"Peter Jackson and Company missed out on an opportunity to improve upon the source novel. Dogmatic faithfulness to the spirit of a book is useless if that devotion does not yield cinematically desirable results. What Tolkien did not do with his novel can’t be rectified, but the movies inspired by his “LOTR” ought to have raised the story to new heights. Instead, they tread cautiously for fear of offending die-hards."

I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever heard someone say that the Two Towers movie stays too close to the book. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie... but in parts it's a totally different story that happens to feature the same characters.

I just finished watching the EE. I did think it improved on the pacing of the theatrical version, but at the same time it didn't wow me the way the FOTR EE did. This is partly because a lot of the additions in FOTR were parts of the book that can been cut, whereas in TT most of the additions are just more stuff that has nothing to do with the book. I think that makes it less interesting seeing the differences.

At the same time, it's still an even better version of an already excellent movie. So I'm happy