The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Two Towers Question Definitely Answered

There is a mystery at the heart of the second installment of The Lord of the rings, from Peter Jackson’s 2002 adaptation to Tolkien’s 1954 original. The two Towers has tormented many readers who missed the only line in the books that gives the answer, and many moviegoers who have thought, “Wait … is there a second tower in this movie?”

The mystery, of course, is: Which towers are the Two towers?

In another scenario, perhaps, this would be an easy thing to understand, but the geography of Middle-earth almost bristles with needles of one kind or another, from Saruman’s tower in Isengard; to the steeples of Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor; to Barad-dûr, the perch of the Eye of Sauron, and they all play an important role in The Lord of the rings.

But it’s a valid question, one that even JRR Tolkien entertained himself for most of the time he was writing. The Fellowship of the Ring. And it plagued Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh again when it was time to become The Lord of the rings in three movies.

When you really get down to business The two Towers just not a very good name for the intermediate delivery of The Lord of the rings. But then it never was of course have a name at all.

One book to rule them all

Tolkien imagined The Lord of the rings as a single book told in six named sections, not a trilogy. But its publishers were wary of the high price of paper in post-war England and thought readers would be reluctant to see a thousand-page tome, so they ordered it to be divided into three parts with two sections each.

This meant that Tolkien had to come up with names for all three parts. The second book in the trilogy, containing sections III and IV of the six-section epic, proved challenging. Section III linearly followed Section II, covering about a week of the adventures of Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Merry, and Pippin in Rohan. Section IV went back in time a week to continue with Frodo and Sam and then continued for more than two weeks. At no point did these two sections intersect.

Finally, Tolkien settled on The Fellowship of the Ring, The two Towers, and The return of the King, so that the titles of the three books could be included in the first printing of Fellowship to attract the satisfied reader. According to his biographer Humphrey Carpenter, he initially wrote to his publisher Allen & Unwin that the towers referred to in the title should be left ambiguous.

Then he wrote that he was trying to decide on specific towers, but was rambling between three different options. Perhaps the events of the book were best represented by Orthanc and Barad-dûr, the strongholds of Saruman and Sauron respectively, as the main antagonistic forces of The Lord of the rings? Or perhaps it was Minas Tirith and Barad-dûr, representing the last refuge of the forces of good and the stronghold of the greatest evil? OR, perhaps it was Orthanc, the location of the final conflict of Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Pippin and Merry’s Two towers adventures, where Gandalf strips Saruman of his magical powers, and Cirith Ungol’s tower, the location of Sam and Frodo’s cliffhanger cliffhanger Two towers arc, where Frodo is captured alive by orcs and Sam is left alone to carry the One Ring to Mount Doom.

I wish I could tell you it was any of these, but unfortunately, a month after that, Tolkien didn’t settle on any of those combos.

What towers are the two towers?

While i was finishing The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien decided that the two towers of The two Towers It would be … Orthanc and Minas Morgul.

Morgul Mines? Are you kidding, professor?

Most likely right now you’re thinking “If it’s not Saruman’s tower, or Sauron’s tower, or the tower in which Frodo is captured, then what the heck is Minas Morgul?” Minas Morgul, formerly a city of Gondor, hence the “Mines”, as in Minas Tirith, is the stronghold of the Witch-king of Angmar, leader of the Nazgul. Appears in solo one scene in Tolkien the Two towers, in which Sam and Frodo cower as the Witch King leads his armies out of a spooky castle, bound for Minas Tirith and the Battle of Pelennor Fields. That is all!

And here’s the fun part: Minas Morgul doesn’t appear in the movie. The two Towers not at all, due to the particular brine that the book’s non-novelistic structure presented to Boyens, Jackson, and Walsh. If you follow the timeline of overlapping events from The Lord of the rings” When Frodo and Sam see Minas Morgul, Gandalf, Aragorn and the rest of the crew have already crossed Rohan twice, healed Theoden, defended Helm’s Deep, sacked Isengard, broken the staff of Saruman, they have walked the Paths of the Dead, and Gandalf and Pippin have reached Minas Tirith.

When the Battle of Helm’s Deep occurs, the moment Boyens, Jackson, and Walsh decided to buckle up the end of their Two towers, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum have yet to meet Faramir. To avoid including much more content in The two Towers Than was actually feasible, the trio manipulated Sam and Frodo’s timeline a bit, created a story arc for them to get past it, and left a lot of the plot from the Sam and Frodo book for 2003. The return of the King.

The creative demands of the adaptation meant that Minas Morgul only appeared in Return of the King, What a sickly green castle It shoots a giant supernatural laser into the sky before throwing down the armies of Mordor. So, in addition to the monumental task of translating Tolkien’s work to the screen, Jackson and his team had to come up with their own two towers for The two Towers, which Galadriel kindly explains in the movie trailer.

But even though the trailers of The two Towers explicitly listed its namesake spiers as Barad-dûr and Orthanc, the American psyche was already grappling with the legacy of two other towers. And through no fault of their own, the overall success of The Fellowship of the Ring invited to make some comparisons for its long-awaited sequel.

Oh no, is this about 9/11?

Image: New Line Cinema

It sure is!

Months before The two TowersReleased December 2002, a man named Kevin Klerck wore the now-missing PetitionOnline.com to create the request “Rename ‘The Two Towers’ to something less offensive. “His manifesto said, in part:

Peter Jackson has decided to name the sequel reluctantly [to The Fellowship of the Rings] The two Towers. The title is clearly intended to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center. In this post-September. In the world, it is unforgivable that this should be allowed to happen.

Unlike many of the post 9/11 reactions to the Lord of the Rings movies, Klerck was not serious, but the petition still attracted thousands of signatures and enough news coverage that I was able to corroborate my confusing memories of 20 years ago with a quick Google search. Other search results indicate that Klerk’s work may not have been the only one of its kind; although I cannot tell if other requests or efforts were sincere or equally satirical.

Regardless, talk about the core problem with The two Towers as a title: It is very difficult to know what the hell it means. It is an idea that Tolkien produced under editorial mandate and then, as a surprisingly large number of things in The Lord of the rings – worked backwards to find a solution that made more sense to him than to anyone else.

There are many die-hard fans of the books who, 20 years later, are still excited about how Faramir had to become a bad boy for the film version of The two Towers, so that Sam and Frodo would have something to do while their friends were at the much more dramatic Battle of Helm’s Deep. But as a pedantic book lover, I think we should all band together for a new version of the movie.

By Peter Jackson The two Towers actually improves Tolkien’s, because at least he knows which two towers it is. Minas Morgul my ass.