One of the greatest disaster films in cinema history is getting a sequel on the big screen after 28 years. We’ve got the new trailer for Twisters for you.
Bernard Hill gave me one of my favorite fantasy moments and it still sticks with me 22 years later
British actor Bernard Hill passed away recently. It only takes one The Lord of the Rings scene to show what a gigantic talent fantasy fans have lost
On May 5, 2024, Bernard Hill passed away. He enjoyed a long career in cinema, TV and theater. He appeared in epics such as Gandhi and The Ghost and the Darkness. In Titanic, he played the tragic figure of the captain. But most people, certainly all fantasy and Lord of the Rings fans, will know him as Théoden, King of Rohan.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, is a masterpiece for a thousand reasons: Gigantic battle scenes. Exhilarating landscape shots. A production design that is second to none. For me, Hill is one of them: as a fan of fantasy films, his role has been etched in my memory since the film’s release, although it is nowhere near as important as characters like Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) or Frodo (Elijah Wood).
Bernard Hill is pure pleasure as the Lord of the Rings king
Bernard Hill doesn’t have a single mediocre scene as King Théoden. The script is not uninvolved in this, but above all it is thanks to the actor. From the faint rattle of the blinded puppet king to the despair of a father mourning his son in his ancestral tombs and the “Grimmetaten awake!” of a doomed warrior: Hill shines from the first to the last second. For me, one scene in particular stands out
(Bernard Hill as King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
Théoden can be seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In The Two Towers, he retreats to the refuge of Helm’s Deep and awaits the onslaught of thousands of cruel Uruk-hai.
The situation is desperate: The entire civilian population of Rohan is trapped in the castle, awaiting doom. Director Peter Jackson documents the preparations. He shows the fear on the faces of the children, whose battle axes tower over them by half. He shows the black stream of the enemy hordes like the scales of a hungry dragon. He shows the friends Aragorn and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) arguing, almost at each other’s throats in their desperation. Then comes Bernard Hill’s best of all his great scenes.
This is why Bernard Hill’s best Lord of the Rings scene is so great
Théoden stands in the middle of a banqueting hall lit by a dazzling beam of light. His officer Gamling (Bruce Hopkins) brings the royal armor and reports, but his king just stares into space, mesmerized. “Who am I, Gamling?” he asks. “You are our king,” replies his adjutant.
Hill barely moves, he just looks straight ahead in the scene. And yet an infinite depth of emotion can be gleaned from the smallest of gestures. When Gamling soldierly declares, “We’ll follow you to any end”, Hill repeats the sentence with a light, barely perceptible laugh. As if he must be grinning at the fact that all that remains of his life’s work is a morbid oath of allegiance.
His officer puts on his armor and he remains stiff, as if resigned to his fate. But his gaze, his entire mimic expression, radiates such vivacity, dignity and amazement that I am still fascinated 22 years after the film’s release. Hill creates the face of a man who, full of remorse, turns to the inevitable. Théoden quotes a poem:
Where are rider and steed?
And the horn that echoes far away?
Long gone like rain in the forest
And wind in the branches.
In the shadows behind the mountains the days sank in the west.
“How could it have come to this?”, Hill’s character concludes the scene. His monologue, even in the original, never fails to blow me away. In his words, his wide-open eyes, his petrified posture, there is an infinite sadness about the missed opportunities of the centuries, about the passage of time that completely erases the traces of all human generations. And a powerlessness in the face of this process, which only allows for the fulfillment of duty.
Watch the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers here
Jackson is aware of the power of Hill’s scene. While he previously stayed close to the speaking actors, he now shows innocent children in war armor and the shadow of the Uruk-hais washing into the earthy valleys of Rohan. And finally returns to Hill, who seems to awaken from a phlegm with his last words. He briefly lets his eyes glide around the room, as if he needs to get his bearings after a long sleep. Only to realize a split second later: It’s a rude awakening. All hope is lost.
Hill masters the scene with the meticulous skill of a ballet dancer. Every wrinkle is subject to his will to embody the emotional onslaught inside Théoden in all its richness. With his facial expressions, his gestures, his words, he elevates the fantasy masterpiece beyond itself, as happens in the best Lord of the Rings moments: The scene is no longer about escape castles and Uruk-hais and fragile alliances, but about the transience of man.
The film world owes a great deal to Bernard Hill
What Bernard Hill does here may not come as a surprise to his older fans, after all he played Shakespeare’s characters for the theater stage and BBC television programs for years. But as a fourteen-year-old Lord of the Rings fan, this scene never left me. It still hasn’t to this day.
Bernard Hill shows me every time anew how rich a single two-minute sequence can be if a talented actor masters it with sensitivity for his role. He was able to light up a movie with pure facial expressions. And to create deep emotional impressions for an entire human life. His work, like his loss, cannot be overestimated.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the disaster movie experienced a revival before the superheroes from Marvel and DC took over in Hollywood. Alongside Roland Emmerich’s smashing blockbuster epics, one film from this period in particular has burned itself into the memory of film history: Twister.
Directed by Jan De Bont (Speed), the action thriller grossed almost 500 million US dollars in 1996 and became one of the blockbuster sensations of the year. The hunt for tornadoes continues on the big screen in 2024. The new trailer for Twisters promises one of the must-see films of the summer
The new trailer for Twisters thrills with three minutes of pure tornado madness
After the original was led by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, the sequel stars shooting stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in the lead roles. Edgar Jones rose to fame in the series Normal People and thrilled audiences in The Song of the Crayfish. Powell has been the talk of the town since Top Gun: Maverick and recently scored a notable romcom hit with Where the Lie Falls
Based on the trailer, the new film is strongly oriented towards the structure of its predecessor. Once again, two different teams with different settings chase after the tornadoes. The big difference: the central pair do not fight on the same side. Instead, Edgar-Jones and Powell face each other as rivals. The original, on the other hand, had a clear villain in Cary Elwes.
However, the most interesting thing about Twisters is not the stars, but the director. Lee Isaac Chung makes his blockbuster debut with this film, having recently directed episodes of the Star Wars series The Mandalorian and Skeleton Crew. His masterpiece is another: the deeply touching family drama Minari, which was nominated for six Oscars in 2021 and won one (Best Supporting Actress).
