At the heart of the Lord of the Rings is the emotional and physical struggle between, from left, Sam (Sean Austin), Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Gollum (Andy Serkis, not in picture).
Tanya Batson-Savage, Staff Reporter
"WE HAVE come to it at last. The Great Battle of our time." Uttered quietly by Gandalf as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is about to plunge into the lengthy penultimate battle, the words stir echoes of the idea that The Lord of the Rings is the great movie of our time.
It is so not only because it reflects the growing technology. It also reflects the mammoth that is the entertainment industry as the world is consumed by passive entertainment and today's world order which, despite years of rhetoric, remains hardly changed 50 years after the story was written.
Peter Jackson's version of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of The Rings brings the books to life with all the magic and wonder of the creatures, cultures and places spawned in Tolkein's Middle Earth.
Shot in New Zealand, the three movies present a world which echoes the Middle Ages and, in doing so, also seem like an alternate reality. The wonderful vistas were enhanced by a moving 50-year-old story and, in the creation of The Ents and Gollum, some of the best computer generated images to yet awe audiences. And of course, there are the epic thrilling battles that border on being never-ending.
The Lord of the Rings is based upon a quest to save the world, a task fraught with sufficient danger to make it gripping. Frodo Baggins and his friend and servant Samwise Gamgee are to destroy The One Ring, a simple but beautiful gold band of enormous power. Seven other persons accompany them on this quest: Arrogorn, the heir to the throne of Gondor; the elf Legolas; the dwarf Gimli; the wizard Gandalf; the warrior Boromir; and two other hobbits Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took.
LARGER-THAN-LIFE STORYLINE
With or without the movies, it is easy to fall under the spell of The Lord of the Rings, because the story is so much larger than life, and it is so wonderfully told. The creatures hobbits, trolls, orcs (goblins) and wargs are all born of magic and so can easily thrive in the imagination. The places, simply in the names selected for them, impress with magical resonance. Names such as Mount Doom, Barad-Dur and the Stairs of Cirith Ungol echo even on the page.
The heroes are unequivocal and stride tall in their quest to do good. There is no doubt, with the exception of Gollum who is good and evil, that while good men may be persuaded by 'the one ring' to do evil, they are essentially either good or evil.
There is no in-between.
Indeed, the only hero to quickly fall prey to the ring's manipulations (thus showing his own weakness) is the only one who does not make it to the end of the fellowship. Boromir's (Sean Bean) heart was too set on power for him to be one of the lasting heroes, because humility is an essential part of the hero.
On the other hand, Arragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) are the perfect handsome heroes. These two can make maidens swoon and earn men's respect and allegiance.
Indeed, the presentation of characters such as Eowyn (Miranda Otto), Eomer (Karl Urban), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Theoden simply make you want to see more of them because they seem to be so much more. It is evident that each could have their own story.
The four hobbits at the centre of the tale, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), Samwise Gamgee (Sean Austin), Peregrin Took (Billy Boyd) and Meriodoc Brandybuck (Dominic Monaghan) are also easy to cheer for.
Almost like children, as their bravery grows in the face of mounting fear they easily earn respect and cannot be dismissed for their size. They show that size may matter, but you can work with it.
PASSION FOR VILLAINS
Likewise, the often disfigured villains are easy to hate. Who could love an orc? Everything about them, from their weaponry to their teeth, screams butchery. They receive the collective anger of the audience, because one never sees more than a hand and eye of Sauron and Sauroman is soon defeated. They are the most visible and the ugliest and thus the easiest to hate.
While the final instalment of the trilogy, now showing in cinemas, is yet to beat the box office record set by The Titanic, which continues to be the top grossing movies of all time, together all three movies are very impressive.
According to a movieweb.com list last updated on December 31, 2003, Titanic has an impressive lifetime gross of US$600.788 million. Individually, none of the Lord of the Rings movies has neared that.
The Two Towers rests at number seven with US$340 million and The Fellowship of the Ring is at number 12 with US$314.163 million. Though it had only been 12 days since it opened on December 17, The Return of The King stood at number 36 with US$232.759 million.
In getting to that point, The Return of the King cleaved through a few records, etching its name firmly in movie history. Its grossing of US$125.1 million broke the Wednesday opening record, which had been held by Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. Additionally, its US$73.6 million Friday to Sunday tally in its opening week took the record for the best three-day opening in December.
However, like the book before them and unlike most sequels, they were done together but released separately. This is a part of what makes The Lord of the Rings phenomenal.Starting in 2001, the movies were released in instalments, which had audiences waiting an entire year before they could move on to the next segment of the story.
While this may not have proven too frustrating for the legions of Tolkein fans already walking the earth before the making of the movies, there were many who had not yet been introduced to Middle Earth who also went through the months of anticipation.
In local cinemas, sighs and complaints of lamenting the wait of another year could be heard as Gollum, Frodo and Sam set off on the last leg of their journey. However, like Sam and Frodo, we yielded to Gollum's 'come on Hobbits!' and willingly bade our time for a year and finally it came.
MOVIES FUEL BOOKS' POPULARITY
Of course, with a year to wait between films, the popularity of the movies has increased the popularity of the books. According to news.bbc.co.uk, the trilogy has been dubbed the United Kingdom's most popular novel, based on 'The Big Read Contest', beating out Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the top spot.
Updated on December 14, 2003, the site declared that the Big Read Contest had boosted interest in the book by 400 per cent, according to reports from Amazon.co.uk.
According to theonering.net, the boom began with news of the movies, generating sales for both movie tie-ins and reprints of the trilogy and The Hobbit. Lord-of-the-rings-movies-games-books.com lists close to 100 related items, ranging from the illustrated movie companion, to maps of Middle Earth.
The books have been deemed the epitome of fantasy writing, though it appeals to many more than lovers of the fantastic. It does so in part because the reality which helps to create the creators of Middle Earth is so evident.To either watch or read the Lord of the Rings, with a slightly jaded eye, one sensitive to the issues of race may not have so enthusiastic a response to the story.
Reflected at the heart of the story, going beyond Frodo's quest, is a very particular world order. Peter Jackson's realisations of Tolkein's Middle Earth helps to bring this startlingly to reality.
COLOUR SYMBOLISM
Tolkein works with very basic colour imagery. In doing so, black means one thing evil. While it is easy to pass this by when it comes to the description of swords or clothing, it grates more going down when it comes to the characters.
Uruk-hai is not the complete name of the evil creatures crafted into existence by Saurumon. According to the book, they are, the 'Black Uruk-hai'. By itself, this remains a matter of creating a meaningless mountain from what should have remained a molehill.However, with the exception of the main villains all of the evil people those who side with Sauron are non-white.
As the costuming used in the movie highlighted, when the word 'corsair' appears in The Lord of the Rings, it does not merely mean pirate. It particularly refers to those from the Barbary coast.An Arabic-looking people with the kohl outlined eyes, as seen toward the end of The Two Towers, they and their 'elephaunts' are also among those who fight for evil.
Additionally, the 'mountainmen' and 'wildmen' also seem to bear a striking resemblance to the Irish, which is in keeping with their being adversaries to England.
Though the movie version of the trilogy made concessions to Tolkein's sexism, giving Arwyn, Eowyn and Galadriel more prominence and paying more attention to the romance between Arwen and Arragorn, none is made for the 'darkness' of the villains. This can easily go unnoticed because in a post 9/11 world it remains easy to accept villains who are shades darker than the heroes.
