The Big Surprise
 
Okay. It's time for me to admit one of my personal quirks. (No, not that one!) For me, much of viewing the Two Towers was very like the moment a friend experienced when watching The Empire Strikes Back: "Wait a minute! Either the Millennium Falcon spent an awfully long time outrunning the Empire, or Luke's Jedi training with Yoda was really short!"

Consistent time lines and geography are essential to my enjoyment of a film. So, for a great deal of Jackson's second Lord of the Rings installment, I was squirming in my seat. After all, they'd taken Tolkien's neatly ordered and sensible universe and turned it into hamburger. Why?

Of course, the screenwriters faced a huge challenge because Tolkien's book is neatly divided into two halves which don't cut back and forth between each other—and that doesn't work with a movie. Making matters worse, there are really two parallel narratives to the "west" half of the book, making a total of three distinctive story threads to follow.

So clearly there was deliberate intent in ending The Towers Towers where Jackson did. It was no accident that the movie closes with the drowning of Isengard instead of the disaster at Cirith Ungol; but it may have been a very big surprise to many Tolkien fans.

Thread One: Sam, Frodo and Gollum
 
The first of the major story threads follows Sam and Frodo on the first leg of their journey toward Mordor. At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, they have come into the Emyn Muil, and it is here that they encounter Gollum. Reconciling themselves to the need of his services as a guide, they take a path through the Dead Marshes to the Black Gate. From there, Gollum persuades them to travel South through Ithilien, where they are captured by Faramir's men.

In a stunning departure from Tolkien's text, the Steward of Gondor's younger son declines the honorable choice given him by Tolkien—instead taking the Ring Bearer by force toward Gondor via Osgiliath. There, in another shocking invention, Frodo comes face to face with the Witch King of Angmar. In Tolkien's novel, the Nazgûl are wholly ignorant, at this point, of the Ring's whereabouts! But the real capper is this: these events are being played out a full six days earlier than they should be! And that's no mystery to anyone who picks up a copy of The Lord of the Rings—Appendix B of The Return of the King contains a day-by-day breakdown of the story's events.

Thread Two: Merry, Pippin and Treebeard
 
Meanwhile, of course, the other two Hobbits are spirited away from Anduin toward Fangorn by the odd alliance of Orcs from the Barad-dûr and Orthanc. The feuding wretches are butchered by Éomer's éored as Merry and Pippin crawl off into the Forest. There, they encounter the Ent Treebeard.

Now, what happens to them over the next four days? In the movie, apparently not much, and over a much longer period of time. In the book, they spend a night at Treebeard's "home" before going with him to the two-day Entmoot. In the movie, it's not clear at all what they were doing for up to five days. The Entmoot then takes less than a day, and—shockingly—the Ents decide to do nothing at all about Saruman. It takes a "clever" idea on the part of the Hobbits to rouse the Ents—never mind how Merry and Pippin would have been able to guess what was really going on at Isengard, much less anticipate how it would affect Treebeard. And again, these concluding events transpire at least twenty-four hours later than they should according to Tolkien's time line.

Thread Three: Helm's Deep
 
Having chased Merry and Pippin across Rohan, Aragorn and his companions follow their friends' trail into Fangorn. There they re-encounter Gandalf, now The White. Together, they journey to Edoras, where Théoden casts off Saruman's influence and retakes leadership of his people.

But rather than lead the women and children to Dunharrow, Éowyn travels with them—and the Riders of Rohan—to Helm's Deep. On the way, Jackson adds an ambush by Warg-mounted Orcs, after Gandalf mysteriously departs. Days later, Aragorn rejoins his companions at Rohan's mountain fortress, just in time for the final defensive preparations—and, in yet another odd invention, the arrival of a band of Elves from Rivendell, led by Haldir (of Lórien!). Battle ensues; it is climaxed by Gandalf's arrival with Éomer's éored. And it is this force that annihilates the Orcs—not the Ents and Huorns. Because they can't! They're still ripping up Isengard!

The Cleansing of Isengard
 
The lynch-pin of Jackson's climax is, of course, the destruction of Saruman's fortress by Treebeard and pals. As the Ents rip up the mountain reservoirs on the Isen (another Jackson invention), we are treated to a reworking of Tolkien's musings on the nature of Story, courtesy of Sam:

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you—that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't."

Why End This Way?
 
What Jackson really wants is to end his movie with an image of renewal: a single visual metaphor that will tie together the spiritual healing needed by Frodo, the bright light needed to counter the darkness of battle at Helm's Deep, and cleansing for the blight of Isengard. So he plays fast and loose with Tolkien's time lines and geography in order to bring us, at the last, to the flood: not only the flood of Isengard, but an invocation of the proto-mythological deluge—or, if you like, God's cleansing of the world in the time of Noah. "A new day will come," the rainbow promises. "And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

"Those were the stories that stayed with you," Jackson tells us—the ones, perhaps, that we heard in Sunday School or from our parents. They "meant something, even if we were too small to understand why." And, in part, Peter Jackson is using his films (and Tolkien's story) to make "sense" of those Biblical stories—for himself, and for us.

LOTR Coverage Index here

E-mail Greg Wright here