The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring premiered in theaters. The film opened to fanfare as the first installment of a long-awaited live-action adaptation of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series. But in the years since, it’s clear that it was more than that. Lord of the Rings wasn’t just a movie adaptation of a beloved series. It would set a template that Hollywood has followed for years since not just for epic fantasy, but the entire medium of film.
Since its release, there hasn’t been a production quite like The Lord of the Rings: an intense project that both adhered closely to the source material, but which also became an anchoring event in cinemas. Indeed, in the face of massive cinematic universe projects such as the Marvel, Harry Potter, or Star Wars films, a trilogy seems almost quaint.
Like the novels, The Lord of the Rings was essentially a single film split into smaller installments. Originally intended as a sequel to Tolkien’s debut The Hobbit, the novels are a story that grew in the telling, turning from a light-hearted fantasy adventure to a massive tome that would inspire almost every fantasy novel that followed it. The series has been adapted in the past with a series of animated films starting in 1977, but it wasn’t until the late-1990s that there was serious interest in doing a live-action version.
Jackson had initially planned for the adaptation to run for two films, with studios pushing for it to be condensed down to one. When the project landed with New Line Cinemas, studio head Bob Shaye somewhat famously asked, “Why would I want to do two films? There are three books. Why not do three films?” The expansion to become a trilogy would allow Jackson to adapt each novel, and to adapt more of Tolkien’s original material. Production for the film started in October 1999, with Peter Jackson helming an ambitious project: all three films of the series would be shot at the same time in New Zealand over a 438-day shoot, with additional reshoots.