The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Rated PA: Intense and sustained epic battle violence and scary images. Not suitable for children.

The second installment of The Lord Of The Rings breaks even deeper ground in the theme of conflict convincing us that the greatest battle we face is not against the numerous attacks from without, but the inherent and at times overbearing burden of good against evil within.

The evil ruler Saruman orchestrates an all-out attack on Theoden, King of Rohan, in his attempt to rule Middle-earth. While Frodo and Sam continue their journey to destroy a powerful ring, the team of Aragorn, Gandalph, Legolas and Gimli prepare for war in the hopes of stopping the oncoming destruction. The result is a story filled with adventure, romance and honour.

Among the engaging characters in the film, the brilliant dramatization of Gollum, a human-like being, is the most compelling. He serves as a guide to Frodo and embodies the Christian experience as he struggles to serve his master on one hand while battling against his evil cravings on the other. Gollum is so overcome with his dual nature that he even refers to himself as “us”. Maybe that’s a more accurate description than we realize. Even as Darth Vader faced an internal struggle of good versus evil in Return of the Jedi, so Gollum portrays, and has himself understood, the co-existence of good and evil within us. The apostle Paul says: “Why do I do the things I don’t want to?”

Gollum faces his evil side and wins out by commanding it to “leave and never come back”. But evil becomes an ongoing battle that, oddly enough, seems to intensify the more he tries to resist it. The film reinforces the idea that the degree to which we surrender to evil is the degree to which we give up our freedom to fight it.

While The Two Towers involves supernatural powers and mystical places it does not shy away from addressing the evils of witchcraft. After Theoden is freed by the wizard Gandalph from the oppression of the evil Saruman, he recognizes his servant had manipulated him. “Your witchcraft would have had me on all fours crawling like a beast!” he says. Here, and in other places, the film expresses a key difference between the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series. The former clearly (though unknowingly) promotes witchcraft, while the latter, thankfully, abhors it.

Regardless of where we find ourselves in our battles (be they external or internal) the film reminds us (as Aragorn so simply yet so powerfully said) that “there is always hope”. In witnessing the struggle Gollum goes through, Frodo says: “I have to believe he can come back.” The greatest challenge is not to simply win the battle, but to recognize that it can not be won on our own.

Paul Boge is a writer and an engineer. He attends North Kildonan MB Church in Winnipeg.