The story, without spoilers
The company formed in Rivendell has broken apart, and The Two Towers follows three separate roads. Frodo and Sam push on toward Mordor alone until they catch the creature that has been trailing them: Gollum, the Ring's former keeper, wretched and cunning, who offers to guide them in exchange for his life.
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli chase a band of orcs across the plains of Rohan, a kingdom of horse-lords whose old king, Théoden, has been hollowed out by the whispers of his adviser Gríma Wormtongue. Merry and Pippin, meanwhile, end up in the ancient forest of Fangorn. Saruman's armies are gathering, and the threads draw toward a desperate night at a fortress in the mountains.
Behind the scenes
The middle film's signature creation was Gollum. Andy Serkis performed the role on set alongside the other actors, and Weta's animators built the digital character on top of his performance. Serkis's physical, vocal performance gave the effects team something no animator could invent from scratch, and it remains the best-known example of performance capture on screen.
The siege of Helm's Deep was the other mountain to climb. Filming the battle took about three months, with most of the night-time shots handled by John Mahaffie. Its blend of real extras, miniatures and computer-generated crowds became a reference point for screen battles that followed. The film's two Oscars, for sound editing and visual effects, reflect exactly those sequences.
The screenplay credits grew to four for the middle chapter, with Stephen Sinclair joining Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson. The story is cut into three strands: Frodo and Sam heading for Mordor with Gollum as an uneasy guide, Merry and Pippin among the tree-like Ents, and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in the kingdom of Rohan, where new faces including Bernard Hill, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban and Brad Dourif join the cast.
Why it still matters
Middle chapters usually earn less than openers. The Two Towers earned more: $945.1 million against $897.5 million for The Fellowship of the Ring. That rise told the industry that audiences were following the story rather than sampling it, which gave Jackson room for a long, complete finale.
It also proved a franchise could open in the middle of the action, with no recap, and trust viewers to keep up. Bernard Hill's Théoden, Miranda Otto's Éowyn and Karl Urban's Éomer gave the trilogy a new set of human faces,, while Gollum's argument with himself became one of the most quoted scenes of the trilogy.
The film premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on 5 December 2002. Its original run of $923 million made it the highest-grossing film of 2002 and, at the time, the third-highest of all time, behind only Titanic and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Re-releases have since lifted it to about $945 million.
Critics singled out Gollum and the siege at Helm's Deep, and the film is often counted among the strongest sequels ever made. For audiences it proved that the trilogy could hold its quality across the long, difficult middle part of a story.
Gollum is the reason the film is still studied. Andy Serkis's performance was turned into a digital character who shared scenes with the live cast, and he is as much a presence in the film as any of the actors. Critics singled that work out when the film was released, and it remains a reference point for performance-driven digital characters. It also won the film two Oscars, for visual effects and for sound editing, from its six nominations, including Best Picture.