S02E08 — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Finally, less walking around! We talk about one of the installments in the epic Lord of the Rings series with the most changes by filmmakers. But do we love it, or hate it? Guess you’ll have to journey with us hobbits to Isengard to find out!

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Two Towers book divides its storylines, keeping Frodo and Sam separate from the rest of the Fellowship for the entire novel, while the movie weaves them together for a more balanced flow. The film also adds dramatic tension, expands battles, and fleshes out character arcs that Tolkien left more subtle.

Tim: The movie was better

Donna: The movie was better

Rebekah: The movie was better

Josiah: The movie was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] All: They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard! What did you say? They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard? What did you say? They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard! To Isengard! To Isengard! They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard! To infat hobbits!

[00:00:33] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a family of four. We review book to film adaptations, and we are currently in the middle of most of the families, uh, one of their favorite series that was adapted from book to film. Uh, so spoiler alert and warning for this episode, we are going to be discussing the Lord of the Rings, the two towers.

[00:00:55] Rebekah: So we’re definitely going to spoil that, uh, more than likely we are going to spoil things from, uh, the third. book and film return of the king. Uh, we may discuss, uh, even some things that come from the Hobbit. So if you’re still catching up, want to read them before you listen, you might want to do that before this episode, before we dive right in, we love to give you a fun fact about ourselves as we introduce each other or actually, Oh my gosh.

[00:01:19] Rebekah: Okay. Let’s introduce each other. Somebody introduced me first and I’ll go first and tell you our fun fact. 

[00:01:24] Tim: Okay. Ratchet, A O 1, except brunette, otherwise known as Rebecca. The daughter, the sister. 

[00:01:33] Rebekah: I wonder if anyone will ever understand what we’re talking about because this isn’t a video podcast yet.

[00:01:38] Rebekah: That’s true. And so it’s the names displayed on our screens, but you know what, I’m just going to roll with it. I’m just going to roll with it. So our fun fact today is considering several characters, grapple with the task before them. What is something you’ve done that before you did it, couldn’t even imagine trying it.

[00:01:58] Rebekah: So my fun fact today of something that I couldn’t have imagined doing until I did, uh, was I have a staunch rule for myself, that I do not use the restroom outdoors. So I just. It’s just a thing I don’t do. I don’t like when we go camping, we have to go camping near a bathroom is what I’m saying. And so myself and Josiah, who’s on the podcast with us and my husband, Josh, who’s the producer and my dog, actually, Molly, we were in the car on the way home from my parents house going back to Nashville.

[00:02:30] Rebekah: We got stuck in a freak ice storm in Asheville, like freak ice storm, every road iced over. And we took, I think we went a mile and a half in like six hours. to get off the nearest exit. Um, and we spent the night in a grocery store, um, parking lot. And before we got to the parking lot, I had to use the potty just to number one, thank goodness.

[00:02:54] Rebekah: But we were literally just like sitting on the road, watching cars collide. Like we, anytime we moved, we were moving a few inches at a time. And so my brave brother, uh, since my husband was driving, uh, my brave brother escorted me to the other side of the road. where it was dark and no one could see us.

[00:03:12] Rebekah: And I went number ones. So next we are going to hear from that brave brother, brother, son, Josiah. What’s the other thing? His pod, your podcast name is where is Arwen Osiyah, son of Isildudu. 

[00:03:30] TJ: I’m glad Rebecca said that. 

[00:03:32] Rebekah: You’re welcome. 

[00:03:33] TJ: I mean, pause. I can’t think of something so hard. Like, I couldn’t imagine even trying it.

[00:03:41] TJ: Even trying it? I mean, it was something Do you want me to give you yours? Well, it has to be something I was forced to do. 

[00:03:48] Donna: Okay. Hmm. 

[00:03:49] TJ: And I don’t really get forced to do a lot of things. You 

[00:03:52] Donna: weren’t, it’s not, they weren’t forced to do it, the people in the story. 

[00:03:55] Tim: They made the choice. 

[00:03:57] TJ: What is my story, dad?

[00:03:59] Donna: Yeah, 

[00:03:59] Tim: you tell him. You have a similar story to Rebecca’s, actually. Oh no. When you were, when you were a young child, you were visiting my family who lived in a much more wooded, backdoorsy kind of area. And, um, my mother told me, uh, while you were there that, For some reason you wouldn’t go, you wouldn’t go tinkle out in the yard like your cousin would do.

[00:04:26] Tim: And you had to come into the bathroom and you just about wet yourself because you had to go and you had to go and you had to go, but you had to go inside. I’m a 

[00:04:34] TJ: proper gentleman. Okay, what about this? I could never have imagined trying to pay as much in rent as I do a month. 

[00:04:44] Rebekah: Ugh, same. Yeah, that, yeah.

[00:04:46] Rebekah: That’s not a very happy one. Does one of you have a happy one? Who wants to go next so Josiah can introduce you? 

[00:04:51] TJ: Is there anyone that’s not a potty related? What? What about Tim Amir or Thank the Elderly? This is the father dad of the fellowship. The father dad. Father husband. Husband 

[00:05:06] Tim: father of the fellowship.

[00:05:07] Tim: Daddy hubby. Yes. Um, I am so glad to be here, a wonderful time to spend with my family and to spend with all of you. And talk 

[00:05:16] Rebekah: about 

[00:05:17] Tim: being and things. Um, mine is a little different. I should have. Um, mine is a little different. I was asked to sing, um, the old rugged cross when I was, uh, 14 or 15 was asked to sing for our Easter service at church.

[00:05:35] Tim: And it was the first time I’d tried to do that. And I tell the story, we had an upright piano in that church and I leaned on the piano to kick it. Keep myself from falling. Cause I was so scared. My legs felt like spaghetti and I sang it. And of course, if anybody’s ever saying the old rugged cross, you know, that it’s too high and too low, no matter what key you put it in, um, yeah, it goes too high and too low, but, um, I did it and I got through and the, the amazing thing about that story is I 11 years of my ministry as a minister of music and I did that.

[00:06:14] Tim: All 

[00:06:16] Donna: twist. 

[00:06:16] Tim: So imagine 

[00:06:18] TJ: trying it. 

[00:06:18] Tim: Yep. 

[00:06:19] Donna: Wow. Wow. It’s such a cool story. And all I could think of was if he were in a bar, you’d have climbed on top of the piano and danced. What? Wow. That’s a little off. 

[00:06:29] Rebekah: None of that would have happened ever. He would not have been in a bar, nor would he have gotten up on the piano or dance.

[00:06:36] TJ: Yeah. But all of that didn’t happen or wouldn’t have been in a bar. Then he’d be a completely different person. And he might’ve done it on a piano. 

[00:06:43] Donna: Don’t cast shade on 

[00:06:43] Rebekah: me, you peed outside. I am also trying to think about whether or not I ever have been in a position where I couldn’t imagine singing in front of people.

[00:06:53] Rebekah: Yeah, me too. That’s a foreign concept. Both of you 

[00:06:56] Tim: did that early, early on because of what we did. You 

[00:07:01] Rebekah: trembled at the piano so that we could run on stage. We could soar. 

[00:07:04] Tim: And you did. All right, introduce 

[00:07:07] Rebekah: our last person, Putter. 

[00:07:08] Tim: Her name that we get to see, the screen name, is nomenclature, a lost aunt, a lost aunt wife.

[00:07:19] Tim: You’ve been found! The and mother of our wonderful fellowship. What’s your story, my dear? 

[00:07:28] Donna: I’m the one that came up with the fun fact and I had time to think about it. And I had this wonderful noble thing and I was like, Oh my gosh, I wonder what they’ll say. What have they conquered? Well, mine was that I never imagined I can have children and raise them.

[00:07:52] Donna: Oh, I thought I’d be a horrible mom. No, you are the best mom and not a horrible mom. You ended 

[00:07:58] TJ: up being like a really A plus mom. That’s funny. You’re like the example 

[00:08:03] Rebekah: mom that other people try to. I’ll reflect what I went for 

[00:08:07] Donna: example, it worked. 

[00:08:09] TJ: You should be an Instagram mom doll. Yes. 

[00:08:12] Donna: I just tell people it was so easy.

[00:08:14] Donna: I just spanked Rebecca a lot and she fell in line. And then when TJ came, she was like, fall in line. She was like, fall in line. They don’t mess around. 

[00:08:25] TJ: You only have to do it with one kid. So it’s not even like abuse. 

[00:08:31] Donna: Rebecca’s sibling advice was, don’t even think about asking to dress up for Halloween. We don’t do that.

[00:08:37] Donna: And don’t get so excited about driving the car. They use you as a pack mule. 

[00:08:42] Rebekah: Yes. Those all make sense. Well, brother Josiah, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what happens in the Lord of the Rings, the two towers? 

[00:08:51] TJ: Yes. The two towers follows a fractured. As they pursue individual paths to resist the growing power of Sauron and his servant Sauron.

[00:09:02] TJ: Frodo and Sam are followed by Gollum, from whom Bilbo took the One Ring many years before. Gollum! And ultimately, they band with a duplicitous creature. To journey toward Mordor, grappling with the Ring’s corrupting influence, the burden of their mission. Of course, that’s the second half of the book. The first half of the book, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli aid the kingdom of Rohan, which is under the siege of Saruman’s forces, cultivated None of that is 

[00:09:31] Donna: how you pronounce those words.

[00:09:32] Donna: Rohan. 

[00:09:34] TJ: Culminating in the heroic defense of Helm’s Dape. Mary and, Nope. 

[00:09:39] Rebekah: Still no. Again, that’s not it. Deep. Thank you. 

[00:09:43] TJ: Mary and Peppa escaped their captivity with the ORs and rally the Mary and ppa. They rally the ends to rise against Soman at Eisen Guard and the tower taking the Hobbits to Eisen Garden and the tower at the center of EIS and Guard is or funk.

[00:10:00] TJ: The, uh, the city of Isengard is destroyed by the Ents, breaking Saruman’s power. And, uh, we, we’ll cover, well, we’re about to cover this, but the second book covers a lot of third movie material. They go multiple chapters into movie three. 

[00:10:20] Donna: I think he broke it. In places that make sense movie wise, but yeah, it’s, it’s definitely, they’re definitely blurred.

[00:10:29] Rebekah: All right. Well, as we get into changes, then we divide our changes into characterization, setting and plot timeline. This episode, that is the order that we’ll be covering those in. So we’ve only got a couple of things in characters and setting that were changed and then we’ll get into the very significant plot and timeline adjustments.

[00:10:49] Donna: So the first characterization change I want to cover with you actually is kind of related to what Josiah was just saying. If you’ve read book and seen movie, Boromir actually dies. Well, yeah. Atgast? Yeah, our podcast. Now I don’t know if you’re doing it to fool with me. Uh, Bora Mere actually dies in the first scene of the two towers in the book.

[00:11:15] Donna: In the book? 

[00:11:16] Tim: Yeah. I didn’t see that in the movie. 

[00:11:19] Donna: Mm-hmm. You didn’t see it because it’s not in the movie. Oh, . Uh, he’s defending when he is defending Mary and Mary and Pippin against the Orcs. Um, and he, he perishes, uh, the scene was moved to the end of the first. film. In addition to the plot change, which we talked about in the last episode, Boromir is described as having long dark hair in the scene where the remaining fellowship members send his body in a boat over the waterfall.

[00:11:50] Rebekah: Which is so crazy. I’ve like, that’s how I. When I was first watching these kind of casually that was how I differentiated Aragorn from Boromir was that Boromir was the dirty blonde and Aragorn was the brunette. I think that was really random. That was 

[00:12:05] Tim: probably very intentional though because it’s a visual medium you can’t have both of those types of people in dark long hair in all of those costume things because they kind of look like the same person.

[00:12:19] Donna: Yeah. And just a thing here when we’re talking about Boromir’s hair. I read this trivia that I didn’t use about the actor that plays Faramir that they chose him because of his resemblance to Boromir. 

[00:12:34] Rebekah: Oh yeah. I totally believe they look like brothers. 

[00:12:36] Donna: What? Yeah. I thought they looked very similar. That’s so weird.

[00:12:40] Donna: I did not catch that. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting, you know, a lot of, you know, changes like that have to be made all the time, but. 

[00:12:47] TJ: Well, the film also adds a pseudo romantic interest between Eowyn and Aragorn that is not present in the book. So there are movie flashbacks and dreamlike sequences with Arwen and Aragorn.

[00:13:00] TJ: In the movie, showing her struggle to decide whether to stay in Middle Earth or leave Valinor. These scenes are not in the book. Arwen is not in the book at all. So, Aragorn’s love triangle is not a part of his character, his love with Arwen is Only in the appendices. It’s, it’s not really in the books at all.

[00:13:23] TJ: I think she’s going to show up at the very end. But, you know, people who don’t read the appendices probably aren’t going to know who she is if they’re just reading the books. I was researching this. Tolkien said that Arwen and Aragorn were vital to the story but their narrative could not be fit into his narrative.

[00:13:41] TJ: Hobbito centric structure, as in centered around the hobbits. So their love story is almost 100 percent in the appendices only. 

[00:13:52] Rebekah: I have a bone to pick with, I don’t know, Tolkien, filmmakers, etc. Why does Arwen and Eowyn, why do those names? Sound so similar. If you’re speaking quickly, it’s almost impossible to tell.

[00:14:06] Rebekah: You’re talking about different people. It drives me nuts in the movie. They’re obviously different people, but oh my gosh, the names of people in the names of towns. Like I understand why the maps are in the back of the book. I have no idea where we are. I’m like, so lost.

[00:14:25] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. It’s so like, there’s Oh, I understand the why. I totally understand the why. 

[00:14:32] Tim: Theoden and his son was Théoden. Théoden. It might have been Théomyr. Uh, no, I think it’s. It’s given 

[00:14:41] Rebekah: me a hard time. Run for my money. 

[00:14:43] Tim: Théoden, 

[00:14:43] TJ: Théodred. 

[00:14:45] Tim: So, one additional, um. film edition, is that Grimma had a disturbing romantic interest in Eowyn, who is the niece of King Theoden.

[00:14:58] Tim: Uh, it is mentioned multiple times in the movie, but it’s only subtly indicated in the book, a very slight Interest that if he stays back, he’s been interested in one of the women kind of thing. So, that was an addition. 

[00:15:12] Rebekah: Oh my gosh, a super creepy one. 

[00:15:14] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:15:15] Rebekah: It’s like so much more real when you see someone like, creepily trying to like, push themselves on someone in a movie.

[00:15:22] Rebekah: It’s 

[00:15:22] Donna: I was okay with him putting it there to kind of increase the skeevy nature of, of Grimma. But then it also, you almost feel bad for him. Cause he like wants somebody to love him. So the conflict there I think is interesting. Wow. Um. I didn’t get that at all. I just think he’s awful. Yeah. I mean, he is awful.

[00:15:43] Donna: The character’s awful. But I also 

[00:15:45] Rebekah: don’t think that Snape has enough redeeming qualities about him as a character. So maybe I’m just a little black and white about it. 

[00:15:52] Donna: And on our discussion about names. Uh, J. R. R. Tolkien’s name is John Ronald Ruhle Tolkien. So I mean, I think that’s interesting that his two middle names are Ronald Ruhle.

[00:16:06] Donna: So I’m not shocked now. Maybe he was trying to pass on that torture to somebody else. Yeah, I’m not shocked now. Hey, correct me if 

[00:16:12] Tim: you’re scared to do it that way. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Well, it may be, it may be more of a British tradition. I mean, the, the names are so much closer. Or you just change a few letters and, Oh, it’s a completely different name.

[00:16:24] Tim: We’re like James and John, not John and Joan. Yeah. 

[00:16:30] Rebekah: Well, small plug, but I saw a very talented author, T. Josiah Haynes put a Tik TOK up recently where he talked about something he would do differently in his books. And it was using insanely complex names, especially names that were too similar to one another because of naming conventions.

[00:16:48] Rebekah: That to him were good. How did you say that? You, you were basically like, just make it simple. I stand, 

[00:16:52] TJ: I stand by it, that it was, it’s creative and logistically sensical and it follows the world building. But like, even though I’m proud of it, it makes perfect sense. It scares readers off and like, at the end of the day, are you trying to make something that just makes sense or are you trying to make something that people want to read?

[00:17:12] TJ: Right. 

[00:17:12] Rebekah: Um, as the first of a couple of our setting changes, Fangorn Forest, where Merry and Pippin meet the trees, the Ents, is described in the book as being a little mysterious. But the filmmakers went out of their way to show it as being very eerie, very foreboding. I don’t remember which one it was, if it was like Aragorn or Legolas, but I think one of them comments when they find out that that’s where the hobbits have gone, Oh no, why would they go in there?

[00:17:37] Rebekah: Like they went out of their way to really make it a little scarier. Once you get into the forest and the Ents, you know, are together and meeting and you realize they’re not going to hurt the, the two hobbits, it’s a little less eerie, but I thought that was an interesting choice. Yeah. 

[00:17:53] Tim: After the battle, um, at Helm’s Deep and they’ve gone They’ve gone to Orthanc to Saruman’s place, uh, Gimli actually says something in the book about not ever wanting to go in that forest because it, it, it’s frightening.

[00:18:09] Tim: So I think they probably did ramp it up for the movie, but, um, it’s part of the book, but it’s not nearly as. 

[00:18:18] Donna: One of the most chilling scenes for me in this movie is after the Uruk hai leave Helm’s Deep and Gandalf and the, the leads and others are standing and watching them run away and they run into the forest and they disappear into the forest like they’re getting away and all of a sudden the forest starts shaking.

[00:18:41] Donna: And it’s like, Oh my gosh, it is every time I see it, it’s just this chilling little thing, you know, of course you’re cheering for the trees, but 

[00:18:51] TJ: yeah, 

[00:18:51] Donna: sure. 

[00:18:53] TJ: Another setting change, the city of Osgiliath is shown on screen in the film. There’s an extensive sequence there we’ll go into in more detail later, but in the books, none of the characters actually go there.

[00:19:05] Rebekah: It’s on the maps, it is mentioned, but is not on screen or on a page, I suppose. 

[00:19:11] Donna: Yeah. And, uh, many of the travel sequences are significantly shorter, shortened in the film versus the book. That’s a pretty standard 

[00:19:21] Rebekah: change. Yeah. Well, I was going to say the book itself has a lot less travel than the first book.

[00:19:26] Rebekah: So that was my difficulty with Fellowship. I, I want to share this because I think it’s really funny. I texted Casey, one of my friends that I know very well, she reads Lord of the Rings every year. She’s a big, big, big fan. We also have some similar tastes and some very different tastes in like books and film and stuff.

[00:19:44] Rebekah: I texted Casey to show her that I was reading the two towers and literally she said, first of all, I think she said, how did I not know you were reading them? I’m in the middle of reading the two towers as well. Tell me when you start the third book so we can read it together. After she got really excited about me reading them and saying we should read the third one together, her like immediate before I responded to any of this stuff, she goes, how much did you hate the first book?

[00:20:09] Rebekah: Because she knows me and she loves the books and she knew that I was going to have had issues with it. So. All that to say, I’m glad this film was way more, like, jam packed, which I appreciated. And the book was still slow. I still had a really hard time, but it was not nearly as, like, frustrating. I didn’t feel like I was just, like, following a bunch of people walking along a field, you know?

[00:20:34] Rebekah: Yeah. So, all right, let’s get into what did in fact happen. So the format of the plot in this book differs dramatically from the film, but I feel like to explain how that works, you need to understand the difference in Tolkien’s original vision for his story and the ultimate end product that was released by the publishers.

[00:20:51] Rebekah: And dad, you were studying this the other day. So can you explain how all that works? 

[00:20:56] Tim: In a series of letters written by Tolkien in the 1980s, The author stated that he saw the epic of Middle Earth divided into six distinct books, published as one complete work. His publisher disagreed with this vision, choosing instead to publish three novels, Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King.

[00:21:16] Tim: Each of which features two of the six books in Tolkien’s writings. Perceptive readers will notice that along with the distinct books being named in each novel, the page numbers are continuous in the three novels and don’t begin back at page one. And I did not notice that. 

[00:21:34] Rebekah: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s It’s just in my version or only in certain versions, but I think like, so you guys bought Christian a collector’s edition of the Lord of the Rings book, and it is Tolkien’s original vision of all six books in one one combined, the Lord of the Rings volume.

[00:21:51] Rebekah: So okay, here’s why this changes a lot in the two towers, because ultimately the first and second books that are contained in the first novel fellowship, they kind of follow the story of the film. Fairly closely. Obviously, we talked about the changes, but the novel The Two Towers contains books three and four of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

[00:22:10] Rebekah: Book three, known as The Treason of Isengard, follows the captured elves Miriam Pippin, as well as Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas, later joined by Gandalf. Through the adventures there, uh, they go through the Fangorn Forest, Rohan, Isengard, and Helm’s Deep, Frodo and Sam are totally absent. So book four, called The Ring Goes East, Rewinds time to around the beginning of book three and covers a similar time frame, but this time it’s all about Sam, Frodo, and Gollum’s travel towards Mordor and they, you know, meet Faramir, et cetera.

[00:22:46] Rebekah: The film intersperses the storylines, does change up the timeline in those storylines as well, and it goes back and forth between. One to the other so none of the characters from the Frodo Sam book Interact with the characters from the book with everybody else from the fellowship But they still go back and forth in the film and the movie actually begins with Frodo and Sam Lost and beginning to notice their shadow Gollum rather than with the other groups but the book like when I sat down to read the two towers It took me several hours of reading to ever get to a point where we saw Frodo again.

[00:23:23] Rebekah: So I thought that was just such an interesting way of doing it. And I, I will say, I really liked the way that the film changed it. Cause I think, I don’t think you could have done a film the way that the books are set up. I thought it was a really, really smart adjustment. 

[00:23:37] Donna: I felt like it, I felt like he was trying to take you along their journeys.

[00:23:42] Donna: As they were happening at the same time by going back and forth like that, they’ve been going through this while Frodo and Sam are going through this. 

[00:23:52] Tim: There’s another book in Book to Film that we covered last year that bounces back a lot. It goes forward and then it goes back and for us it got a little confusing.

[00:24:02] Tim: Where were we? When were we? Was 

[00:24:04] Rebekah: that Gone Girl? 

[00:24:04] Tim: Um, maybe they 

[00:24:07] Rebekah: did that one. I’m looking at some of the other ones that we did. I think that’s the only one we’ve covered like that had that really strong back 

[00:24:15] Tim: and forth. 

[00:24:16] Rebekah: Oppenheimer 

[00:24:17] Donna: too. 

[00:24:17] Tim: Oh, Oppenheimer. I think Oppenheimer may be the one I was thinking of because, because they go through an entire storyline and then they say, okay, now they’ve met this other person.

[00:24:27] Tim: Let’s go back to the beginning of their story. And so the novel, the book that Oppenheimer was based on. Was that way? I think that’s the one I was thinking of that just really kind of threw us 

[00:24:39] Rebekah: well in the biography format. It’s like they introduced someone and it’s like, and then he met this person in this year that was like really important to this story.

[00:24:46] Rebekah: Hold on. We’re going to spend several minutes telling you where this person was born, who their parents are, why they matter their entire life story. And then when you’ve forgotten why we met them in the first place, we’re going to go back to that part. 

[00:24:58] Tim: Yeah. That was, that was a little difficult. Tolkien’s vision wasn’t quite like that, but I’m really glad that for the movie there, Peter Jackson put it together.

[00:25:07] Tim: You’re bouncing from one story to the other. You’re not having to go through an entire story and then back up to a completely different story. 

[00:25:15] Rebekah: I’m glad that it wasn’t necessarily done this way, but you know how shortly after this series is when it became really popular to do the last book in a series is two films, you know?

[00:25:24] Rebekah: Right. I think it is interesting because this genuinely could have been two films. There were, there was no reason it needed to be in the same film at all. Tolkien wrote these as two simultaneously, but completely unrelated almost stories. And so I think there’s an argument to be made for like, if you did this as a television show, you could probably do an entire season on book three, an entire season on book four, or do like one episode in book three, one episode in book four.

[00:25:51] Rebekah: But I don’t know that watchers would enjoy that. 

[00:25:53] TJ: No, I think That Walking Dead at the same time as Game of Thrones to me, kind of prove that audiences don’t want the walking dead way of episodes, often covered. One location or one mm-hmm . Character at a time. So your fa, your fan favorite character might not be in an episode for six.

[00:26:13] TJ: Whereas Game of Thrones was always hopping around, which not everyone loved it, but generally you, you didn’t go more than one, maybe two episodes, but usually only one episode at a time were you missing out on people. But similarly to the first film in the trilogy, we see Saruman, the orcs, and the Urchai in Isengard on screen.

[00:26:33] TJ: In the book, we first meet the wizard. After his capture by the Ents. Not just the first time in the book, but the first time in the entire series on page. This is kind of near the end of the, uh, first half of the book. Where we’re covering the Merry Pippin, Aragorn story. And I was shook when I was reading this and reminded how Saruman’s just not a, not a physical presence.

[00:26:59] TJ: He’s mentioned, but he’s 

[00:27:03] Rebekah: mentioned and he’s very foreboding, but he’s not like on page a lot. 

[00:27:07] TJ: Yeah, that was, it was insane to me that the. Movies did such a natural, great job at he’s on, he’s on screen. There’s plenty of great opportunities for Christopher Lee to be Saruman and he’s foreboding the from the first movie when he’s doing the snow on the mountain side.

[00:27:29] TJ: In this movie, you get a lot of stuff with him preparing his. Uruk hai armies to go to Helm’s Deep and stuff like that. A lot of great stuff that we lose in the books. Uh, so good job on the film for working Saruman in a lot more. The book says some 

[00:27:47] Tim: things about, about what the Uruk Hai are and how he crossed, um.

[00:27:53] Tim: Goblins and orcs, 

[00:27:54] Rebekah: right? 

[00:27:56] Tim: I think it was humans. Cause I remember, I 

[00:27:57] Rebekah: think I read that yesterday. 

[00:27:59] Tim: Okay. I couldn’t remember, but it’s two. Two different races, creatures, whatever, um, that he crossed and, and that’s in the book, but seeing that visually and seeing, seeing the animosity they have with the regular orcs and, uh, different kinds of things on film, that’s a deeper dive into it.

[00:28:18] Rebekah: It’s a cross between orcs and goblin men. Yeah. So it may be a cross. I don’t know if goblin men are considered to be already like a mixed race. So, very interesting. 

[00:28:30] Tim: Actually, Treebeard says something about the fact that the elves, there are dark forces that the good races and made bad copies. Um, the orcs are, Um, a bad copy of the elves, um, and he, there’s like two or three different ones.

[00:28:52] Tim: He says that about trolls. Oh, he says it in connection with the ants. He says that the trolls were made as a dark copy of the ants. 

[00:29:04] Donna: A few other characters that we don’t. Get in book one are Theoden and Grimma in the films and, uh, in the films we meet them before Aragorn and the company reach them. This gives film watchers the context of Saruman’s influence over Grimma.

[00:29:26] Donna: During that scene, grandma Banishes Amir from the Kingdom, who’s the nephew of Thein, right? Mm-hmm . Thain’s nephew. And, uh, what actor portrayed a yes that I can never remember, MC, every time Carl Urban. Yes. Carl Urban plays him. And I was like the new 

[00:29:45] Tim: McCoy. 

[00:29:46] Donna: Oh, I see him every time. And I go, oh, who, who?

[00:29:50] Donna: What’s 

[00:29:50] Tim: the, what’s the boys? Series that something about the boys. Um, the boys have 

[00:29:57] TJ: gotten in. I’ve never seen it, but he’s the main 

[00:29:59] Tim: character in that 

[00:30:00] Rebekah: they didn’t son also comes. He’s brought from the battlefield where they thought he died and he had a mortal wound and is like laying in bed watched over by a win.

[00:30:14] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. Uh huh. Uh huh. And that’s when we see 

[00:30:17] TJ: Grimma. Yeah. Looking at 

[00:30:20] Tim: her. 

[00:30:20] TJ: That, yeah. 

[00:30:21] Donna: Longingly. 

[00:30:22] TJ: Now, Rebecca, did you see the Extended Edition? Because I think there’s more Theodred in the Extended Edition. We watched the Extended. It’s the only 

[00:30:29] Rebekah: one I have. 

[00:30:31] TJ: I think in the theatrical release. You only get Theodred in the bed, sick, and dying.

[00:30:38] Donna: You do see a little more, yes, true. In the books, we first get to Rohan as Gandalf, Aragorn, and Gimli, and Legolas arrive. Prior to this, Amor went on an unsanctioned mission to defeat orcs coming from the Emon wheel where his band of Rohirrim warriors defeat the orcs who kidnapped Merry and Pippin and he was briefly imprisoned but not banished before Gandalf.

[00:31:07] Donna: took care of Grimma and got rid of him. A little piece of trivia related to this. Many of the Rohirrim writers were women wearing glued on beards. Nice. And I’m thinking as my name for this episode is nomenclature, The Lost Entwife. Maybe this is where my people went. And they were just hiding and pretending to be Rohirrim women.

[00:31:34] Donna: We don’t know. We don’t know. By 

[00:31:36] Rebekah: the way, it took me forever to figure out what the Rohirrim were because I thought they were their own race of people and it took me forever to realize, no, they are horse riding warriors of Rohan. They’re special forces. I didn’t know. Also, I think that at some point before we finish this series, we should probably watch the new movie that Peter Jackson produced called The War of Froherim.

[00:32:01] Rebekah: We couldn’t find any of us have seen it. We wouldn’t, Siri wouldn’t show me where it was at. I can only find it on Apple TV. 

[00:32:08] TJ: But it was out of theaters by the time I even looked it up. 

[00:32:11] Rebekah: Four weeks. Like it was there, there and gone. Boy, I’m looking forward 

[00:32:16] Tim: to seeing that one again. 

[00:32:18] Rebekah: Oh gosh. 

[00:32:19] Tim: Well, in this film, Theoden is shown as physically aged.

[00:32:25] Tim: And gross, quite honestly, uh, possessed by Saruman’s spell through Grimma Wormtongue. Gandalf performs an exorcism like scene to free Theoden, and his appearance visibly changes, which I think is an excellent special effect in the movie. I thought it at the time, it still holds up. It de ages him by decades and removes several significant physical blemishes.

[00:32:48] Tim: In the book, Theoden isn’t possessed but subtly manipulated by Wormtongue’s words and control, and Gandalf’s arrival inspires him to reclaim his strength. It’s a lot less dramatic, a change. I like the change in the film. I think, I think it’s a bold change. Yeah, it’s, it’s good. It’s a good change. 

[00:33:11] Rebekah: This is one of the things I thought was most memorable from my first and multiple watches.

[00:33:17] Rebekah: Like I think about that randomly, like it’ll come up in my mind, like as a metaphor for something else or 

[00:33:25] Tim: whatever. So we’ve been able to use it with teen ministries and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, I loved this. I think it’s, it’s an homage to the fact that Peter Jackson loves the Lord of the Rings books and world.

[00:33:40] Tim: And he was able to take that world and do something even better. Yeah. 

[00:33:48] Donna: Yeah. This particular scene is to me, one of his greatest strengths as a filmmaker. He creates these moments where you get such vindication where you’re that scene and him casting and then Saruman flying across the room on his back.

[00:34:07] Donna: That whole thing, I mean, it’s just a very powerful and you just want to shout and go, yeah. He just had great vision for that all the way, all three movies. And I think it’s part of what kept this movie from just being so dark because it’s dark. They’re facing horrible things. 

[00:34:26] Tim: When I first found out that they were going to make movies from the books, which For many years, I read every year, I said it’s going to be difficult to make a movie that people will want to watch.

[00:34:40] Tim: And will also cause them to want to see the next one. Yeah. The Two Towers was the one, the toughest one. 

[00:34:48] Rebekah: Well, we found that with Hunger Games because the second and or sorry, the third film was so very dark. Didn’t or wasn’t it something like the fourth film had like the lowest box office or like lowest weekend or it was something like that.

[00:35:03] Rebekah: Because one of the dark movies, it just like makes you. It might be a good retelling, but it’s hard because, you know, you have to wait for the movie to come out like the next one. And then by the time you get there, that feeling of like, Oh, I left that last one feeling pretty, you know, it’s just kind of a passing thought.

[00:35:19] Rebekah: And then they move on. 

[00:35:20] TJ: Well, another visually stunning. scene in the movie that is different in the book. Frodo falls into the dead marshes of the book. The scene is short. It’s a little dramatic. But in the movie, it’s ghostly, scary time under the marshes. It kinda seems like he’s gonna drown. But, I love what the movie does.

[00:35:45] TJ: It’s not just for spectacle. It’s a character moment for Smeagol slash Gollum. He literally saves Frodo, and I guess maybe it’s up for interpretation, but I’ve always seen it as the moment Frodo realizes, oh, Schmeagol did not have to save me. He saves 

[00:36:02] Tim: the water, he says Sam and realizes Sam hasn’t gotten to him yet.

[00:36:06] TJ: It’s so, I love the Schmeagol, Frodo, Sam parts. It’s so great in so many ways, but in the movie, He thinks it’s Sam. He’s saved by Smeagol. Smeagol did not try to steal the ring. Like, his hands were all over Frodo. And he didn’t try and steal the ring. Which, like, furthers the idea that Smeagol was, like, getting in control of his golem evil.

[00:36:29] TJ: Yeah. Yeah. He was able to rescue Frodo without the temptation. And I think that that’s a fantastic movie choice. Maybe it’s a good place to say here, that I think that Schmiegel’s storyline is the strongest part of the series, uh, from a literature standpoint. I think that, now Rebecca, maybe it’s good for you to chime in as a person who, who likes this series the least, but I have introduced Lord of the Rings to several new people over the years, and whether they say it or not, I can tell that when Smeagol becomes a main character in the second movie, the mood changes.

[00:37:09] TJ: They’re like, Oh, this is such a, this is not a character that’s only good or only bad. And I think that people, whether or not, whether or not they know it, they want to root for Smeagol. But the tension of Gollum is keeping the energy very high in the audience’s mind. And I think it’s such a beautiful character study, Rebecca, of evil and good within the same person.

[00:37:35] Rebekah: Yeah, I am familiar with the concept of a good character study. 

[00:37:38] TJ: Did you hate 

[00:37:39] Rebekah: Gollum’s storyline? No, I actually, um, I think that, unlike the way I felt about Grimma, I do feel like Gollum is both written and portrayed in the films as very complex. He was a problematic person, obviously, and his backstory, which I think is replayed in the third film, right?

[00:38:03] Rebekah: Yes, his early beginning of the film. And you see his whole, like, where he came from before he became what he is now. Like, I think they do a really good job with making him incredibly complex and showing that, like, he’s not all bad. He’s corrupted, but he’s not corrupt. And so, yeah, I actually agree, it’s a really, um, it’s a really interesting storytelling mode for me.

[00:38:24] Rebekah: Did 

[00:38:24] Tim: you notice, did you notice the difference between Smeagol in the first film and Smeagol in the second, when you were watching? 

[00:38:31] Rebekah: Was one, no, I don’t know. I’d be wildly objecting. In 

[00:38:34] Tim: the first film, he’s, he’s very dark. Um, he appears to be almost black. 

[00:38:40] Donna: There, there was a lot of change there in how Gollum was going to be.

[00:38:46] Donna: Once they saw how masterful circus was, and 

[00:38:51] Tim: the special effects as well, they were, you know, he was more animated in the first one. 

[00:38:56] Donna: Right. Because they were going to only use circus for the speaking and they brought him in and he was there for a period of three weeks and did reading and Jackson was so compelled with him that he worked with, he, he talked to Weta.

[00:39:12] Donna: To the, to the digital design guys and was like, Hey, let’s do that. Let’s use him. And so that wasn’t an initial thought, but another part of the character that of Smeagol, the, the, just the genius of the writing and in the portrayal, both in the first movie, Gandalf tells Frodo. You wish Bilbo had killed him?

[00:39:35] Donna: Is that what you think? And he has that whole thing about some people who should die, live, some people who should live, die. And so he set you up for the complexity of Smeagol. Yeah. And he says, I’m sure 

[00:39:48] Tim: that he has, he has a part to play in, in the story. 

[00:39:52] Rebekah: I think one of the things to Josiah’s point that I, Like found really important was that Smeagol’s, uh, like duplicitousness, you know, that like his I can’t decide how I want to be this way or the other way.

[00:40:04] Rebekah: It was a setup for Sam ending up looking not that great. Because you actually do, like, as Sam is being so harsh about him, just because he’s trying to defend Frodo and all of that is true. But it was so interesting that they set it up so that Sam, who is literally, Josh literally was like, and made a comment today, he was like, Sam’s the real star of this series.

[00:40:26] Rebekah: Like, everybody ends up loving him so much. He’s 

[00:40:28] Tim: When we watched it last night, I said the same thing to him. 

[00:40:32] Rebekah: I love that. And so I think that’s very true. Like he ends up being this person you love, but Smeagol was complex enough that you actually wonder, like, is Sam being chill? Like, is he being too mean?

[00:40:46] Rebekah: Is this okay? being over the top? Yep. So that makes sense. Um, a little thing as we kind of go back into some of the Hobbits, uh, that are not Sam and Frodo. There was a small but humorous scene in the books that I really liked. It’s not in the movie. Pippin, while they’re in orc captivity for several days, pretended to have the One Ring to convince an orc to untie him.

[00:41:07] Rebekah: The orcs knew they weren’t supposed to kill them. And in the book, there’s a mention of the fact that like, that there were halflings and they were carrying some sort of an item. That they couldn’t risk losing and so they weren’t allowed to kill the halflings and whatever. He even coughs to drive home his point, which I thought was so funny.

[00:41:25] Rebekah: Like the way they did it in the book was really, really clever. So that was something I was like very much like hoping was in the movie, like the extended version, but there wasn’t really a spot for it, but I thought it was really clever. I 

[00:41:38] Tim: mean, it could have been an eight hour movie. 

[00:41:40] Donna: True. The film’s version of Mary and Pippin’s escape gets rid of some of their hobbitish behavior from the book.

[00:41:49] Donna: However, I mean, to your point, Rebecca, I think this is, this all plays into it. In the book. In the book, the two crawl away as the battle begins, but stop really near, very near the fighting to eat, as they could just go no longer without food. Aragorn later remarks how strange this choice was, even for hobbits.

[00:42:13] Donna: But in the film, it shows the hobbits running away from the battle. between Ahomer’s Rohirrim and the orcs, and they’re following by, and they’re followed by an orc into the forest before encountering Treebeard, the, the Ent, and, and they become in, they come into Ent world. 

[00:42:33] Tim: That’s all changed a bit. That’s, that’s a little tighter.

[00:42:36] Tim: I think, I think it’s tighter in the movie. It’s a cleaner plot line visually. 

[00:42:42] Donna: I wonder if it would have been odd to try to give a light moment in the midst of that fight, because it’s a super intense thing and they’re, they’re trying, the one. is the goblin that’s trying to eat, wants to eat. And he’s like, what about him?

[00:43:00] Donna: He looks tasty. 

[00:43:01] Tim: He doesn’t need 

[00:43:02] Donna: his legs. He doesn’t need his 

[00:43:05] Tim: legs. You get a little bit of it later, when they’re in Isengard and it’s flooded, and you see them with the apples, and pulling the turkey out of the dirty water. Yes, gross. They, they show their hobbitish nature pretty quickly in that, and it’s funny.

[00:43:21] Tim: Well, Mary and Pippin don’t meet up with Gandalf while they’re with Treebeard in the book, as the film shows, but they see him later when he arrives at Isengard after the Ents descend upon Saruman’s stronghold. In the movie Treebeard asks Gandalf the White if the two halflings are actually little orcs.

[00:43:40] Tim: And this is the first big reveal of the resurrected wizard. Gandalf first appears to Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn as they followed the orcs who captured their hobbit friends. So this is another bit of change. 

[00:43:53] Rebekah: I was actually confused in the film because I didn’t remember that they were the ones that first met up with Gandalf and so then I was like, well, they were looking for the, 

[00:44:01] Tim: they were looking for the white wizard thinking that it was Saruman and so they were ready to attack him.

[00:44:07] Donna: Because Treebeard doesn’t initially realize that Saruman is bad, right? He doesn’t at first. He’s not. I think he just doesn’t care. He, yeah. Is that more accurate? 

[00:44:17] Rebekah: Like he’s just not. That he’s not concerned with him. 

[00:44:19] Donna: Yeah. I think that’s probably a better way to think about it. 

[00:44:23] Tim: But at some point, and we’ll get into it here in a moment, probably, um, he says a wizard should know better than, than some of the things that Saruman is doing.

[00:44:33] Rebekah: So speaking of Treebeard, the end’s takeover of Isengard occurs much earlier in the book than the film. And please correct me if I get any of this wrong, because It really threw me off, so I was trying to gather this all back together after I finished everything. The book discusses the Ents, accompanied by Merry and Pippin, bravely marching to Isengard to join in the war against evil after a lengthy deliberation in the Entmoot, where they have their little meeting.

[00:44:58] Rebekah: Yes. In the film, The two hobbits have to convince the Ents to take part. They first decide not to, and they do this by tricking Treebeard to walk past Isengard to take them wherever they were going, where the Ent sees burned and destroyed forests of his brother trees. As Marion Pippin hoped, this causes Treebeard to take up arms and get the rest of the Ents to take up arms as well.

[00:45:20] Rebekah: All of the books Isengard battles take place off page, and we learn about them during book three, when Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, and Gandalf, accompanied by a reinvigorated Theoden, arrive at Isengard to find Saruman captured in his tower. With the Ents standing guard over the city, the film shows this battle during the same sequence of the events at Helm’s Deep, the climax of Merry and Pippin’s journey.

[00:45:44] Rebekah: So that was wild to me. Like, it was so different because it happened so much further before the whole thing at Helm’s Deep. Like, they’re with Theoden and You don’t see any of that battle. So I loved seeing it played out on screen. I think that the format of where they shifted this to happen made sense.

[00:46:04] Rebekah: I think the one thing that bothered me, it like really did give the sense that Mary and Pippin were like pretty not chill. You know what I mean? Like it was, I didn’t love that they kind of tricked him after they had decided like this wasn’t their war. Um, so that wasn’t my favorite, but I thought the rest of like how they switched it around made sense.

[00:46:23] Tim: It was an, it was an interesting change. Now remember the Helm’s Deep stuff was going on because all of the Orcs, well, most of the Orc and all of the, the Uruk hai have gone. to Helm’s Deep by the time the Ents come to Isengard. So, it is kind of happening at the same time, and that’s what we see more in the movie, in the film.

[00:46:46] Donna: This battle, uh, there’s a little scene in here that’s so unimportant, but is so important to me, personally, is when the dam has broken, and you’re looking at the whole thing, and the water rushing by, and the tree that got put on fire. The Ent. The ant, sorry, the ant that got into the path of one of the Uruk Hai’s fire swords or whatever he had set him on fire.

[00:47:14] Donna: You see him and they’ve all planted their feet down, they’ve planted their roots down and the water’s coming across and hitting them. And the. tree with, that’s on fire, leans into the water and, and puts his heart, that’s one of those little moments. I’m like, Oh, yay. He wins. He 

[00:47:30] Tim: is because, because you think, Oh no, they’re actually defeating some of the ends.

[00:47:34] Tim: They’re killing them. And this is a race that’s so extremely old and all of that. So they’re not reproducing. Yeah. It, it is something for the audience to say, yes. They, they, they didn’t kill him, they weren’t able to overcome him, so. Yeah. 

[00:47:48] TJ: I, uh, I like that Mary and Pippin are able to have an influence on the war.

[00:47:54] TJ: I think that what the movie tried to do, doesn’t seem like it completely succeeded for Rebecca. But I think what the movie was trying to do was show that the Ents were wrong to decide that it wasn’t their war and that they were mistaken. And Mary Pippin tricked them by just showing them that, yes, it is your war.

[00:48:13] TJ: And it was. That part I agree 

[00:48:14] Rebekah: with, you know. 

[00:48:16] TJ: Yeah. I guess they did trick him through deceit. But I like that they had to, you know, they’re just two hobbits who influenced the defeat of Saruman. Yeah. 

[00:48:29] Donna: And, and up to that point, a lot of their characterization was the comic relief half of the Hobbits. So, when you see, they wanted to go home, they could go home, they could have actually just gone home.

[00:48:44] Tim: Before they convinced. Before they trick Treebeard, they say, you know, what are we doing? We, we don’t have any part to play in this. We can’t. That’s what I 

[00:48:53] Donna: mean. Exactly. Can’t really 

[00:48:54] Tim: make a difference. And yet they end up doing that. And Gandalf has said that, um, they’re going to have a part to play as well as the fact that the Ents may find out they’re more powerful than they think.

[00:49:05] Tim: So. I think those are all really heart lifting parts. 

[00:49:10] Donna: Well, we don’t realize the strength within us as Christians. This is just as true for the Christian as, as anyone else. We short ourselves for the strength that we have within us until we’re challenged to have to stand up for what we believe or stand up for, you know, a principle or, or a right thing or whatever it is.

[00:49:32] Donna: Um, and that’s different for everybody, you know, but, but until we’re challenged, a lot of times we don’t realize what we can do. 

[00:49:41] TJ: Hey, that’s what you made the fun fact. 

[00:49:44] Donna: Oh, it is. It’s coming together. Wow. It is. Even if it means being outside in snow. Okay. That’s 

[00:49:51] TJ: right. And melting on a stage. In the movie, we do follow two kids.

[00:49:57] TJ: Set on horseback by their mother to flee Siremon’s descending upon their village. These children later arrive in Rohan, and their story underscores the cruelty of the Dark Lord’s armies. Neither the children nor their mother are featured in the books. So, this is You know, we kind of alluded to the fact that a lot of the Book 2 plot is stuck in Movie 3.

[00:50:21] TJ: And I think that it works, but there’s a lot of added stuff in Movie 2. And one of them is this family, which I do think covers something that is seldom covered in fantasy, which is the cost on the commoner. Usually you’re just following the nobles and who war really affects. This is very Game of Thrones of me is the common fault.

[00:50:44] TJ: They’re the people who, well, in Game of Thrones, George Martin says, why is it always the innocents who suffer most when you high lords play your game of throne? I mean, it’s not that it’s not the high lords that suffer most. 

[00:50:59] Donna: Yeah. I felt like this was another one of those light moments that Jackson found that gave you a momentary connection to this little family.

[00:51:11] Donna: And those two kids write off and you genuinely don’t know at that point, there’s no promise that they’ll ever see their mom again or that the mom will see them. I mean, and he, so it’s serious, but it’s a very touching thing that does bring you back to the reality of there’s the King and his children and his court.

[00:51:28] Donna: But then there’s these people that are just living everyday lives in Rohan that, what do they know about this? What do they have to do with this? And, um, you know, I think we could, there’s a lot of things in life that we could liken to it. Um, 

[00:51:43] Tim: Generals play their war games, but it’s, It’s the soldier that dies in the battle.

[00:51:50] Donna: Aragorn and Théoden have some relational tension in the film that’s not present in the book. Specifically, film Aragorn opposes Théoden’s decision to retreat and to defend Helm’s Deep and not engage in quote unquote open war. In the book, the two act with mutual respect and Aragorn doesn’t seem to openly oppose the idea.

[00:52:16] Donna: of defending Helm’s Deep. I mean, I think this was another decision to depart from the book. 

[00:52:23] Tim: Yeah, this is all a bit different. When Theoden is heading to Helm’s Deep, and that’s not what Gandalf wanted him to do in the film. 

[00:52:33] Rebekah: Oh, and Aragorn wanted him to do either. Right? That’s right. Right. Aragorn was going off Gandalf’s.

[00:52:37] Rebekah: But in the book, it’s not 

[00:52:38] Tim: like that. So when Theoden departs for Helm’s Deep with his army, um, those who weren’t going to the city to fight are sent to Dunharrow, a safely secured location. In the film, the entire population of his city or Edoras accompanies the army to Helm’s Deep, placing them very close to the action in the final battle there.

[00:53:01] Tim: Um, just a tidbit of trivia, Jackson’s children, as well as Elijah Wood’s sister, have cameos as young refugees in the caves behind the Hornburg. Vigo’s son, Henry, appears as a boy of Rohan preparing for the battle with Haleth. I believe that’s where he is saying show me your, let me see your sword. This is a good sword and all.

[00:53:22] Tim: I think that’s the boy. I think that’s actually his son, Vigo’s son. And how did you guys feel 

[00:53:28] Rebekah: about that, like, conflict between Aragorn and Theoden and all those, like, shifts? 

[00:53:33] Tim: I think it, I think it works for the movie. There again, like, Treebeard and the Ents were ready to go to war. But they had to be convinced in the film, but in the book, they were ready to go.

[00:53:46] Tim: In the book, Theoden had no problem with Aragorn, and he was going to send, he was going to send, uh, the people that weren’t fighting to a safe location, and he was going to go and fight the battle in a different location. In the film, that changed that. So I, I think it’s, I think it’s a different way of trying to build tension.

[00:54:08] Tim: I think in both of those cases, the main character involved, Theoden or Treebeard and the Ents, they were going to do the right thing to start with. But in the film, they had to be convinced. By the main character. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:54:22] Donna: Yeah. Well, it strengthens. Aragorn’s rise as the king, but I thought it was a little weird because my first thought about it when we first saw it was, well, Théoden’s older, he’s been through more, he’s, you know, battle worn, and so to him making this decision, there were things to weigh out, but then that And so it’s like, Oh yeah, that’s right.

[00:54:58] Donna: He’s not the younger man rising up. He’s the experienced one. But at the same time, Theoden has also just lost a son. 

[00:55:09] Tim: But this also, this also keeps the tension up with Gandalf, because in the book, Theoden agrees with Gandalf, your counsel is good and all of that stuff. Um, in the film, there’s still more tension.

[00:55:23] Tim: They haven’t, you know, really come together quite yet. 

[00:55:27] TJ: It’s always kind of weakened, theod in for me after he goes through that transformation with Gandalf. I’m excited for him to be awesome. 

[00:55:35] Tim: Strong 

[00:55:36] TJ: for him to be like, yeah. Yeah. So I think it’s a little bit of a backward momentum for mm-hmm . For him. But you, you mentioned his son.

[00:55:44] TJ: I wonder if they could have leaned more into. I saw what war could do to my son and I, I don’t know how they could have worked it in, but if they had made it about his son, I think it would have been less weird for Theoden to be so anti Aragorn for, you know, for a little bit. 

[00:56:00] Donna: The line after the son’s funeral and he says no parents should Out with their child or something like that.

[00:56:06] Donna: Heartbreaking. Um, that came from a line, a, a story that one of them had encountered. A lady and I, uh, before the filming or during filming had enc, one of them, Jackson or someone else had encountered a woman in her and she’d lost a child, I think in, maybe in battle. I’m not positive. And she made the comment that she as telling her story and he worked that into this ’cause he was so touched by her.

[00:56:34] TJ: Another change from book to movie at Helm’s Deep, there is a group of warrior elves. In the movie led by, by Hal Deer, not led by Arwin, uh, not led by Arwin Arwin, War The Rings expert Yes, JR. Toki and made a mistake. Uh, we, we didn’t have the same literary theory as we do today. I won’t hold it too, too hard against him like Rebecca will, but wow.

[00:56:59] TJ: Yes. How dear I, I think it’s funny that every time New Watchers. See this scene and he comes in, it’s like, OK, clearly we are supposed to know who this is. Haldir, clearly I missed some small scene and I believe that all that Haldir does in the first movie is catch them at the beginning of Lothlorien and like insult Gimli.

[00:57:23] TJ: Right, I think that’s 

[00:57:25] Donna: true. 

[00:57:25] TJ: Even I, who am a mega nerd, I kept thinking that this was Galadriel’s husband, Celeborn. Ah. But no, there’s literally 

[00:57:35] Rebekah: Celeborn? Celeborn’s? Yeah, Celeborn.

[00:57:37] TJ: Celeborn. So there’s Celeborn and Haldir. I’m like, wait, you’re telling me there’s two male elves at Lothlilien? You, you don’t need to.

[00:57:47] TJ: You need Galadriel and then she needs one guy. 

[00:57:52] Donna: Yeah, 

[00:57:52] TJ: yeah. So combine these, but they did film Arwen. As warrior princess at Helm’s Deep, they cut it from the film. Yeah. But that would have kind of continued to be a trend. It looked way too much, yeah, was way 

[00:58:07] Tim: too much Xena warrior princess. Oh. 

[00:58:10] TJ: Yeah. In the books, I was, I was confused, it was so hard for me to follow because it was so different from the movie and that’s, that’s so dumb that I, that I had the movie in my head so much.

[00:58:22] TJ: But the defenders of Helm’s Deep in the book are men and Huorns. The tree like people who aren’t 

[00:58:29] Tim: ants. The narrator of the book that I was listening to called them horns. Interesting. Like hats, trumpet, 

[00:58:37] TJ: like horns. Yeah, very confusing. Yeah. And they are not shown in the film, uh, at all, nor alluded to. It’s just in the book.

[00:58:46] TJ: It’s all the men of Rohan, plus, you know, you know, you have your Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Gandalf. Does come at the, when does Gandalf show up, Rebecca? 

[00:58:57] Rebekah: He’s not there at the very beginning, but Gandalf shows up at the battle with a rescue party. However, uh, the leader of this rescue party is different in the movie.

[00:59:08] Rebekah: He shows up with Amir and they have like this whole bat, this whole Rohirrim. Uh, however, in the book, Amir. Aomir is already there with the group from Helm’s Deep. Gandalf in the book shows up with Erkenbrand, who is simply another, like, well known warrior of Rohan, correct? 

[00:59:28] Tim: Yes. 

[00:59:28] Rebekah: Okay. So in that, I think as a new character at that point in the book, maybe someone who was mentioned, but it’s not somebody that we’ve met.

[00:59:34] Rebekah: I thought that was such a strong change because you kind of start off with that really tense scene where a Amir meets up with Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn and it’s so good. It’s not in the book at all. I didn’t even mention that scene, but like, you know, that’s not in the book. I don’t think, but it’s such a, 

[00:59:50] Tim: well, it changes a lot of the stuff with Amir and Aragorn and all of those.

[00:59:54] Tim: It’s very different. 

[00:59:56] Rebekah: But, uh, I really liked the way that they did this for the film. I thought that it, it was like a good payoff of someone that we met and then, like, they became really useful and all that. 

[01:00:06] Tim: Yeah, and instead of just adding a new character in to the film. Then we come to one of the least, my least favorite changes.

[01:00:16] Tim: Faramir. Brother to Boromir has none of his brother’s envy for the One Ring in the book. He is the only other person besides Aragorn who has said, No, I want nothing to do with it, of the men. After meeting up with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, Faramir chose to allow them to continue their journey and did not force them to accompany him to Minas Tirith.

[01:00:42] Tim: In the film, Faramir’s a different person. He’s displayed with a more complex motivation. Complex? Yeah, well. Uh, considering bringing I would say complex. Yeah, considering bringing the ring to his father, Denethor, to show his worth, um, he forces the two hobbits and Gollum to go to Osgiliath with him, which we see Osgiliath and we had It’s not A big battle.

[01:01:04] Tim: Yeah, despite the many objections. Yeah, it’s, it’s an extra battle. He only decides to release Frodo after seeing his close encounter with a Nazgul. Movie Faramir also threatens Smeagol slash Gollum to not harm the hobbits on their journey. So in this version, in the movie version, Faramir only decides that the ring is.

[01:01:26] Tim: Too bad for anybody to have when he sees Frodo almost kill Sam, his best friend. In the book, I like Faramir better because he’s the one person who isn’t, who, who has no desire to take the ring. And it, and it makes him so unique. Well, it makes him so unique because everybody is corrupted by the ring. 

[01:01:55] Rebekah: Yeah.

[01:01:55] Tim: Anybody that has the opportunity to get near it and he’s the one person who doesn’t. And I, I thought this was a. a poor change. I love the series. I love Peter Jackson’s take on it all. This was a miss for me. 

[01:02:10] TJ: I liked the, the complexity of the jealousy of an older brother. Denethor’s love, uh, made Faramir into a, into an almost bad person who had to choose.

[01:02:23] TJ: To go against his father’s badness, be like, you know what, the, the fact that he struggles, I don’t know, it relates to me more. I can definitely see what you mean. It’s one less person who is good, who is automatically good. You have another person who has to choose, and for a second they choose the wrong path.

[01:02:47] Tim: Yeah, I think he has a great story in the third book. I don’t see the need for more Boromir 

[01:02:54] TJ: envy in the third book? 

[01:02:55] Tim: There’s more Faramir. Well, yes there is, because Denethor, the father, um, spoiler alert, um, the father, when Faramir is wounded, Denethor decides, oh, it’s all, all too much. And I’m gonna take my son, who’s not dead, but he’s very badly wounded, and I’m going to burn the two of us together, because the battle, I don’t want to be here for the battle, because everything is lost.

[01:03:22] TJ: And I think that makes Faramir all the better, that 

[01:03:25] Tim: Mm hmm. Yeah. 

[01:03:26] TJ: You know, even if you leave the second film thinking, Okay, Faramir made the right choice in the end, but it took him too long. 

[01:03:32] Tim: Yeah. The addition of the Osgiliath scene, you also, you also get a flashback to when Boromir is there, and they’ve set the city free.

[01:03:45] Tim: Denethor comes, and he’s the steward, he’s not the king. Denethor comes, and he’s so excited that Boromir did this, and Boromir tries his dead level best to say, this was Faramir’s doing. Oh no, Denethor says, you know, Faramir’s the one who gave up the city to start with. He’s garbage, you know. So I got the impression from that, and I thought it was a good scene.

[01:04:09] Tim: That Boromir had been trying to equalize the playing field. That this wasn’t Boromir the hero and Faramir the, oh no, why did we have him? But Boromir was trying to say, you know, he’s a warrior, he deserves it too. And all of that with dad and dad didn’t want to have anything to do with it. 

[01:04:28] TJ: I can definitely see how For me, I love Faramir in the movies, and I can definitely relate to, if you like Faramir from the books, it’s a hard thing to swallow to see how he was changed, but, uh, you know, finishing off with this Osgiliath sequence, the climax of the movie for Faramir.

[01:04:52] TJ: Frodo and Sam. Frodo is kind of attacked by a flying Nazgul. You know, not attacked physically, but almost mentally. Frodo starts to go into a trance. The one ring almost convinces him to put the ring on his finger. And Sam tackles him in the nick of time. Frodo responds by holding a sword to Sam’s throat before Sam reminds Frodo who he really is.

[01:05:19] TJ: and the hope of some good in this world. 

[01:05:21] Tim: Do you suppose that that particular part of that scene is the reason for the whole change of the plot? With Faramir bringing him back to Osgiliath and all of that stuff, that whole piece just for that payoff? 

[01:05:36] Rebekah: It makes every, it makes all of the three different storylines that are kind of happening feel like they have the same Climactic level, whereas because of what they moved over into the third film, like Sam and Frodo didn’t have this climactic thing going on with so now they do like, so I think that because they moved, she lobbed like, I think that makes sense.

[01:05:58] Rebekah: Oh, and Sam 

[01:05:59] Donna: going, it’s, it’s me. It’s your Sam. Oh my gosh. 

[01:06:04] TJ: Yeah, there was, there was some good Frodo say. I was surprised. I remember book four starting and me thinking, uh, hey, the Frodo and Sam stuff. Okay, let’s, let’s get through it. And then it was a breeze. It was amazing. I love Smeagol. Frodo and Sam got some good dialogue as they are getting developed more than you know.

[01:06:23] TJ: You know, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, who are like, it’s fun to be with them. But Frodo, Sam and Schmeagol are all going through three distinct and compelling character arcs, especially in this book. If I remember years ago, when I read these books, I do think the third book lets me down on Frodo, Sam, Schmeagol.

[01:06:44] TJ: But the second, the second book, Frodo, Sam, Schmeagol might be my. Favorite of all of the sections. But yeah, I think it’s interesting that the Osgiliath scene is the climax for the Frodo, Sam story in two towers movie, because in the book Frodo and Sam’s journey through she lobs layer occur, it’s the climax of their story in the two towers book.

[01:07:09] TJ: The film moves this entire sequence to return to the king, including the stairs of, of here. Uh, right beside Menace Morgul. That’s the whole sequence in Return of the King movie. And I, I was, I was in it, in the book, at Menace Morgul, and I was like, wow. Yeah, we’re getting into this. And I was kind of getting scared, because I was like Okay, what kind of character development is left for Frodo and Sam and Smeagol for the third book?

[01:07:37] TJ: So, I’m a little worried about that. Yeah. But, um, there’s the steps of Cirith Ungol, or whatever it’s called, and, more importantly, Shelob’s lair, is all in the Two Towers book. So, I think it’s understandable that they added the Osgiliath battle as a climax in the movie, because they had to have some sort of climax.

[01:07:59] TJ: I remember as a child, when the movie ended, I tried to look up what Gollum was taking Frodo and Salmon to. And in the early 2000s internet, I could not figure it out. And I think it was because, Shelob’s Lair is in the Two Towers book. And so it was difficult for me to figure out, I might have like Gone into dad’s room, gotten the Return of the King book, and tried to find Frodo and Sam to see what they were up to.

[01:08:25] TJ: But like, they were already past She Law by that point, so I couldn’t figure it out, so it was still a surprise. You know, when I was a kid, I guess I wasn’t even a teenager yet when this movie came out. The movie ended and I didn’t know what Gollum was taking them towards. It was, it was a great Cliffhanger.

[01:08:41] TJ: I will say that the Two Towers, Frodo, Sam, Smeagol story is maybe stronger because in the book, Smeagol is basically introduced and basically wrapped up. The Two Towers Is Smeagol’s book, whereas I don’t expect him to come back until the end of Return of the King. And so there was something full circle about Smeagol beginning and ending in The Two Towers.

[01:09:13] TJ: It made it feel like a complete book story. Whereas, I liked in the movie where Smeagol was still a main character at the beginning of the third movie. And throughout the middle of it. But it was powerful to have him go on such a journey. 

[01:09:31] All: Yeah. 

[01:09:32] TJ: And it, it kind of temporarily finished within the same book.

[01:09:36] Tim: Yeah. I think that Jackson probably wanted to see more of Smeagol partly because of Andy Sarkis portrayal. I, I think he probably expanded the role, um, because he’s so good. 

[01:09:52] Donna: Yeah, I think probably just exploded his head with thought of what, what he could do with this talent. 

[01:10:00] Tim: Don’t you think it’s interesting too that Sam Frodo Smeagol storyline?

[01:10:05] Tim: Is, like, absent for a large part of Return of the King in the book. It, I think that’s one of the reasons why Shelob is taken, uh, you know, is let, taken out of Two Towers, pushed into the next book. 

[01:10:20] TJ: It’s the same thing as Two Towers. I think you go through all of Aragorn’s point of view before you go back in time to Frodo.

[01:10:30] TJ: Which is a 

[01:10:31] Rebekah: big ask. Like, that’s a long time. That’s rough 

[01:10:33] TJ: for the reader. That’s rough for them. And I think it was less rough in the 50s, but it’s perhaps it’s rough nowadays. 

[01:10:40] Donna: We’re going to move into some stat trivia for this lovely, amazing cash cow. Um, the book release was November 11th, 1954. It’s funny we’re talking about this and talking about the amazing effects and what they did throughout these films and how they brought it to life.

[01:11:03] Donna: And this is something that was written before all of that existed. Movies existed and TV, television, but the movie release was in December. 2002 on the 5th at Ziegfeld Theatre, on the 18th in the U. S. and on the 19th in New Zealand and then across the rest of the world. The book got a rating of 4. 49 out of 5 on Goodreads.

[01:11:33] Donna: That’s a million ratings and 22, 000 reviews. So that’s held up. Uh, same thing with the Tomato meter in the audience, the popcorn meter, 95%, 95 percent even with this being as dark as it is, it still has held up. IMDb gives it 8. 8 out of 10. The box office numbers were, uh, production 94 million. The opening weekend, the movie brought in 62 million.

[01:12:04] Donna: Similar to the first where the opening weekend was, It was under the production, which seemed kind of weird, but the USA Canada gross multiplied that about six times and was 340 million. The worldwide gross was 583 million with a total Well, uh, total all encompassing at 923 million, 

[01:12:29] Tim: which means it’s hit over a billion when you look at some of the other, the other stats.

[01:12:34] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:12:34] Donna: So, um, home media and I added this one cause I thought it was interesting. The two towers released on VHS, you guys remember what that is, right? I do. Um, yeah. And DVD on August 26, 2003. So less than a year later, my birthday, they released, I bet they released it for your birthday. It was in the first, I should have bought that for you in the first five days.

[01:13:02] Donna: Five days. Over 3. 5 million DVDs are sold. Rentals racked up 22. 8 million in sales, breaking the record previously held by the Bourne Identity. In December of 20, uh, of 2003, so August it comes out. By December, 16. 4 million DVDs have been purchased, earning 305. 4 million in sales for New Line Home Entertainment.

[01:13:33] Donna: So it made almost the, the USA Canada gross. of the movie in DVD, uh, sales. That’s pretty wild. It is. It is. And what’s really wild is 20 years later, DVDs don’t really sell well because you can see it on stream. You can still 

[01:13:55] Tim: get a blue, blu 

[01:13:57] Donna: ray, but not 

[01:13:57] Tim: very many people get them. 

[01:13:59] Donna: But it was, I thought that was crazy.

[01:14:01] Donna: The only 

[01:14:01] Tim: rental thing is like Redbox and that’s not doing very well. 

[01:14:05] Donna: Mm mm. Yeah. So, uh, it, it, like the first movie and the third is rated PG 13 and all filled in, filmed in New Zealand. 

[01:14:15] Tim: So, couple of interesting things in the trivia. People have often wondered, um, what the two towers are. Now, if you’ve seen the movie.

[01:14:25] Tim: You think the two towers are Minas Morgul, where the Eye of Sauron is, and, uh, Osgiliath, or Isengard, where Sauron is. But there are actually four towers in Middle earth from which Tolkien considered the titular landmarks of the title. Tolkien himself was torn about the meaning of the title as late as January 1954, but In February, 1954, Tolkien settled on the White Tower of Minas Morgul with a thin waning moon above it and Orthanc, a black tower with three horns on the top.

[01:15:03] Tim: The final illustration No, 

[01:15:05] TJ: stupid. 

[01:15:06] Tim: The final illustration also incorporates Saruman’s sign of the white hand related to Orthanc and a Nazgul flying 

[01:15:12] Donna: between the towers. He didn’t even use No! He didn’t even use the main By a door! I know. And if you look at the, uh, but look at the book cover and it’s like, Oh, or think wasn’t even one of the main four 

[01:15:25] TJ: or think and bar a door.

[01:15:28] TJ: Who cares about menace? Morgal? Nothing happens there. 

[01:15:31] Donna: I mean, maybe talking and thought poor menace. Morgal, they get nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Uh, in the don’t whine, it will mend the category. Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and Brett Beatty, who is John Rhys Davies stunt double as Gimli, all sustained injuries filming for the outdoor scene in and around Rohan.

[01:15:55] Donna: Viggo broke two toes kicking the orc helmet, and his cry of pain was so convincing, Jackson kept it in the final cut as his anguish for Merry and Pippin. Uh, Orlando Bloom fell off his horse and cracked three ribs. 

[01:16:11] Tim: You mean that beautiful jumping onto a horse thing that happens? I don’t know if that’s 

[01:16:16] Donna: when, but he broke it.

[01:16:18] Donna: He broke three of them, three nice little ribs, and then Brett dislocated his knee. Jackson would refer to them as the walking wounded after this. I’m assuming, you know, he’s a jokester. In other filming, uh, Mortensen chipped a tooth, and when he chipped the tooth, he did not want to go to the dentist. He had heard it, and when he hit, he hit his face when he chipped the tooth.

[01:16:42] Donna: He wanted to keep on going. Tis. Keep the intensity of the pain he was feeling and put it in his character. And I’m like, dude, that is, that’s overkill. 

[01:16:53] Tim: Um, just remember what the pain was like, but you can play it. 

[01:16:57] Donna: But they took, when they took him to the dentist there locally, he left all his costume on with all the blood stain all over it.

[01:17:05] Donna: I mean, he was fully in the middle of the scene. I thought that was very interesting. Bernard Hill, King Theoden had his ear slashed with a sword. And during a horse riding scene, he cracked his sternum. So it’s like, oh my gosh. Now, I did see there were a bunch of 

[01:17:22] Tim: other The pain they suffered for the craft.

[01:17:24] Donna: Yeah, there were a bunch of other injuries. A lot of the stuntmen had injuries and stuff. And that is part of Action Adventure, I get that. But I was just like, reading, I kept thinking, okay, at some point, what’s going on right now? 

[01:17:40] TJ: Well, the chance of 10, You think that that was a special effect? Yes. At Helm’s Deep, it was recorded by 25, 000 cricket fans in a stadium.

[01:17:53] TJ: Shouting words spelled out on the Diamond Vision projection screen. Cricket is a sport popular outside of America, 

[01:18:07] All: directed by by all Jackson, and our cricket fans just 

[01:18:08] Donna: left. They were, they were gone. Go

[01:18:14] All: Dash. 

[01:18:16] Rebekah: Sure they did. Wow. I have heard of this company because. Uh, Josh likes the guys that, uh, interview them a lot, but visual effects and animation company Weta FX, formerly Weta Digital, based in New Zealand and founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk in 1993, handled the primary digital effects for the whole trilogy.

[01:18:41] Rebekah: Weta has also worked on other known, well known projects like King Kong in 05, Bridge to Terabithia in 06. 7, The Jungle Book in 2016, Planet of the Apes through 2011 and 2017, and both of the recent Avatar films. 

[01:18:57] Tim: Uh, one thing with Weta Magic, Treebeard is a 14 foot tall puppet, and he was built on a wheel.

[01:19:05] Tim: Then, polyurethane molds of tree bark were applied to create his wooden skin. To be more comfortable. Mary and Pippin sat on bicycle seats hidden in the puppets hands. But because getting down from their perches was so difficult, they would stay during breaks as everyone else would leave the set for meal breaks.

[01:19:26] Tim: Each frame involving Treebeard took between 28 to 48 hours to render. Now, it wouldn’t take that long now, we’re 24 years faster in computers, but still. 

[01:19:40] Donna: In more Weta news, some Gollum shots, though not as long as Treebeard, took as long as six hours to render, so they were often left overnight. On a couple of mornings, the team checked the footage only to find every hair on Gollum’s head standing straight up, like they had like, what, 15 hair, uh, in sort of a punkish afro, or his eyes would pop in and out of his head with every word he said.

[01:20:05] Tim: They were inventing, 

[01:20:06] TJ: dude. Technology with this too. And all the PETA folks shouted, Hurrah! Why? Why did we do that? Now about PETA. How that is a good segue. Approximately 200 horses were used in the trilogy. They and their riders were fitted with MoCap. Motion capture like Andy Serkis and Gollum. They were digitally inserted into the fighting scene so they weren’t actually there in filming.

[01:20:37] TJ: And also the dead horses lying on the ground after the battle made a polystyrene. Nice. 

[01:20:43] Rebekah: I am sorry. If you’re not using No animals were harmed. If you’re not actually using dead horses in your dead horse scene, what are you even doing? My disbelief. How am I supposed to suspend my disbelief? My suspension of disbelief.

[01:20:55] Rebekah: I can’t believe they’d do this to me. Uh, filming the battle at Helms Deep took four months to shoot, three at night, and one during the day. It also involved a large number of extras. Jackson gave all the participants free t shirts to commemorate it. The front of their t shirts bore the statement, I survived Helms Deep.

[01:21:12] Rebekah: The back had one of two statements depending on which camp you fought in, Lord of the Rings Uruk Hai Battalion or Elf Regiment. They didn’t have enough recruits over six feet tall for the Uruk Hai. So all cast under six feet were affectionately nicknamed the Uruk Low. That said, there were never more than 100 people portraying Uruk Hai present at one time in a scene.

[01:21:34] Rebekah: The rest we see on film are all CG. 

[01:21:36] Tim: Wow. Good job though. 

[01:21:39] Rebekah: Yeah, 

[01:21:40] Tim: for sure. It’s 

[01:21:41] Donna: amazing. 

[01:21:42] Tim: I will say, I will say this before we move to another part. All of that was CG. I’ve been watching on an HDTV, and the one thing that I’ve noticed that doesn’t quite stand up is the special effect of replacing Frodo and Sam’s face onto the smaller people that were working.

[01:22:03] Tim: working as their doubles. When they, when they superimpose their face, there’s something a little strange about the look. It just doesn’t quite look as real, but I’m watching on an HDTV 20 years plus. Newer that, yeah. Created. Yeah. Filmed for. So. 

[01:22:21] Donna: Um, to strengthen and protect his voice, Andy Serkis drank many bottles of what became known as Gollum juice, keeping his throat lubricated for the most intense moments of the monologue and dialogue.

[01:22:35] Donna: Hee 

[01:22:36] TJ: haw! The sound of the fell beasts at the race race ride is actually a donkey. 

[01:22:42] Donna: Really? Sometimes I wish I didn’t know these things. Because then every time I hear them, every time I hear the noises, I’m hearing Donkey. 

[01:22:55] Tim: Well, it’s strange how they get sound effects sometimes because, you know, the, the lightsabers in Star Wars came from hitting the guy wires of,

[01:23:10] Donna: We have mentioned a couple of times that this series of movies is very light on the female main characters. Uh, and we have mentioned earlier tonight even that Arwen was going to be in this movie some and ended up, it just didn’t work. Um, but the first day that Miranda, Miranda Otto came on set, who played Eowyn, not Arwen.

[01:23:37] Donna: I told you it’s ridiculous. I mean, to be fair, Aragorn wouldn’t have had to think much about what he said. He could just say it, Arwen. He could just mumble 

[01:23:48] Rebekah: either of the names and mumble the names 

[01:23:50] Donna: and be fine. Um, but the first day that Miranda Otto came came on to set for filming. Some reported that Liv Tyler ran to her exclaiming, I’m so glad there’s another woman in this film.

[01:24:02] Donna: And I’ll just say there was so much trivia out there. There’s so much about this. And of course it’s 20 some years old, right? Now I’m going to get serious again because I found a fun little mini game for the rest. Of our little, uh, quest to play. I’m so ready. Director Peter Jackson has a cameo appearance in each film of the trilogy.

[01:24:30] Donna: We won’t go to the third one, but in the first and the second movies that we’ve covered now, getting to the end of film two, do you happen to know where he appeared? 

[01:24:40] Tim: I know where he appeared in the first one. 

[01:24:42] TJ: Was he at the Council of Elrond? Or like in the Elf Feast? 

[01:24:45] Tim: No, he was He was sitting outside the bar in Brie, he was sitting outside the Prancing Pony as they went by.

[01:24:54] Donna: He was eating something. What was he eating for bonus? An apple? Not an apple. Rebecca, any guess about what he would have been eating? Just take a wild guess. Soup. They’re in the village of Brie. Soup. 

[01:25:06] TJ: Was he eating a Brie wheel of cheese? 

[01:25:08] Donna: So close. But not close at all. Rice. A carrot. He was eating a carrot.

[01:25:13] Donna: Salad. A Salad. I’m so glad it was just a carrot. Now, in the two 

[01:25:19] TJ: towers, was he at Helms Deep with the hopeless women and children and old guys? 

[01:25:25] Donna: Oh my gosh. He wasn’t. I’m so sorry. So where was he? You don’t want to take a wild stab? 

[01:25:30] TJ: Why don’t there were 

[01:25:31] Donna: only so many things you were more than the principles of dad again?

[01:25:36] TJ: Was he a wargrider? 

[01:25:39] Donna: Oh, no, that would have been such a good idea. You need to stop stabbing your husband. I’m just he was The Rohan soldier throwing a spear toward the Uruk hai who were assaulting the fortress at Helm’s Deep. 

[01:25:55] Tim: Oh, I remember. I do remember one of those. It was probably him. 

[01:26:00] TJ: And in Return of the King, it’s a little known fact, but he is Aragorn.

[01:26:07] Tim: He plays Aragorn’s double 

[01:26:09] Donna: at the beginning of the movie. There’s a little disc. The role of Aragorn will now.

[01:26:23] TJ: Why would anybody think 

[01:26:25] Donna: that he only had the, he only had the serious podcast. Okay. He only had to grow like a foot and then, and And then he had to, well, he had a beard, but he did, he would have had to lose weight. Yeah, he would 

[01:26:40] TJ: have been a lot cooler, better actor. Viggo Mortensen, I just 

[01:26:45] Donna: think our, do Mortensen’s 

[01:26:48] Tim: first scene that was filmed in the movies was?

[01:26:51] Tim: His first, very first scene. Was he on his deathbed as an old man? It was the battle on the mountaintop where the kings had been. Weathertop? Weathertop. Where Frodo got stabbed with the Morgul blade. Oh yeah. That was his first scene. 

[01:27:08] Rebekah: Okay, I had a follow up fun trivia question, but it is not related to Lord of the Rings.

[01:27:13] Rebekah: It is a podcast trivia question. 

[01:27:14] Tim: Oh, okay. 

[01:27:16] Rebekah: Mr. World Geography Man. Our podcast has been downloaded by three different countries in Africa by people in three different countries. 

[01:27:24] Donna: The countries themselves did not 

[01:27:25] Rebekah: download the 

[01:27:26] Donna: podcast. 

[01:27:27] Rebekah: The 

[01:27:27] Donna: government, 

[01:27:28] TJ: the government is watching by legislation.

[01:27:31] Rebekah: Can you guess the three or at least one of the three?

[01:27:35] TJ: South Africa. That is accurate. That’s what I would say. Egypt. Yes. Um, I’m gonna say, I wanna say Kenya. 

[01:27:44] Rebekah: Nope. However, it is a country that all of us have heard of. Long name. Mozambique. 

[01:27:51] TJ: Mozambique. Okay. 

[01:27:52] Rebekah: So there you go. Now you know the countries in Africa that have had people downloading our podcast. So we should give our final verdicts.

[01:28:01] Donna: I’ll start. I never start. I never start. I did enjoy this book. I’ve read the first book more than once, but I think this was my first read for The Two Towers and I was okay with it. I, I agree with, uh, what we had said earlier that the pacing is a little, is a little different. You’ve got more going on and, but I still enjoyed how Peter Jackson interpreted it.

[01:28:26] Donna: So I’m, I’m going to give a nod to the movie. I’m not going to say I’ll never read the book again. I think it was an interesting flow through this world. And Tolkien is just, was a genius in this way, in the way he thought through things. And I think that’s one of the things that’s amazing for me personally, because I could never endure what he did to develop this and develop the world and the appendices and all the ways that he fleshed out everything that happened and fleshed out these people.

[01:28:55] Donna: And it’s just a great mind. And, um, so, but I’m, I’m going to give the nod to the movie. 

[01:29:01] TJ: It’s a toughie. This, this is probably going to be my favorite of the books in a lot of ways. Um, so I think it might be the best book. I don’t know if it’s the best movie. It has. A lot of great things. I think Fellowship of the Ring is going to be the best movie.

[01:29:16] TJ: I’m still going to give it to Two Eyed Tower’s movie. Comparing both book and film. The, the movie add, this is maybe even the, I don’t know about the weakest film. They added a lot and a lot was good. I hear a lot of criticism for the warg fight on the way to Helm’s Deep. Which was added. Oh, where it looked 

[01:29:35] Rebekah: like Aragorn like died for a second.

[01:29:38] TJ: Yeah, the fake out death bothers a lot of people where it’s like, did we really need to do that? Did it really go anywhere? Um, a lot of people I’ve heard complain about, Oh, it’s so hopeless. Oh, it’s so hopeless. They keep telling you how hopeless it is for an hour and a half. Helms Deep is amazing. The expansion of Helms Deep in the movie, great change.

[01:29:58] TJ: So glad, cause Helms Deep battle in the book, it was one chapter, right? It was amazing how fast it went by. The stuff we didn’t really, that we’re not really going to cover until the third epi the third movie, I suppose. There was so much depth in the second book. Makes it my favorite of the books, I think.

[01:30:17] TJ: But, the, the movie had so much going for it. The, the Smeagol was, was great. I liked what they did with Faramir, but I definitely see your perspective. Osgiliath? Was not perfect, but it was it was a necessary addition, and I think it was cool I especially think it was cool because in the third movie you go back to Osgiliath and Faramir losing the city So I think it’s a nice connection to the third movie, but some people criticize that But even with all of the additions that didn’t hit as hard, I think there were so many great things.

[01:30:53] TJ: Obviously, I mentioned the battle already. A little more Arwen. It doesn’t take too much time away. It’s not the most gripping stuff, but it’s nice to remember that Aragorn has a reason beyond, I’m the rightful king. There’s more, it’s about saving the Middle Earth for the ones he loves. So there were, there were a lot of good additions that I have to give this verdict, final verdict to the movie, but great job, Tolkien.

[01:31:19] Rebekah: Well, I would say, I mentioned this briefly earlier, overall, I still, I’m probably not going to read these again. I’m recognizing that this is just not a series that is super like for me and fits into what I like, which is hard because like I was hoping that reading the books would make me really love them.

[01:31:40] Rebekah: And I think reading the books has made me. So like, I feel like it’s so much more of a slog. Like it’s harder for me to want to get into the movies. And so I’m, I’m struggling. I, I didn’t love the book. Like it was less boring, but I don’t, that’s not a very good like way for me to feel. It’s just, Oh, it’s.

[01:31:59] Rebekah: It’s slightly different. So, um, I think the movie is better. I think that they took a lot of things that were separated for reasons I understand in the book, the book was like objectively well written. I’m not trying to say that that’s not, it’s just not for me as much as my like personal taste, but. I think that the movie took a lot of things that were a little bit, like, I had a really hard time understanding why are we going to all these places?

[01:32:26] Rebekah: Why are we fighting battles in all these places? Is it just that Uruk hai and orcs are just everywhere? Like, is that kind of the point? Is there, which of these is important? Like, I felt a little lost with all the places and things reading. And I felt like the movie helped collate those for me. Like it, it made a little more sense.

[01:32:44] Rebekah: I really liked Amir’s. Like side story thing like that resonated with me a lot I loved the portrayal of Gollum with the other two hobbits Like I think for the most part there were very few things about this probably Faramir And then I didn’t like Miriam Pippin kind of manipulating Treebeard as much.

[01:33:03] Rebekah: It just wasn’t my preference But other than that, I think everything else felt like a big win on the movie 

[01:33:10] Tim: Well, my verdict is the two towers has always been my least favorite book. Um, . 

[01:33:17] All: Interesting. Yeah, it’s been 

[01:33:18] Tim: my, it’s been, it’s very dark. Yeah. It’s been my least favorite book because it was, because it’s so dark.

[01:33:23] Tim: And I, and that’s why I said I didn’t know before they made it. I wasn’t sure how they were gonna make. a movie from The Two Towers that people would want to see and wouldn’t walk out of the theater thinking, Oh no, there’s no hope. It’s just, it’s just a, such a dark, dark book. I may have preferred it in the form that Tolkien originally would have put it out as one continuing story with those six parts.

[01:33:51] Tim: All in all, Peter Jackson did a really good job of taking all of the source material and making the best movie he could have made. I didn’t care for the choice with Faramir. That really has, has always bothered me. Because Faramir is one of my favorite characters from the books. Um, and the Faramir of the movie is not.

[01:34:13] Tim: I don’t like him as much. But I think he did a really good job. He added some stuff that was superfluous. Like the wargriders and Aragorn looking like he’s died. Um, I’m not sure exactly what that was for, except to try to ramp up a little bit the story with Ahomir, you know, being so disappointed that he wasn’t coming back, that he had died or whatever.

[01:34:35] Tim: But I would probably also say, and this is part of my end, one of the things that we’re discovering is these very well made, Top notch movies are making it a little harder to read the book and enjoy it as much. I mean, there’s some of the things that we do that you watch the movie, then you watch, you read the book, and you’re like, Well, there’s extra stuff in the book, and I really like the extra stuff.

[01:35:02] Tim: I’m not sure that this one is like that, oh, you know, well, the movie was good, but the book just has lots of extra stuff in it. I think Jackson probably made a better film than the book. Um, and so in this one, I’m going to give it to the film and, and this is my series that I asked us to do. So I 

[01:35:23] Rebekah: will also comment.

[01:35:24] Rebekah: That’s funny. Cause. Uh, one of our regular listeners, Seth, uh, was talking to me the other day and he’s always saying how this is his favorite book and film of the series. And so I love that, you know, it can be varied beyond, you know, we all have different opinions. Well, if you enjoyed our episode, please leave us a five star rating or review.

[01:35:43] Rebekah: We appreciate them a lot. You can find us on x instagram and facebook at book is better pod Maybe tiktok who knows the world is our oyster If you want to send feedback, ask us questions to answer on future episodes, or just have fun with us, join our free discord server at the link in the episode description.

[01:36:01] Rebekah: And hey, we are live on Patreon. You can join for free to see posts about new episodes come out. However, we do have some paid tiers. And if you join, you will get some really fun little bonus. things. So please check it out. And in the meantime, you know, they’re taking the hobbits. Where are they taking the hobbits?

[01:36:22] Tim: To Isengard. To Isengard. To Isengard. To Isengard. 

[01:36:26] Rebekah: I don’t, that doesn’t sound right to me.

[01:36:32] TJ: Where are they taking the hobbits? Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stove. They’re gonna save my whole life. He 

[01:36:43] Rebekah: lost it as he was going on there. 

[01:36:45] Donna: What do your elf eyes see? I like that too. I think they’re taking the hobbits 

[01:36:50] TJ: to boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew and guard. Goodbye, baby listeners.

[01:37:05] Rebekah: I’m just very proud of you. That was a 

[01:37:06] TJ: disgusting burp that I just muted..