Peter Jackson Had a Much Harder Time Making ‘The Two Towers’ Than ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ For 1 Agonizing Reason

One of the finest filmmakers in Hollywood, Sir Peter Jackson, is best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The film franchise is not only just a series of movies based on a novel but also a cinematic experience for the audience. After achieving fame with LotR, he moved on to create another masterpiece with the Hobbit trilogy. Both of the franchises are film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.

Although he earned millions through his films, Jackson always believed in a simple lifestyle. When his film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring earned $860 million worldwide, even then, the filmmaker was seen sporting a jacket mended at the seams with duct tape. Nothing can change him, not even his films’ critical and commercial successes. But did you know he faced a hard time filming Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for this one reason?

Was it more challenging to direct The Two Towers than The Fellowship of the Ring?

Based on the epic fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings film franchise was made. After Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson directed its sequel The Two Towers in 2002. But, during the filming, the director faced one major hurdle that gave him quite a hard time.

Talking about why The Two Towers was harder than The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly,

The Two Towers was much, much harder because of the simple fact that Fellowship was a linear story. It started with Frodo and followed him all the way through. The decisions were simple: What do you leave in and what do you cut out? You didn’t change the order of things; you just kind of followed the plot. In this film, because we have three different plot lines branching out, we had a lot of flexibility over how long we stayed with a particular plot before cutting to the other one. 

Jackson further explained it with an example and said, “In the last cut, [the CG creature] Gollum appears in the second scene of the film. But we did edits earlier this year where he didn’t appear for half an hour. It was much more fun and much more of a creative exercise this year.”

For those who don’t know, Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum, is one of the most talented motion-capture actors and is known for his voice acting.

What was the most painful thing for Peter Jackson to cut out?

In the same conversation, Peter Jackson revealed if anything was too painful for him to cut out from the movie. The director said, “Not a great deal was cut.” He further continued,

There’s not very much [extra footage] with Frodo and Sam because there’s so much of Gollum in each of their scenes, and because those shots are so difficult to do, you don’t really do Gollum unless you absolutely know that it’s going to be in the movie.

Jackson added that they had to cut a scene where Merry and Pippin drink the Ent draught. But it was so funny that the director had decided to put that on the DVD.

The Two Towers introduced many fan-favorite characters, including Gollum. Even though he made a cameo in The Fellowship of the Ring, his character arc was shown in the sequel. If you haven’t watched any of the movies from the trilogy, stream it on Max or rent it on Apple TV+.