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"The Two Towers": Good Worth Fighting For

The film, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, is about the future of peace on Middle-Earth. This peace is dependent upon the destruction of a ring, entrusted to the hand of a hobbit, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood). The ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, and filled with all his power and malice, slowly corrupts its wearer to do his will. All of the world is being plunged into war, and the only way of stopping Sauron and his army, is the perilous quest of taking the ring past the enemy and casting it into the fires of Mount Doom.

Hobbits are unobtrusive, peaceful, and unadventurous by nature. But both Frodo and his friend Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) find themselves on a dangerous journey to save Middle-Earth. On their way to the treacherous slopes of Mount Doom, far from their home in the Shire, they are famished, exhausted, and Frodo shows more and more of the strain of bearing the ring.

Frodo says, "I can't do this, Sam."

Sam replies, "I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are.

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened.

"But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

"Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now: Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back; only they didn't. Because they were holding on to something."

Frodo asks, "What are we holding on to, Sam?"

Sam replies, "That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for."

Content: PG-13 for war violence and frightening images

Elapsed time: Measured from the beginning of the opening of the New Line Cinema symbol, this scene begins at 02:44:12 and ends at 02:46:30

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