One thing that became clear when I did the AFI Challenge in 2018 was there weren’t many sequels. In point of fact, there was exactly one, and I’ll be getting to that one again at some point this year. Perhaps because it is driven as much by filmgoers as it is by critical consensus, there are a few sequels on the Stacker list. I’ve even covered a pair of them already. But there’s only one film trilogy that the Stacker list covers all three parts in, and that’s The Lord of the Rings. Personally, as a fan, I would actually argue I see it as one long film, but that’s not how it’s listed here, so I’ll do them individually as they come up. They also aren’t listed in order no matter what end of the list I start at. As such, I’m writing my first assessment for the middle chapter, The Two Towers.
I actually think it might be the best of the bunch.
Let’s be clear here first: when I say The Two Towers is the best of the bunch, that’s not in any way a slight on the other two. The Fellowship of the Ring is about as fine an introduction to Tolkien’s world as anyone could ask for. About the only flaw to The Return of the King is it has what feels like a couple ending points too many. Taken as a whole, these three films are an epic achievement in cinema, and if Peter Jackson never makes another film equal to these three, well he really has nothing to be ashamed of there. He made these three films back-to-back, filming over a period of something like 16 months at a time when he really hadn’t made anything that could have justified such a huge budget to any studio. And yet, not only did he pull it off, but he couldn’t even equal his own achievement years later when he made the noticeably less impressive The Hobbit trilogy. But I’d rather not discuss The Hobbit. This time around is about The Two Towers and why it might be the best of the trilogy.
For me, I think it comes down to pacing and how Jackson told his story. I actually read the books in anticipation of seeing the films, and Tolkien had a pattern for the second two books in his trilogy. The first half of any given novel would cover what most of the surviving members of the Fellowship of the Ring were up to while the second half would cover Sam and Frodo’s perilous journey into Mordor. As such, there was a certain amount of chronological backsliding going on in the source material as Tolkien would need to go back in time to cover the events of Sam and Frodo’s journey while their other friends were fighting epic battles to determine the fate of Middle-Earth. Jackson opted not to do that, instead splicing the events together to have both of them occurring at the same time. So, as Sam (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) continue on, the others are doing what they can to get the armies of Middle-Earth to stand up to Sauron’s forces and keep the evil that is Sauron, working through his One Ring, at bay.
I’ll probably say more about the casting of the Fellowship when I get to The Fellowship of the Ring, but they are all to a man (not many women in these films) just about perfect. But what I do want to focus on here is why I think The Two Towers is the best in a trilogy where every film is a visual and storytelling work of art. That determination comes down to a couple factors. First, there’s Gollum (Andy Serkis). Next, there’s the Battle of Helm’s Deep. I’d rank the Ents as among the most impressive characters considering how little they actually do for most of the film. And finally, there are a couple of smaller moments that occur in a film full of big ones to remind the audience of the stakes involved.
First up, Gollum. For a twenty year old special effect, he’s still rather impressive looking. A good deal of that can be chalked up to Andy Serkis’s performance. Yes, that’s not his actual face, but he was the one who found a way to act through the special effects. I would equate that to how older actors would need to act through all kinds of make-up to create a memorable character. Think Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster, John Hurt as the Elephant Man, or even Peter Weller as Robocop. The scene where Gollum and Sméagol argue between themselves, and it’s clear who is talking at any given moment, is still powerful stuff. There’s a reason Serkis has become the go-to guy for motion capture performances, and as Andor proved, he’s no slouch when his face is actually on screen too.
I actually think it helps that, as much as CGI and computer effects were obviously a big deal for this film series, much like the first Jurassic Park, these films didn’t rely on CGI nearly as much as people might think. The orcs, for example, all have very distinct and solid looks in part because they are. Compare them to the more uniform hordes of baddies in The Hobbit trilogy, and the differences are pretty darn clear.
Speaking of CGI, what about Helm’s Deep? Yeah, there’s probably a lot of stuff on screen there that only ever existed on a computer screen. But that battle itself is incredibly impressive, perhaps the most impressive of the entire trilogy. I say so because the film builds up to that battle with a lot of moments meant to show how well and truly screwed the poor people inside are. Yes, there’s some minor moments of hope. Gandalf (the great Sir Ian McKellen), newly rechristened “the White,” has ridden off to bring in reinforcements, promising to do so by sunrise if the fortress can hold out that long. An army of Elven archers and fighters arrive to shore up the defenders. Helm’s Deep, according to King Théoden (Bernard Hill), has never been breached by an enemy. And as much as the fight looks hopeless, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) will fight just as hard and die with these people if he has to. Aragorn, even if he doesn’t want a crown, is the perfect image of the stalwart fantasy king. If anyone can pull of a miracle, it’s him.
That said, the fight is clearly stacked against the defenders. They’re heavily outnumbered, and much of the Army of Men is made up of boys and old timers, basically anyone strong enough and male enough to hold a weapon, to the point the battle starts because one old man couldn’t hold his bowstring any longer. The orcs also have the best technology since they came with gunpowder. So, having a well-armed, ferocious, massive army all show up and rhythmically chant and slam their spears in unison on the ground, that’s about as formidable an army as could be conjured up. But then Jackson does something else that I am not sure he repeats anywhere else in the entire trilogy: he makes the battle all about tactics.
Consider how each moment in the Battle at Helm’s Deep shows both sides adjusting their tactics to overcome whatever the other side is doing. The orcs charge, and the defenders fire volley after volley of arrows to show them down. The orcs fire back and kill some defenders. The ladders go up. The defenders repel the ladders. Jackson also takes every change in tactics from a big picture moment to a small one. We see the ladders go up, we see the orcs reach the top, and then we see characters we know like Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) competing to see who can get the most kills. We see Aragorn adjust on the fly. At one point, the fate of the battle may just come down to one lone orc with a torch. For every attack one side makes, the other side finds a way to at least try to counter it until the sun risers and Gandalf returns, resplendent in white with his hair, robes, and even his horse, and the Riders of Rohan by his side. The battle is won, and what few orcs that get away may have their own problems in the forest.
And that would be because of the Ents. These films knew the right way to balance the grim with the lighthearted, and there’s something to really like about these seemingly dim-witted sentient trees. That it takes them most of their screentime to realize that Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippen (Billy Boyd) are in fact not orcs is just a nice moment of comedy to lighten the mood, and they look so gentle and even a little wise. But dang, don’t get these guys mad. They don’t like orcs, and I would wager they don’t care much for lumberjacks either.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the one Ent that is set on fire when the trees attack Saruman’s (Christopher Lee) tower at Isengard is also shown dousing himself when the waters flow in. The Ents are mortal creatures, but I’m not sure anyone had the heart to kill one of them when all is said and done.
And that small thing, an Ent putting his own flaming body out, is the other thing that made these films, especially this one, as good as they are. Strewn throughout the larger narrative are these smaller moments that really work, and I don’t recall off-hand any in the other films that had this level of power for me. I’m thinking of the scene where Elrond (Hugo Weaving) prophesizes for his daughter Arwen (Liv Tyler) exactly what would happen to her if she stayed behind to marry Aragorn, a mortal man to her immortal elf. This is a concerned father speaking the truth, more or less. Arwen would outlive her husband by centuries, and with no passage to the next world available to her, she will have a very lonely existence after he died when he eventually would. Yes, the extended cut (that I opted not to watch for this rewatch) has Aragorn admit he’s already 80 years old despite appearances, but he’s not immortal. There’s a melancholy feel to Elrond’s story, shown in the form of Arwen alone, dressed in black as the leaves change behind her.
But then there’s another moment of a desperate, nameless mother putting her two children on a horse and sending them off ahead of an advancing orc army in a small farm town. The mother does turn up again alive later (again, there’s a part of me that suspects Jackson didn’t have the heart to orphan some kids like that), but it’s a powerful moment that shows the stakes of the story: defenseless people are doing to die because of the likes of Sauron, Saruman, and their respective minions all looking for power at the expense of the weak. And still, people do what they can to push back at the darkness, even if it means sending someone’s own children away to keep them safe when evil is literally on the nearest horizon.
And that is why these films work. It’s not just about the big story. The smaller ones that make up the larger narrative count too. That can be kids on a horse, running for their lives, one poor sap arguing with himself because a chance discovery centuries earlier ruined his life, or someone making the goddam trees mad. Fantasy stories often deal with the power of good to vanquish evil, and there’s a reason Tolkien’s work still resonates for fans of the genre, even casual ones like my parents, who could never tell a hobbit from a dwarf, but still made time to see each of these films as they came out in theaters for the three years in a row that they did so. Yeah, The Return of the King may have been the one to actually get that Best Picture Oscar, but I suspect, as I am sure most fans do, that the award was really for the trilogy as a whole.
But I’ll get to the other two later on.
NEXT: Why are donkeys treated so poorly in film? I don’t know, but I will be getting a good example of that with the donkey protagonist of the 1966 French tragedy Au hasard Balthazar.
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