Sadly, like the first film, the McGuffin of a plot is still flimsy, and the whole experience is overcooked and unapologetically huge. More battles, more CGI, more talking, more everything. But unless you've seen the first film, it's meaningless.

Just like the first film, there’s huge sequences of irrelevant exposition, dialogue, and improbable co-incidences. Director Peter Jackson and writer J.R.R.Tolkein (who penned the original trilogy of books) squander time and common sense as if were limitless : allowing co-incidence to define momentous events in a work of this import is just, well, lazy.

But the film does have its moments. The thrilling, unprecedented battle at the films climax is the stuff of 50’s epics. And the beaten, heartbroken portrayal of King Theoden by Bernard Hill, is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions - a man who is facing the extinction of his people despite his every effort, staring defeat in the face, and knowing that there is nothing that he could do to prevent it that hasn't already been tried - and failed, is worthy of an Oscar.

But moments do not a movie make.

The implication that runs through this film - through every frame - is that a war isn’t about sides. The enemy, what mankind should be fighting, is war itself. It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see a man called Bush avenging the fall of his very own Two Towers whilst he prepares his armies for a war. And whilst this was originally written deep during the Second World War, it's never seemed more relevant than now, when the world is perpetually in limbo on the cusp of war.

And this brings us onto the finale of the film. The Battle Of Helms Deep, fought on many fronts and with many characters is handled as well as it could be, but suffers - like the film as a whole - from being three separate hour-long films running concurrently. It’s a two hour classic trapped inside the a bloated three hour epic.

As far as epics go, only Star Wars: Send In The Clones” comes near to The Two Towers in gravitas or scale. The problem is that The Two Towers is a film that aspires to far more than it can deliver, and whilst it certainly provides everything on an excessive, enormous scale, it tells you nothing. It mistakes length for gravitas. But if the next film is any good, then all this work might just be worth it.

If you've seen the first film, go and see this. You'll need to. And wait impatiently for the pay-off of the upcoming sequel “The Return Of The King”. I only hope it can give us the answers. Because this could be the middle-slice of the best series of films made since the "Star Wars" trilogy.