Two Towers Cast
Calls Good Worth Fighting For
National Catholic Register
Dec. 22-28, 2002
by STAN WILLIAMS
Register Correspondent
NEW YORK - J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, "The Lord of the Rings is of
course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first,
but consciously in the revision."
Recently, I joined a small group of religion writers in New York
for the national press preview of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J.R.R.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
This is the second of three films of the famous trilogy. Each is
being released a year apart; The Two Towers opened in U.S. theaters Dec. 18.
A day after our preview, we sat at a round table and interviewed
members of the film's cast and crew as their handlers ushered them in and out.
What follows is a compilation of the many interviews that occurred that day.
Tolkien's Middle Earth is a world of great fantasy, yet its
themes are anchored in real, historic events. Is that so?
John Rhys-Davies (Gimli the Dwarf): Yes. The unusual
thing that happens to Tolkien happens early. In World War I he's a captain in
the British Army during the first day of the first battle of the Sommes, when
the British army lost 20,000 killed. Huge losses. You don't come through that
fire, unimaginable fire, without it either destroying you or making you morally
as a man. Tolkien is very aware of the presence of evil.
Peter Jackson (Director): Only two or three of his classmates
were alive afterward. Consequently, Tolkien is very anti-war. He wrote this
second book, The Two Towers, between 1937 and 1941, and he's very much asking,
"Do you allow yourself to be enslaved?" The ultimate value at stake
is your free will, and freedom. It's not just the freedom from being taken
prisoner and enslaved by all these invading orcs, but being enslaved by the
ring itself. The threat of the ring is that it takes away your freedom, it
takes away your ability to make your own decisions - because it starts to
control you.
The first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring,
came out just after 9/11 when we became suddenly aware that earth, not Middle
Earth, was faced with a pervasive and unprecedented evil. In this second film
the two towers represent a dominating evil, ironically how the 9/11 terrorists
probably saw the two towers of the World Trade Center. Is there a parallel?
Rhys-Davies: One of the films' messages is that if we
don't get this war with terrorism right we could lose our civilization. And we
better understand that, and we better make the sort of accommodations
intellectually and get our own moral status right if we're going to meet this
challenge. This is not a challenge that is going to be one month, 10 months, or
15 years. This is something that we're going to have to deal with at least for
the next 40 or 50 until we find a reasonable way to contain it.
Barrie Osbourne (producer): If the world is going to survive we
have to find a way to live together and appreciate differences - not tolerate
differences, but celebrate differences. There needs to be harmony and an
appreciation for diversity in the world rather than isolation in fanatical
movements.
Rhys-Davies: Tolkien is aware that civilizations can be
lost. He has a sense of history. There are whole civilizations that we know nothing
about, except that there seems to be a script but we can't decipher it. Some
ruins and things we can't recognize, a people and a culture have completely
vanished. Tolkien knows that every few hundred years or so there comes a
challenge to a generation where you can lose it all.
Does the movie have any answers for us, in how we should act or
what we should do?
Miranda Otto (Eowyn): In the realm of Rohan, at the side of her
uncle, King Theoden, Eowyn lived her life by her ideals and is prepared to die.
The world today is so much filled with compromise. Eowyn is someone who
doesn't, and yet she says, "I fear neither death nor pain." She fears
instead a slow crumbling away of values that she wants to live by, even if
doing so risks certain death. She's determined to be completely true to what
she believes in.
Rhys-Davies: There is such a resonance between what
Tolkien is talking about and where we are today. We need the spirituality of
the elf, we need the earthly indestructible qualities of the dwarf, we need the
great and good simple hearts of the hobbits, and we must aspire to see the king
that has yet to come take his place on his throne. We all have a choice. We're
either slaves or we are princes.
We make slaves of ourselves when we should be like princes dealing
with each other on the level of the Pope, with great courtesy and mutual
respect and awareness of our own majesty and authority. Tolkien understands
that. It is not too weird to imagine that we get this wrong, and to see the
cross taken down from St. Peter's, and the Sistine painted over, and a hammer
being taken to the Pieta and to the David in Florence, and perhaps in 70 or 80
years to see these phenomenal portraits here in the New York galleries burned
and destroyed.
Bernard Hill (King Theoden of Rohan): Many of the characters
in The Lord of the Rings are in the stage and condition that they're in because
of this great evil influence and power that permeates the whole of Middle
Earth, which is what the quest is all about - to destroy it, and let good
survive - to let the good come back and conquer. And the fact that it's the
world of man makes it all the more relevant because we're all fighting that
good and evil battle today, as we always have done. Which is why tales such as
these are always true.
We've been talking about how the movie deals with our corporate
battle against evil on a global scale. But The Lord of the Rings addresses our
personal struggle with evil, especially through the character of Gollum,
doesn't it?
Andy Serkis (Gollum, Smˇagol): Gollum is like an
archetype. His possession of the ring has caused a Cain and Abel situation, and
he kills Smˇagol (his former self). It's like he's fallen from grace and he's
expelled from paradise.
He's made a bad decision and it takes him.
Smˇagol is like this abused child. This abusive parent has crushed
him for hundreds of years, yet the light in his soul starts to emerge as Frodo
brings it out of him. It's like the fight between your dark and your light
side. You can let your dark side run riot or you can send out positive energy
into the world. Most people do pretty good policing that dark side, but Gollum
hasn't.
So, is Gollum a good guy or a bad guy?
Serkis: Gollum is a real threat to them, and thus Sam's reaction
is understandable. But Gollum was not born evil. He had a weak moral stature
and the ring got its claws into him, and he responded very quickly to it.
Smˇagol is the survivor; Gollum is the predator. I wanted the
audience to feel they had some connection to this character, that he wasn't
just a black-and-white villain. I know I have a dark side and light side.
Gollum in a way is like a little child. He can throw a tantrum if he doesn't
get his way.
I know because when I'm trying to get my son to the other end of
the supermarket, I've seen him crawling on the floor like Gollum.
What is it that helps Frodo see Gollum in a different light?
Serkis: Frodo asks Gandalf, "Why didn't Bilbo kill him?"
To which Gandalf answers, "I've got some feeling that he's going to play
some part in your journey."
The lesson here is not taking someone at face value. Frodo becomes
powerful because he's able to grow and see that this treacherous little
creature is worthy of some kind of care. Gollum is really a ring junky or
heroin addict, and Frodo sees this and begins to care for him - because the
ring has affected Frodo in the same way, and that creates a bond between them
that is really, really strong.
Phillipa Boyens (screenwriter): Because of the ring's
influence, Frodo is faced with this huge portent of turning into something like
Gollum. So it becomes very, very important for Frodo to save Gollum; somehow
that's going to allow Frodo to save himself from what he sees as his fate. So
Frodo begins to see the good side of Gollum, Smˇagol emerges, and Frodo and Sam
survive. Tolkien said that no one is wholly evil. Not even Gollum. That is the
great "humanity" that is in these stories.
Even Galadriel, being offered the ring by Frodo, is gravely
tempted and says, "All shall love me and despair." But she passes the
test. Things aren't black and white, things aren't just good vs. evil. It's
continual conflict. It's about the struggle for belief and faith.
Summing up, what does the movie have to say to us about our
struggles with evil on both a global and personal level?
Elijah Wood (Frodo): I think The Two Towers really says it well in
the speech that Sam has at the end of the movie. It's a message I'd love for
people to walk away thinking about. As Frodo is about to give up and question
what is there worth fighting for - "I can't do this, I'm incapable of
carrying this ring" - Sam in this emotional speech says, "No matter
how bad things are, no matter how much evil there is in this world, there is
always some good worth fighting for, worth standing up for and worth some
effort in carrying on."
Stan
Williams, Ph.D., writes occasionally about Judeo-Christian themes in motion
pictures between his own film projects at SWC Films,
http://www.StanWilliams.com.