The Lord of the Rings is the most overrated movie franchise in existence. I am amazed by the number of people that obsess over these films. I have never liked fantasy or adventure films, and I have never understood why a reasonable person would go to extremes to see the first possible showing of a fantasy film. People who see midnight showings of fantasy films are not reasonable people, whether the movie is Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. But the LOTR movies are so bad that nothing justifies seeing these films more than once.

The screenplay for The Two Towers was among the worst I have ever encountered. The dialogue in The Two Towers was contrived and the battle sequences were derivative. This film was a combination of elements of other films, but there is nothing fresh or new about The Two Towers. If the film was edited to remove travel scenes and battle scenes, it would be less than 15 minutes long.

This film eats up three hours and 10 dollars of your resources. Fans of the franchise expect viewers to be impressed at how lifelike the computer-generated character Gollum is. They must also expect us to ignore how terribly useless the scenes containing this character are. Fans of the franchise expect viewers to ignore the fact that trees walk, speak fluent English, and have eyes. Granted, in a film based on the premise that stupid creatures like this exist, seeing these walking trees was not a surprise. As a realist, however, I could not embrace the trees or any of the other characters in the film.

I stand in opposition to this franchise's existence for two reasons. The first is that the films are wildly overrated and over-hyped. The characters in this franchise do not provoke empathy. I did not care whether the hobbits ever made it to Mordor. They gave me no reason to. If this is truly "the ultimate battle between good and evil," as its fans tout it to be, then it should be quite obvious to any moviegoer that good will win. It would shatter the spirits of the suckers who buy into this chicanery if Frodo did not get to destroy his ring; millions of geeks would need therapy if Frodo were to be killed by the forces of evil. I do not know how the third movie plays out, but I have a feeling that Frodo escapes the franchise with his life. If only I were so lucky as to have escaped with my wits.

The second reason that I stand in opposition to The Lord of the Rings is because it is a waste of time. We live in an age of nuclear warfare, child labor, and corporate conglomeration. We also live in an age of solipsism, communism, and rampant poverty. Anyone with the means to read this article, however, is doing well in life. What need, then, do you have for an escapist fantasy land? There are two reasons to watch The Lord of the Rings: you are curious about what the hype is about, or you have read the book and want to see a visual adaptation. There is only one reason to see these films more than once: you want to escape your life. As a middle-class American, I contend that life isn't all that bad, and I don't need to spend $10 to escape to Middle Earth for three hours. Your need for escape fosters the corporate greed at New Line Cinemas that is going to be responsible for a third LOTR film, probably with an equally poor screenplay and equally distracting CGI effects. Your life is just fine. You don't need The Lord of the Rings.

If you are a lover of the cinema, great. You don't need to waste your time with one of the worst screenplays of 2002. If you want to see a film with a clever screenplay and equally clever cinematography, see Adaptation. If you're not a lover of the cinema, then you either belong at dinner with your family (if you like your life) or at a therapist (if you don't). If you unfortunately fall in the latter category, don't feed your angst with The Lord of the Rings. Get real help in time for the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.