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Last year, the movie "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was re-screened in the mainland as a 4K version, encountered a lot of word-of-mouth controversy, and there were many one-star bad reviews on major ticketing platforms, mostly pointing to the movie's time is too long, too many characters, the plot is too stuffy, can't understand, want to sleep...
These bad reviews make more fans who like "The Lord of the Rings" unable to understand, because "The Lord of the Rings" is an eternal god in their hearts, a childhood memory, an insurmountable epic, and a movie that must be taken out and re-watched every few years...
It seems rare for the same movie to be both touted as a god's work and stepped to the bottom.
The Lord of the Rings is indeed an important milestone in the new millennium cinema, setting the precedent for a fantastic epic production with 30 Oscar nominations, the third of which is still one of the most Oscar-winning films in a single edition.
The original "Lord of the Rings" of "The Lord of the Rings" is even more influential, known as "the greatest work in the history of modern fantasy literature", which sets a reference template for later generations of fantasy literature. K. Rowling, George W. R· R. Martin, Stephen King, and other writers we know well all grew up reading The Lord of the Rings.
In fact, whether it is the movie "The Lord of the Rings" or Tolkien's original "Lord of the Rings", it is not a popular work in the strict sense, in which the huge worldview, complex myths and legends, and deep thinking about human nature, death, faith, and hope require people to calm down and taste patiently.
If you want to quickly know where the "gods" of The Lord of the Rings really are? Maybe it starts with learning about the "Father of the Rings" J.R.R. Tolkien!
Because whether it is his groundbreaking brain hole, the optimism of enjoying life, or the ups and downs of life experience, it can be a relaxed and interesting introductory guide for you to enter the "Lord of the Rings".
1
Brain holes like never before
In everyday life, have you ever imagined that there might be a second world around you? There, humans, elves, wizards, dwarves, and half-orcs live together without disobedience. Well, more than half a century ago, someone unfolded the picture of this world.
This man was Tolkien.
Movie "The Hobbit"
Tolkien was a linguist who loved Icelandic, Norwegian, Ancient Germanic and other ancient languages. He began to create his own language at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and created more than ten languages in his lifetime, of which he was most satisfied with the Kunya language based on Finnish.
The Quenya language seems to have come out of the ancient and romantic myths of Europe, whether it is written or chanted, it is elegant and poetic, full of beauty. And it has a huge vocabulary, a rigorous grammar system, and is mature enough to be used on a daily basis!
Tolkien wrote the Quenya language
But it seems unrealistic to expect people to use Quenya in real life. So Tolkien simply began to think about it, shaping the user of the Qunya language, the noble and beautiful elves, and the whole world in which the elves lived. In this world, people are free to use "elen sila lúmenn" (Quenya for "the stars illuminate the moment we meet").
The genie from the movie The Lord of the Rings
The fictional world in Tolkien's mind is the magnificent middle-earth world we see in the movie "The Lord of the Rings" with medieval charm, and it is rigorous and unified as if it had really existed.
First of all, it has a detailed and strict racial setting: the immortal and fading elves, the fast-decaying but world-dominating humans, the dwarves who live in the dark, the Entre walking in the deep forest, the cruel and obscene Oak... And each race has its own origins, cultures and heritage;
From left to right: Wizards, Humans, Gollum, Hobbits
Secondly, Middle-earth has a history of more than ten thousand years, and the large and small historical events that occur in each era are as detailed as the history books, and the stories of the "Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" that we are familiar with are just a wave of vast history;
In order to make this world more vivid, Tolkien drew a detailed map, from the frozen ocean in the north to the barren desert in the south, from the dwarf kingdom in the east to the blessed land on the other side of the sea in the west, every mountain and water, every grass and tree is meticulous and believable;
Map of Middle-earth
Even more bizarrely, Tolkien also wrote a unique creation myth for Middle-earth. Just as God created the world in the Bible, the whole of Middle-earth was created by Iluvita, the father of all things, and the universe was born from the Great Movement.
Throughout his life, Tolkien continued to construct and refine his Middle-earth world, and after his death, he left behind seventy boxes of documents, each containing thousands of pages of unpublished works, including stories, legends, more than 4,000 lines of poetry, and more.
Tolkien
Because of Tolkien's craftsmanship and obsessive pursuit of details, when you walk into Middle-earth, you will immediately be shocked by his brain hole, and even feel that this is not the author's imagination, but a long time ago people telling his real experience.
"Elven Diamond" tells the story of the creation myth of the origin of Middle-earth
2
Hobbits who love life
If you think that Tolkien is a person who spends his days in a house studying language, indulging in imagining the world, and has no interest in real life, you are very wrong.
Tolkien actually loved life so much that even he laughed and said, "I'm a hobbit."
The Lord of the Rings movie tidbits
The hobbits who live in the Shire are unrestrained and prefer a comfortable life. Homes, delicacies, pipes and beds make up the wonderful details of their lives. In life, Tolkien also loved good food, gardening, walking in the woods and fields, and he liked to smoke pipes like the hobbits!
Tolkien smoked a pipe
The writer George Sawyer visited the Tolkiens, and it was as if he had suddenly broken into the hobbit's pocket hole, completely to his surprise:
"Tolkien would take me downstairs to the living room for tea, and the conversation had nothing to do with literature, but often the lives of the children, the lives of the grandchildren, the garden that Tolkien liked to take care of, the evils of the Labour Party, the rising prices of food, the deteriorating shops in Oxford, the increasing difficulty of buying certain goods..."
Tolkien and his wife Edith were in their garden
Perhaps because Tolkien had an unhappy childhood— his father died when he was 3 years old, his mother died at the age of 12, and he was raised by a priest, so tolkien paid special attention to his family and daily life as an adult.
At the age of 16, Tolkien fell in love with Edith, who was 3 years older than himself, and in 1916 the two finally became a family, knowing each other for more than half a century, and having three sons and a daughter. For the Tolkiens, the source of happiness was the love of the family, and it was this love that held them together until the end of their lives.
Tolkien and son
And, in the Tolkien family, there is a tradition that has remained unchanged for more than 20 years - every Christmas, Tolkien will write to his children in the tone of Santa Claus. His letters ran through the childhood of the four children.
Tolkien's letter from Santa Claus is not simply a blessing and encouragement, but a self-created Arctic fairy tale with elaborate illustrations: the polar bear breaks the moon into four petals and lets the people who live in it fall into the back garden; there is a war between Santa Claus and the half-orc tribe in the cave under the house...
Tolkien wrote a Christmas letter to his child,
Santa Claus, who is nearly 2,000 years old, sometimes shakes his hands when he writes letters
Tolkien also used to tell stories to the children by the fireplace in the little study, and at one point he was going to tell the story of a little thing with furry feet, and then asked his little listeners, "What name should I give this little guy?" Then he replied himself, "I suppose we'll call him The Hobbit!" And this is the later world-famous "The Hobbit.".
The Tolkien family
If he hadn't loved life, if he hadn't had an innocent curiosity about life, Tolkien might not have been able to portray the optimistic, courageous, life-loving Hobbits, and it would have been even more impossible to end The Lord of the Rings in the Hobbit's hometown of Shire.
In Tolkien's view, family and hometown are the center of life, and daily life is the most praiseworthy.
The Hobbit hardcover illustrated version
3
Inspiration erupts in despair
Tolkien's life is not exactly like a fairy tale, full of sweetness and beauty.
When he was in college, Tolkien enlisted in the army and participated in World War I, where he was nearly killed in the fierce Battle of the Somme.
Wounded Soldier of World War I
On the battlefield, Tolkien witnessed the brutality and bloodshed of war —death everywhere, apart from the corpse-strewn trenches, blood-stained barbed wire, and deafening terror. Even after the battle, soldiers on both sides hid in their respective trenches and shot at each other.
Deeply aware of the meaninglessness of war, Tolkien began to show his rejection of power, mechanization, and concern for the fate of mankind, and writing became an outlet for his emotions.
In the biographical film Tolkien, Nicholas Holt plays Tolkien
Tolkien wrote as soon as he had the chance, in the dirty huts, in the dim tent candlelight, in the trenches of the rumbling artillery, and the vast Middle-earth legend also took shape on the barbaric and ruthless battlefield.
Later, in a letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien wrote of the healing that Middle-earth had brought him: "I chose to transform my experience into another form and symbol, such as Morgoth, Oak, and the elves (representing beauty and grace and art), etc., which have caused me to survive these difficult years, and I still draw nourishment from the conceptions of the time." ”
Middle-earth not only gave Tolkien strength, but also strongly and truly touched the empathy of a large number of readers and viewers, because this world is the reality in which we live.
In The Lord of the Rings, darkness and evil wait for an opportunity, it sows suspicion between friendships, making human nature appear greedy and ugly, but in the end, it is not the heroes of the world, not the powerful magic, but the love, faith and hope that are held in the hearts of ordinary people.
As the book says, "After all, the shadow is only a small thing and will pass away, and where the shadow cannot reach it after all, the light and the sublime beauty will last forever." ”
Movie "The Lord of the Rings", "Fight for Frodo"
In life, each of us struggles with the "devil" in different ways – poverty, illness, the death of a loved one, emotional problems, these things wear down our resistance and make us feel powerless.
What do you do when everything is in despair? When faced with the temptation of the "Lord of the Rings" that belongs to you, can you hold fast to your faith in good things? You may find answers to these questions in Tolkien's Middle-earth world.
Illustrated version of The Lord of the Rings