At midnight on Tuesday, there was one film — one film to rule them all, one film to find them, one film to bring them all together and supply them.

After months of waiting, the second part of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” has finally hit stores, and fans of the film series were waiting in anticipation to take the film home, even if it meant staying up late.

Some stores even chose to stay open late or reopen at midnight in order to satisfy their customers’ craving for more wizards, elves and dwarves.

Tim Rabenau, assistant store manager at Hastings, 620 Lincoln Way, said store management decided to stay open because they saw a need from their customers to purchase the title as soon as possible.

“People wanted to see [The Two Towers] so bad that we decided to hold a midnight release party for it,” Rabenau said.

“For the people who came in early, we had quizzes, giveaways of gift cards, movie rentals, posters — all sorts of different things,” he said.

The added incentive of visiting Hastings at midnight was enough to draw a sizable crowd. Rabenau said approximately 60 people showed up for the event, some of whom even dressed in their favorite “Lord of the Rings” costumes. Everyone who wore a costume received a prize, and a winner was chosen and given a $25 gift card.

“There was only one person who came in as a character — one person came in as Gandalf,” Rabenau said. “Other people just came as a hobbit or an elf.”

Despite a fairly large crowd at Hastings, the scene at Sam Goody, 65 North Grand Mall, was much quieter.

Mike Mennen, third key manager at Sam Goody, said his store didn’t see a need to keep the store open late.

“We weren’t even open at midnight,” Mennen said. “We’ve kind of cut those back because nobody was really showing up.”

Mennen said Sam Goody did have quite a few customers reserve the album ahead of time, most of whom picked up their copies today.

Walk-in sales, he said, weren’t noticeably higher than other releases.

One reason for a somewhat subdued reaction may relate to the release of a special four-disc extended DVD edition of the film on Nov. 18, which contains added footage not seen in the theatrical version of the film.

Emily Hoppenworth, junior in English and fan of the “Lord of the Rings” series, said she is waiting for the extended version of the film before she’ll purchase it.

“I’m waiting for the extended version for the scenes they’re going to put in and to see how it was made,” Hoppenworth said.

“I guess ideally, I’d want both versions, but it seems a little extravagant and I’m a big tightwad,” she said.