What's there to say, another LOTR, spectacular, I love it, magical.
It starts with Gandalf fighting the Balrog, but this time we follow Gandalf instead of Frodo. He fights the Balrog with his sword while freefalling… and we’re back to Frodo.
Sam thinks they’re lost. The ring is getting heavier. They eat lembas bread and go on. When Gollum makes to grab the ring, the two of them capture him. They tie Gollum with elvish rope that burns him, but Frodo pities him - well, Sam not so much, he’s rather ruthless to Gollum.
Gollum says he’s been to Mordor before, so Frodo tells him to lead them to the black gate…
Pippin snatches his cloak-pin with his teeth and drops it on the ground for Aragorn to find: “not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall”.
They cross Rohan, home of the Horse Lords.
Legolas’ elf-eyes can see in the distance that the uruks are taking the hobbits to Isengard.
Saruman: “the world is changing. Who now has the strength to stand against the armies of Isengard and Mordor? To stand against the might of Sauron and Saruman, and the union of the two towers”
Saruman sets his orcs against humans, sends them to burn villages, starting with the lands of Rohan. A brave woman sends her two children away on a horse, telling them to alert Edoras.
Theodred is badly injured by orcs wearing the white hand of Saruman.
The king is the shadow of a man. Grima lies to him, he’s with Saruman, he wants Eowyn as a prize. Eomer son of Eomund, sees that. Grima banishes him from the kingdom.
Team Aragorn and the orcs have been running non stop, now the orcs stop to eat and rest when they are ambushed inthe night by some nights of Rohan who kill them all. When the riders meet Aragorn, out team knows there are no more orcs to chase. At first they believe the hobbits dead, then Aragorn reads the ground - he’s a ranger and he’s Aragorn, so there.
Aragorn sees that they escaped into Fangorn Forest. In there, Merry and Pippin are found by Treebeard, an Ent, who takes them to “the white wizard”, and for a moment they despair thinking it’s Saruman. So does team Aragorn, and their attack is stopped by the great wizard in a blinding white light: Gandalf the white. He tells them how he fought the Balrog (seeing all these paintings/illustration/whatever the right word is, coming to life was always so touching and exciting) - until he won. He too fell exhausted, darkness took him, but he came back to finish his task, only this time in white. Gandalf whistles for his horse, Shadowfax, and they all ride to Edoras.
They reach “Edoras and the Golden Hall of Meduseld. There dwells Theoden, king of Rohan”.
Once inside the hall, Gandalf walks up to Theoden while team Aragorn fights those who get in the way. Gandalf takes off his cloak showing he’s not grey anymore, and releases the king from his spell: “I will draw you, Saruman, as poison is drawn from a wound”. And he does. And Theoden comes back to himself. Grima Wormtongue is thrown out, but Aragorn stops the king from killing him. Theoden hadn’t even realised that his son Theodred had died.
Only now those two children reach Edoras. After the news of the attacked village, Gandalf wants him to fight, Theoden wants to avoid open war and relocate to the refuge of Helm’s Deep.
They flee to the mountains. Gandalf thinks they won’t be safe but trapped, and tells Aragorn they’ll need him.
“The grey pilgrim, that’s what they used to call me. 300 lives of men I’ve walked this Earth and now I have no time”
He has to go in search of something, but he’ll be back “at the first light, on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the east”
Grima now tells Saruman what he knows, that fearing an attack on the vulnerable city of Edoras Theoden will flee to the Great Fortress of Rohan, Helm’s Deep. A slow and dangerous road it is though, through the mountains. Saruman sends the warg riders.
Elrond and the elves will go to the west, on ships to the Undying Lands, where they won’t die, and he wants Arwen to join them and live. Aragorn wants that too, and even if she won’t take the jewel back he thinks she’ll go there. Elrond tells Arwen that even if her hope comes true and Aragorn wins, he’ll still be a mortal man, he will die and there will be nothing for her but grief until her long life will be over. So she leaves with the elves.
Theoden’s men fight the warg riders while Eowyn leads women and children to Helm’s Deep. They win but they think Aragorn fell. Well, he did fall, but he didn’t die. He comes back.
Eowyn has a big crush on Aragorn, but she also knows that he’s taken.
Aragorn saw the army approach and warns them.
Only women and children seek refuge in the caves, but every man or boy who can wield a sword is armed. This time they’re not travelling but in an actual war, so they wear armors and everything.
All of a sudden, a legion of elves arrives, sent by Elrond, and lead by Haldir. The uruk-hai arrive at night and the battle begins. (For some reason, in this battle I felt pain every time an elf died… its was so wrong…).
The attack from the gate was not the only one though; some orcs put a bomb underneath it and Helm’s Deep is breached (Grima told Saruman everything about the place).
They fight fiercely, Haldir is among the fallen, he sort of dies in Aragorn’s arms.
Aragorn and Gimli plan to attack from another angle, throw them off the bridge, so they go around and there is quite a jump to do, and Gimli can’t do it so he tells Aragorn to toss him… ok, I guess there’s a joke here, whatever, don’t really know why it should be so funny that they insist on it (they already did it in the first movie) but really, toss him? Like it’s nothing, he may be short but he’s a warrior with added armor and axe, how much can all that weight? And Aragorn just touches him and tosses him…
Irrevocably breached, they retreat.
At dawn, Gandalf appears as promised with Eomer and his Rohirrim.
Treebeard told Gandalf he’d keep the hobbits safe, they’re still with him in the forest. The Ents hold a meeting to decide if they’ll go to war or not. They decided not to join the war, until Treebeard arrives at the border with Saruman and sees all the trees cut down by the evil wizard, and all of a sudden it’s his war too. The Ent attack Isengard and destroy the orc-factory.
Gollum leads Frodo and Sam through the barren land and through a swamp with dead bodies in the waters, men elves and orcs from a battle of long ago.
Frodo is like enchanted watching one and falls in, but Gollum takes him out saving him. Frodo knows Gollum was once one of the river-folk, not much different from a hobbit. He also knows his name’s Smeagol. Gollum leads them to the Black Gate. They are almost seen, but the cloaks of Lorien make them look like a big rock. Frodo and Sam almost run through the gate following the army of Sauron (brilliant plan, Sam, shouldn’t be too hard on Gollum for stopping you).
Sam despises Gollum, thinks it’s too late to save him, there’s nothing good left in him. Frodo wants to believe he can be saved, because he is changing too.
They see more of Sauron’s army, men with oliphants come to join him. “no one at home will believe this”. Sam’s best trait, he still thinks they’ll go back home. Those men are attacked by archers lead by Faramir. When Faramir asks Frodo and Sam who they are if not orc spies, Frodo tells him they left Rivendell with seven companions, one of them Boromir, but Frodo didn’t know he had died. To have Faramir spare Smeagol’s life, Frodo lures him to be captured, and they are not nice. Poor Smeagol feels betrayed and Gollum takes over again.
Faramir learns from Gollum about the ring and is tempted to take it, wants it to go to Gondor. Faramir takes them all to Gondor, his men plus Frodo and Sam. Taken to Osgiliath, Sam yells at Faramir what happened to his brother, that he tried to take the ring. Faramir now has his men release the hobbits, and they set out again for Mordor. Gollum has taken charge over Smeagol again and wants to lead them to their death.
Frodo - Elijah Wood
Sam - Sean Astin
Merry - Dominic Monaghan
Pippin - Billy Boyd
Gandalf - Ian McKellen
Aragorn - Viggo Mortensen
Gimli - John Rhys-Davies
Legolas - Orlando Bloom
Theoden - Bernard Hill
Eomer - Karl Urban
Eowyn - Miranda Otto
Elrond - Hugo Weaving
Arwen - Liv Tyler
Saruman - Christopher Lee
Haldir - Craig Parker
Treebeard voice - John Rhys-Davies
Wormtongue - Brad Dourif
Gollum - Andy Serkis
Galadriel - Cate Blanchett
Faramir - David Wenham
plus a long list of talented people, and also
“cute Rohan refugee children: Billy and Katie Jackson” ^_^
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