie to the first, and it is obviously a filler between the two more interesting parts of the series. Like the first, the story tells of Frodo Bagins and his group of friends as they attempt to destroy the magical ring of Sauron in a volcano so that the world will not be destroyed. In the first film, the silliness of the idea was overcome by the great production value, intense action sequences, and ubiquitous presence of good to great actors. In The Two Towers the story can't help but feel unimportant. I wonder if the entire 3 hour long film could have been condensed into twenty for the beginning of movie three. The film is entertaining as we see more creatures, awesome battles, and impending doom, but for a three hour long film, it feels as if we never really connect to any of the characters, and that we're leading up to a single battle scene (which ends up lasting around 40 minutes long). As characters attempt to convince different creatures, whether that is tree guardians or reluctant kings, the scenes are brief, and all together nothing is convincing but rather feels inevitable. Long scenes don't even matter anymore after its decided that "all the tree guardians are going to war anyway for the reasons you pointed out 2 hours ago!". But this is also such a thrilling film, that it is quite worth seeing. A filler, but good.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: ★★★