While not a Christmas or holiday story by any stretch of the imagination, the release of all three The Lord of the Rings movies in December (from 2001-2003) created a brief, but wonderful late winter tradition. My family, like seemingly all others, eagerly anticipated and went to the theater to see each entry, with the Two Towers being arguably the most satisfying of three near-perfect films.
It’s hard to explain to someone who wasn’t there, or was perhaps too young, why these movies absolutely dominated the landscape when they arrived. It was a rare example of a film series that started strong and ended without any noticeable dip in quality or excitement. The Two Towers emphasizes this with an astonishing second act, and was almost universally beloved upon release on December 18th 2002. Reception to the film hasn’t aged much, with many making a run of the trilogy a holiday tradition. That’s something my own family certainly continued to do for many years.
Picking up after the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers moves swiftly from the relatively bleak ending of the first film. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) now find themselves aligned with the dangerous, distrustful Gollum (Andy Serkis). They must continue their brutal trek to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring once and for all.
As the movie shows this harrowing journey, we also see the fragmented Fellowship of the Ring struggling to come together to face not only Sauron’s powerful wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee), but the brainwashed King Théoden (Bernard Hill) of Rohan. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) must rally Rohan to battle, but they’ll need help from the resurrected Gandalf the White (Ian McKellen) if there’s any hope of victory.
There’s obviously a lot more to this masterful example of epic cinematic storytelling, with plot threads focusing on Merry and Pippen (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd respectively), Éowyn (Miranda Otto), and several others. It would take all of the space we have here to go through this staggering plot properly. If you’ve seen The Two Towers, you’ve almost certainly seen it more than once. So, you’ll know how easy it is to get caught up in simply running down the particulars of these arcs and larger narrative.
These movies have lent themselves well to repeat viewings, simply because they continue to provide a plethora of memorable performances, stunning visual effects (which still look quite good today for the most part), and some incredible large-scale battle sequences. Ask a hundred people to list their favorite scenes and lines from The Tower Towers, and you’ll get at least a couple dozen different answers.
You’ll also find that people tend to like just about everything the movie has to offer. So much so that the Extended Edition version of the film (as well as the other two) are the ones people come back to when they rewatch these. It seems that for many, even twenty years later, you just can’t spend enough time in Middle-earth.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ends on a considerably more upbeat note than the previous installment. The tide has turned against Sauron by the movie’s end, but there’s still so much to be done if evil is to be conquered. We leave with a similar sense of purpose to our heroes. Although in our case it’s just to put on The Return of the King and reach the extraordinary conclusion of a trilogy that unfortunately later became a franchise no one asked for.
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