NEW YORK -- The epic odyssey, the most challenging journey of his young life, continues for Elijah Wood, the 21-year-old American who plays the hero Hobbit Frodo in Peter Jackson's epic trilogy, The Lord Of The Rings.
"It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" Wood tells The Sun on the eve of Wednesday's release of the second instalment in the trilogy, The Two Towers.
The film, in which the fragmented members of the Fellowship continue their quest to triumph over evil, is provoking debates. But not just about whether it works as a movie, but about its universal themes, including environmentalism, the morality of war and the ability of ordinary folk to change history.
"Isn't that extraordinary -- it's that kind of movie," Wood muses, fighting a hacking cough that goes with his flu-cold, but doesn't stop him from engaging in a weekend of press interviews. If Frodo Baggins can fight off Orcs and Uruk-hai, the modest former child actor from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, cannot allow himself to be felled by a virus as he discusses the role that is making him a star as a young adult.
"I think what is so great about it," Wood says, "is that so many people see it as this kind of adventure epic, which it is. But it also affects people on a very profound level. And it does leave room for lots of discussion and conversation as to the parallels and interpretations and so forth. Which is great, so great. We can stand behind it all the more."
For Wood, like his Kiwi director, international co-stars and legions of New Zealanders involved in the production, The Lord Of The Rings is cinematic art.
"It is -- absolutely! I think we're very proud to stand behind something that we can consider art because it is very beautiful." And it has depths of meaning, Wood says.
As for The Two Towers, in which Frodo starts to really lose grasp of his sweet disposition and become possessed and transformed by the evil embodied in the One Ring that binds them all, Wood recognizes that the movie is problematic. It is dramatic, but it also, by its very nature, only continues the story. Completion will occur in The Return Of The King, the third instalment, slated for release in December, 2003.
"I actually feel that way about this as well," Wood says in agreement to the proposition that The Two Towers leaves audiences thrilled but in a state of agitated expectation.
"It's the centre. It's the middle piece. There is something kind of awkward about it and you can't really get around that. And that's primarily why it was so difficult for us making this movie. It was always the most difficult to figure out. It was always the most complex in terms of all these storylines that we have to fit together and fuse together.
"It's a complex part of the journey and it's all separated." Wood is referring to the three parallel storylines. One involves the adventure of Frodo, Sam (Sean Astin) and Gollum (Andy Serkis). Another involves the Hobbits Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and their interaction with the resurrected Gandalf (Ian McKellan). And another involves the human hero Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and his leadership in the staggering battle for Helm's Deep, working in concert with his Fellowship friends Legolas the Elf (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the Dwarf (John Rhys-Davies), along with a host of new human characters.
"How do you piece those (stories) together in a way that's cohesive and that continues the momentum of the story at hand?" Wood asks rhetorically about the efforts of co-writer and Oscar-nominated director Peter Jackson.
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