The mother of all battles

There are battles and there are epic battles.

If you think the battle for Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers was massive, the scale of the fighting in part three of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, will make the fighting in Towers look like a sandbox game of toy soldiers.

In King, you will see a much larger vista of Middle-Earth — and the much, much larger battle for it.

In fact, what has left moviegoers and war-freaks at the end of Towers itching for months to see King is this: The promise of adrenalin-whipped battle-cries and multiple clangs resounding the clash of steel against steel all reverberating through the theater’s sensurround sound system.

Movie-goers are eagerly awaiting the biggest cinematic clash of good against evil this year. An advanced screening for die-hards is being sponsored by the Philippine STAR, Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, Philips, Globe Telecom and SM at Megamall cinema 4 on Dec. 18, 2003, 8 p.m. Tickets are available at SM Department Stores in Makati, North Edsa and Megamall.

"Sauron’s wrath will be terrible, his retribution swift," says the wizard Gandalf, played by British actor Ian Mackellen, at the end of Towers. We knew what was coming.

First of all, the good guys will face the 200,000-strong orc army of disembodied warlord Sauron. At Helm’s Deep, Aragorn and company drove off a host of 10,000 invading Uruk-hai.

Unlike the battle for Helm’s Deep, Sauron’s hordes are backed this time by several mumakil — elephantine creatures four-storeys tall — charging through the bone-white city’s first wave of defense like oversized battle tanks on legs.

There are a number of assault towers — necessary for troops to scale high walls and battlements — that will move inexorably forward, pushed by giant trolls like those our heroes faced in part one, The Fellowship of the Ring.

Of course, where there are walls to be breached there are catapults — the ancient version of today’s artillery cannons — lobbing boulders and flaming rocks.

In the book, Sauron’s orcs also maliciously catapulted the decapitated heads of Minas Tirith’s slain defenders over the walls. Many of those whose heads were cast over the walls were killed or captured defending the city.

"They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapeless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain," one passage in the book went.

We will soon find out if the movie’s producers would have that in a film meant for general patronage.

A major challenge in filming King was showing how the battle would unfold without leaving audiences confused about what was happening in the story, according to Peter Jackson, the trilogy’s director who also co-wrote and co-produced it.

In filming the siege of Minas Tirith, the filmmakers had to plan the assault and felt as they were plotting an attack on a real city: When do the catapults fire, when do the siege towers advance and when do the enemy troops charge.

Remember, unlike today wherein conflicts can be won by a push of a button, this is a war in which armies see the whites of the enemies’ eyes.

While special effects have become a staple for enhancing cinematography, the Lord of the Rings series has redefined special effects.

Computer-generated imagery, prosthetic makeup and other special effects are used in the trilogy to create what would otherwise remain solely within the realm of author JRR Tolkien’s imagination and the minds of the people who read the Lord of the Rings trilogy he created.