The Two Towers unarguably makes a powerful impression, and with this second movie the simple accretion of mass, together with director Peter Jackson's maintenance of its unflagging energy and his fanatical attention to detail, mean that the epic is taking some sort of shape. Do grown-ups need to worry their heads about Frodo and Bilbo, I asked - at which point the Tolkies mounted a very effective counter-attack, assaulting the boring Prousties for banging on about the mythic backstories of Baron De Charlus and Robert Saint-Loup. I have had late-night arguments with pro-Tolkien friends, triggered off by rashly calling their need to establish an emotional relationship to this intricate but sterile world a symptom of regressive disorder. Well, L Ron Hubbard's writings became the basis of a bona fide religion, so perhaps JRR Tolkien's will too, and this sort of raillery will indeed become incorrect. Some seriously claimed that "Tolkie" was an offensive slur. Like a couple of other writers on this paper, I was deluged with hate mail. When The Fellowship of the Ring came out last year I gave grave and unrecallable offence to the Tolkie fanbase with disobliging remarks about how the whole middlebrow mythology was dull and overrated, and how this admittedly beautifully designed children's movie was treated with baffling reverence by adults showing a misplaced, sentimental loyalty to their earlier, 12-year-old selves. Warning! Film contains intense combat and fantasy horror scenes, long-haired men smoking unfeasibly long pipes, women with pointy ears, and lots and lots of interminable nerdish nonsense. It's time to drop the needle on the second disc in the biggest double-gatefold concept album in history: the next instalment in the Lord of the Rings saga, entitled The Two Towers.
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