Lord of the Rings - A Critical Reassessment

Toren Smith at The Safety Valve vents about the Two Towers. He feels the movie had its good points but he's not happy with certain aspects of the movie:

Other nits are "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" sequence with Aragorn, the inexplicably cringing women of Rohan--especially Eowyn--during the battle of Helm's Deep, the failure to establish the tension between the orcs of Mordor and the Uruk-Hai, and a few others. Most of these could have been resolved with a minute or two of screen time, and there was plenty of that wasted elsewhere.

The movie failed to establish the tension between the orcs of Mordor and the Uruk-Hai???? The Uruk Hai and the orcs weren't the same thing?? I thought that the Uruk-Hai was something like super-Orcs, like the difference between the regular Army and the Rangers. I think just explaining that would have stopped the movie in its tracks as Gandalf and Saruman spent five minutes in expositional dialogue:

Gandalf: "You know, Saruman, I couldn't help but notice- after you opened a big can of whup-ass on me with that sticky thing of yours - that your troops seem dispirited and listless. They don't seem to have the same interest in devouring living Hobbit captives that they're known for."

Saruman: "Oy. You have no ideas what difficulties there are in leading a hell-spawned slave army. The logistical problems are near insurmountable. Mostly, resulting from the fact that, as near as I can tell, there is no Orcish agricultural sector, and in a neat reversal of the usual strategems of war, I have burned and despoiled my own lands. It's also a wonder that my massed legions haven't succumbed to disease given the fact that they have personal hygiene habits that make the French look fastidious."

Gandalf: "From where I was trapped at the top of the 300 foot tall tower exposed to rain and wind, I could certainly smell your problem. It's what I imagine Paris would smell like if the perfume-cartel raised prices."

Saruman: "And don't get me started on the morale problems. My Orc infantry is in a positive snit about the Uruk-Hai?"

Gandalf: "Who?"

Saruman: "The Uruk-Hai. The snarling, filthy warriors with fangs."

Gandalf: "The Orcs?"

Saruman: "No. The more snarling, filthy warriors with fangs."

Gandalf: "Oh."

Saruman: "By the way, how did you survive that fall into the burning pits of the earth and defeat the Balrog?"

Gandalf: "Oh, that. Simple. Once I had extricated myself from the burning pits of the earth and defeated the Balrog...."

You can see how this would have interrupted the flow of the movie.