Review: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Eowyn Wants to Kick Butt, Sam Gets to Use Frodo’s Cool Flashlight, Treebeard is Slow, Sauron is Somewhat Funny, and I Now Have Arachnophobia (Spoilers).

After reading Fellowship of the Rings, I obviously didn’t stop to take a break, take some time to process the greatness of what I had read, maybe grab a snack. Nope. I immediately jumped to The Two Towers, because patience, what’s that? I had made it my mission at that point to absorb all Tolkien lore as quickly as possible and I wasn’t going to stop. Heck, there’s still a ton of Tolkien books I need to read, some of which are very, very hard to find in stock and aren’t even sold on Amazon (looking at you, Parma Eldalambaron Volume 17), but I’m getting sidetracked. What was I doing? Right. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, lets go.

#1: Legolas is Either Sassy or Somewhat Useless

I know I’m going to really piss off the horde of chronically-online, Wattpad-addicted, rabid Legolas fangirls, but Legolas, while he has is good scenes, is pretty useless. I’m not talking about Orlando Bloom’s Legolas here, I’m talking about the one from the books. He’s somewhat of a backup character and even in the books, it seems like most of the other characters are pulling his weight for him. This meme, though based off the movies, sums him up pretty well:

For example, when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas are searching for Merry and Pippin, and they run into Eomer, Legolas could see them from miles away (“Legolas! What do your elf-eyes see?”), but still let Aragorn just lie on the ground for a while trying to listen for them. Instead of telling Aragorn that before hand, he just waits to give a full description of how many there are in the Eothed with descriptions of the faces and hair colors. While this is somewhat funny, it’s also one of Legolas’s more annoying scenes.

#2: Treebeard

Fun fact about Treebeard: he was based off of C.S. Lewis, which makes me wonder if C.S. Lewis was kinda slow in real life. However, even with that said, Treebeard is actually one of the funnier characters in the books because of how slow he is. One of the best scenes in the book is when he says that the council has decided that Merry and Pippin aren’t Orcs and they’re like, “WHAT?!”

#3: Eowyn Needs a Hug

Eowyn is one of the most relatable characters in the book for me, personally. Throughout the story, she feels weighed down and trapped by her duties and the expectations heaped upon her. She slowly grows weary of her life and wants to go on adventures with the men as a Sheildmaiden, but isn’t allowed to. When she meets Aragorn, while she doesn’t love in the way the movies show, she still has a massive crush on him because she’s envious of the freedom that he has. When he turns her down, she falls into a deep depression to the point where even Legolas feels bad for her. It’s this depression that leads her to the levels of desperation that send her to the battle of Pelennor Feilds in Return of the King.

#4: Giant. Friggin’. Spiders.

Growing up with two Tolkien fans for parents, we have an ongoing joke where if we see a giant spider in the house, we automatically call it “Shelob”. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember and while the Movie-Shelob is terrifying, she’s nowhere as terrifying as she is in the books. That’s probably a good thing since I already want to burn the house down whenever I see one of those disgusting red spiders with the corn kernel-looking butts. Imagine if the movies had been able to capture her in her full terror.

#5: Melkor vs. Sauron

Something that I thought was funny about The Two Towers was how different Sauron is as compared to Melkor when it comes to spiders. In The Silmarillion, Melkor is terrified of Ungoliant and screams so loudly like a little girl when she tries to eat him that the Balrogs could hear him all the way from Angband and had to fly out to save him. While it’s not specified (unfortunately) in the books, I think it’s pretty safe to guess that Melkor had arachnophobia ever after that experience.

Now contrast this with Sauron, who used to be Melkor’s right-hand man. In The Two Towers, not only does Sauron turn a blind eye to Shelob’s presence at Cirith Ungol, but he also sees her as his favorite pet and openly calls her his cat. He even goes so far as to feed her with Orcs and unneeded slaves for entertainment. When you take into account that Shelob is the daughter of Ungoliant, this is even more terrifying and hilarious to think about, since it seems that Sauron was just trying to prove that he was even more evil than his former boss.

#6: Sam is the G.O.A.T

Give this Hobbit all of the medals in Middle Earth. He deserves each and every one of them. Not only did he put up with Frodo’s growing angstiness and Gollum’s psychotic nature, but he never left Frodo’s side and even dealt the killing blow to Shelob. We all need at least one friend like this.

Until next time,

M.J.