Wait for the Special Revised Edition, perhaps?
Sounds like even still, The Two Towers is kind of messed-up. It continues to lack its ending sequence. I wondered why Peter Jackson chose to save the last bit of wrapup with Saruman for the third movie, unless it was just to have Chrisopher Lee’s name in the credits (as with the weird Arwen scenes in the second film).
But. Here’s the sequence:
The conclusion at Isengard was chopped out of the theatrical release because the theatrical release was a rough hack kept together with bailing wire anyway, and that scene made the movie too long for New Line to like it. (You might notice how disconcertingly aprupt the movie’s end happens to be.) So, Peter Jackson figured he’d just splice this sequence into the beginning of RotK.
Since up until just this past week or so he still assumed he was going to do this, the proper ending isn’t in the extended version of TTT. It has now occurred to Peter Jackson that it’s kind of odd to have this leftover business at the outset of the third film, so as a result he’s excised it from the theatrical version of RotK — as lengthy as this cut might be.
And now also as a result, the ending to The Two Towers won’t be seen until the extended version of Return of the King — two full years after the film’s original release.
Yikes.
He really needs to go back through and edit these films a third and final time, when he’s no longer under pressure. I know he intends to. It’s just. Maybe that’ll be the proverbial charm for the middle film. Include everything that needs to be in there. Remove or rework the pointless bits. And just redo the cross-cutting from scratch.
From this distance, it sounds and looks like the third film will be more akin to the quality of the first. As well it should, given the comparably ample time he’s had this time around. (One wonders whether New Line will be able to drag him out for the months of Oscar schmoozing nonsense this year. One wonders if it’s necessary.)
EDIT!
EDIT MORE OOG!
This one, meanwhile, fails on more than two levels.
EDIT AGAIN!
Although it fawns, this impresses me in its particular way. (I got used to the affectations by the end.)