Review by Jay Pinkerton View This Trailer When Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson falls asleep at night, I'm sure he dreams of guys like me. Not sexually, I hope -- in fact, I'd pay good money for any kind of reassurance that he doesn't. But as a source of steady income, my fellow 18 to 35 year-old white males and I are money in the bank for filmmakers like Jackson, the Wachowski Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. They've made their fortunes off the collective ids of lonely geeks like myself, precisely because they're also lonely geeks, and speak the language (most of which involves immense violence in slow motion) with a fluency that's kind of frightening. And I do have to admit -- as a Rings fan, I'm about as ideal as they come. I'm well enough acquainted with the source material to want to see it reinterpreted up on the big screen; yet not so militantly loyal to it that I actually give a tinker's damn about Tolkein-geek "hot button" issues, like the beefed up role of Liv Tyler, or the exclusion of mincing forest loner Tom Bombadil. I just want to see the films. I want to like them. And -- short of adding a klutzy jive-talking sidekick for Gandalf or an extended jazz-based tap dancing sequence involving Sam and Frodo -- I most likely will like them. All this adds up to dollar signs for Jackson. Were he to put forward the idea that I simply give him my checking account number to make things easier on both of us, I'd probably hand it over without much of a fuss. Given Jackson's Svengali-like powers over guys like me, then, there wasn't much doubt that I'd enjoy the trailer for the latest installment in the series, The Two Towers. It starts off slowly, building mood and doling out small amounts of plot. Strong, virile, whiskery men give each other "I'm going to beat you up" looks. Then, around the midway point in the trailer, it kicks into full-on "you must see this film" mode, pumping out a suitably heroic piece of orchestration as all hell breaks loose. Arrows fly, parapets explode (they had dynamite back then?), and Legolas the spritely elf surfs down a staircase on his shield, filling orcs full of arrows. In a word: cool. I wasn't completely without reservations after watching it, admittedly. I know I mentioned earlier that the films' digressions from the book haven't bothered me much so far. But I'd be lying if the Towers trailer didn't make me a little curious about the growing number of changes being made to the sequels. To be honest, I think I was so unbothered the first time around because, for the most part, I thought the changes were improvements. I've read the books, and I can attest to the fact that while it's a pretty gripping yarn, there are an awful lot of digressions in odd spots. It's one thing to read about brave Aragorn fighting his way through a host of orcs; it's another to read about brave Aragorn cooling his barking dogs and reciting twelve pages of dense poetry ten seconds later. This happens often in the books, really often. It's kind of interesting at first -- but because it doesn't actually move the story along, and tends to accomplish nothing except let Tolkein flex a little academic muscle, it gets old quick. Around about the twenty-seventh stanza to The Ballad of Mithril Bag-Bobbgrabben and The Flight From Droth Mathrandir, you start to wonder how imperative this whole "destroying the ring" business could actually be, when the party has the time to stop every ten minutes for some open mic free verse. Jackson wisely ditched most of this, and I applaud him for it. He also significantly altered the characters of Merry and Pippin, who in the books sashayed all over Middle-Earth singing songs composed almost entirely of the words "tra-la-la." Given that they had no characters in the books beyond being useless sacks of potatoes, it was nice to see Scottish accents and some comic relief usefulness infused into their characters. While they're still grating, they're more "David Spade in Just Shoot Me" irritating, rather than "David Spade locked in your bathroom while you try to use it" irritating. But if the new trailer is any indication of things to come, I'm not as confident as I once was in the filmmakers' choices. As I watched, it became clear that The Two Towers is pretty much The Aragorn Show. I don't know how to feel about that. I guess for a movie, his storyline's a little more Hollywood. He becomes a king, after all, and fights a heck of a lot of wars, and acts pretty brave and stuff, and even snags himself a Queen. It makes for good storytelling. But I think I saw the Hobbits for all of five seconds in the new trailer, and that's a little upsetting. I realize they're not as interesting as a swashbuckling rogue who plays by his own rules and gets into fights. But they are the central characters in the books. To have them taken away from the main stage and reduced to washing Aragorn's hair between battles seems to have missed Tolkein's vision slightly. Still, who am I to quibble? I wanted to see The Two Towers before watching the trailer, and having watched the trailer I want to see the movie even more so. It doesn't give anything away (except for Gandalf), but teases you just enough to get your little butt into a theater seat for the premiere. In other words, four Billy Crystals. RATING: