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Just like The Fellowship of the Ring four-disc set, this one is encased in an elegant, well-designed, and surprisingly sturdy cardboard slipcase with a fold-out digitpak inside. Also included is a useful insert booklet with a fold-out map of all the supplements and supplements-within-supplements, all of which are presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1).

Four feature-length audio commentaries
The extended edition of the film is spread across the first two discs, and it features four feature-length audio commentaries that cover every aspect of how the film was made. The first commentary, “The Director and Writers,” includes director Peter Jackson and screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. The second commentary, “The Design Team,” includes seven people: Weta Workshop creative supervisor Richard Taylor, Weta Workshop manager Tania Rodger, production designer Grant Major, conceptual designers Alan Lee and John Howe, supervising art director and set decorator Dan Hennah, and art department manager Chris Hennah. The third commentary, “The Production / Post-Production Team,” includes a whopping 15 people, including producer Barrie M. Osborne, executive producer Mark Ordesky, director of photography Andew Lesnie, editor Mike Horton, co-producer Rick Porras, composer Howard Shore, and a host of sound editors and visual effects people. And, last but not least, is the “The Cast” commentary, which includes 16 of the usual suspects, including Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, and Andy Serkis.

Again, New Line has done us the great service of utilizing the subtitle function to tell us who’s speaking on the commentary, which is extremely helpful considering that some of them feature more than a dozen people with unfamiliar voices.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Origins of Middle-earth
This 30-minute documentary assembles several scholarly experts to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary roots and how his life experiences, most notably his experiences in World War I and his interactions with other literary greats like C.S. Lewis, shaped his work on The Lord of the Rings. One of the most interesting points made is that, had Tolkien lived today and tried to publish his masterwork, no one would have probably touched it because it goes so firmly against the grain of the modern publishing world.

From Book to Script: Finding the Story
This 21-minute featurette focuses on the difficulties of adapting The Two Towers into a workable screenplay. Most of the interview time is given over to cowriter Philippa Boyens, who talks about most of the difficult decisions made in the adaptation, including changing the ending, intercutting the multiple storylines, dropping the character of Tom Bombadil, and the Internet controversy around the initial idea of including Arwen in the Battle for Helm’s Deep.

Designing and Building Middle-earth
This section contains three sections on the film’s production design. Designing Middle-earth, a comprehensive 45-minute documentary, covers everything about production and art design, from the original conceptual sketches by Alan Lee and John Howe, to the construction of all the major sets, to location photography, with plenty of intriguing behind-the-scenes footage. Weta Workshop is a 43-minute general overview of the amazing work done by the special effects masters in the Weta Workshop, headed by creative supervisor Richard Taylor (who sounds a bit like Robin Leach), which did everything from designing and building costumes and weapons (including a clever pump-action crossbow), to building animatronic puppets, to sculpting models, to creating prosthetic make-up effects. The emphasis here is on how much detail went into the work—detail you may not always see directly, but nonetheless has a profound impact on the film’s effectiveness. (Note that this documentary does not cover any of Weta’s CGI work, which is covered in-depth in other supplements.) The overwhelmingly comprehensive Design Galleries, which contain thousands of drawings and behind-the-scenes photographs, are split into two sections: The Peoples of Middle-earth and The Realms of Middle-earth. The former is then further subdivided into individual design galleries for The Enemy, Gandalf the White, Rohan, Third Age Elven Warriors, Treebeard, Ents, Faramir, and Ithilien Rangers, while the latter is subdivided into galleries for Emyn Muil, Dead Marshes, Rohan, Fangorn Forest, Ithilien, Henneth Annun, Osgiliath, and Isengard. Each gallery can be viewed either by clicking on thumbnail images for the full-screen version or by using a slideshow feature. Also, some of the designs include audio commentary by the artist.

Gollum
First in this section on the most important new character in The Two Towers is The Taming of Sméagol, a 40-minute overview documentary about how the character of Gollum was envisioned and created for the film (no big surprise that sinewy punk rocker Iggy Pop was a visual inspiration). Most interesting here is some of the early design work and computer tests done to prove to New Line that Weta was up for the challenge of creating a fully CGI character, although equally impressive is the video footage of Andy Serkis performing Gollum, which shows just how influential he was in shaping the character. Andy Serkis Animation Reference uses split screen to allow us to watch both Andy Serkis’ live-action performance and the final CGI version of Gollum’s split-personality sequence. Gollum’s Stand-In is a 3-minute throwaway bit about how bad co-producer Rick Porras was when he stood in for Gollum one day when Serkis was unavailable. And, lastly there’s a Design Gallery featuring more than 90 sketches and photographs of conceptual sculptures, some of which have optional audio commentary.

Middle-earth Atlas
This is the same interactive map of Middle-earth that was included on the Extended DVD Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, except now it allows you to trace four journeys that take place during The Two Towers: Frodo and Sam; Merry and Pippin; Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli; and Gandalf. Again, they all use the map and trace out where the characters went, stopping at various times and inserting clips from the film.

New Zealand as Middle-earth
This section is divided into a series of mini-featurettes that each run 1–2 minutes in length and show the initial video footage shot by Jackson and company when scouting locations around New Zealand.

Filming The Two Towers
This lengthy behind-the-scenes documentary is divided into three sections. Warriors of the Third Age (21 minutes) focuses on the stunts performed for the film, especially the fight choreography for the massive battle sequences, in which the different “races” of Middle-earth trained in particular cultural fighting styles. Running more than an hour in length, Cameras in Middle-earth is a comprehensive making-of documentary that concentrates on principal photography, moving from one sequence to the next as they appear in the film. The Production Photos gallery contains about 60 color production photographs that may be viewed individually or as an automated slide show (some have accompanying audio commentary).

Visual Effects
This section is divided into three subsections that contain featurettes and image galleries on various aspects of the film’s visual effects. The first section, Miniatures, starts with a 22-minute featurette, “Big-atures,” which is about the building of all the models, many of which are quite enormous (the Helm’s Deep “big-ature” was built at quarter scale). This is followed by an animatic of “The Flooding of Isengard” sequence (which can also be viewed in split screen along with the final sequence in the film) and then a series of stills galleries of all the major miniatures: Barad-dûr, Fangorn Forest, Helm’s Deep, Ruined Isengard, Osgiliath, The Black Gate, and Zirakzigil. Weta Digital is a 28-minute featurette on all the CGI work done on the film, which was significantly more than the first film (some 791 shots, versus around 450 for Fellowship). One of the most interesting aspects of this featurette is the section on Massive, the amazing artificial intelligence software program designed to create the battle sequences. The Abandoned Concepts section contains two galleries of sketches for “Slime Balrog” and “Endless Stair.”

Editorial: Refining the Story
This 22-minute featurette looks at the editing of the film, particularly how the filmmakers realized things that were missing during the editing process that were subsequently added with “pick-up” shots.

Music and Sound
This section is divided into three parts. Music for Middle-earth is a 25-minute featurette on Howard Shore’s score for the film. The Soundscapes of Middle-earth is a 21-minute featurette on the film’s intricate sound design, including how the sound designers recorded a stadium full of cricket fans to get the sound of thousands of warriors chanting. Sound Demonstration: “Helm’s Deep” is an intriguing demonstration of how more than 80 separate sounds were mixed together to create the soundscape for the massive battle sequence. You can watch a minute-long sequence and choose from eight different sound streams, including on-set production audio, foley, and various sound effects, to get a feel for how they all work separately and together.

“The Battle for Helm’s Deep is Over …”
This 10-minute featurette is composed mostly of interviews about the difficulty of the postproduction on this film—the word “nightmare” comes up again and again—and how enjoyable the film’s various premieres were (included is footage from the New York, Los Angeles, and Wellington premierers).