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The film history classic "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was recently re-released in China, but the total box office of the three films was only 145 million, far lower than the 376 million of the earlier re-release of "Avatar". Not only that, but there are also bad reviews on the Internet such as "plot procrastination", "general special effects", and "superficial story". These comments have intrigued me as a decade-old amateur Lord of the Rings fan.
"The Lord of the Rings" basically tells the story of Frodo, a hobbit, who gathered eight friends of various races in order to destroy the source of the demon king Sauron's power, the Supreme Lord, and finally completed his mission by wringing into the enemy's hinterland. Audiences who do not buy the story of "The Lord of the Rings" have always been there, coupled with the short video era, the audience's patience has declined, and the demand for rapid and direct stimulation, it is not inconceivable that the "old-school classic" "The Lord of the Rings" will be re-screened and cold.
For my own part, I had a brief sleep while watching the first two re-releases. However, when I went home to revisit the movies and novels, I felt that my love for The Lord of the Rings and the Middle-earth series had not changed, only from the perspective of appreciation, from the age of 7 to 24, I could still be attracted to the different characteristics of the series.
01, fantasy world and Internet addicted teenagers
I believe that children today will still be attracted to The Lord of the Rings, just as I was captured by the return of the king when I was 7 years old. Children themselves are full of curiosity, believing that the world is always infinitely vast and unexplorable, and "The Lord of the Rings" undoubtedly greatly satisfies this curiosity.
People are willing to believe that the grassy bottom hole really lived in the hobbits, that between the forests and mountains there were elves and dwarves in the kingdom, that wizards, tree people, and rangers once operated together on this planet, and that the three religions and nine streams once gathered in the Prancing Horse Inn.
Because tolkien, the original author, Wrote a detailed portrayal of every plant and tree in Middle-earth, and even created a practical language system for each race, he seemed to be able to convince the reader that he was reading history rather than fantasy chapters. In other words, Middle-earth is more solid and realistic than other fantasy systems.
Readers of The Lord of the Rings, like me, are in a magical Schrödinger cat state.
As a sane person, of course I know these are fictional, but please, why is it so serious that we can't think of the present as the sixth or seventh era of Middle-earth? The Third Age in The Lord of the Rings really existed, but it was far away.
As the beginning of the first film Of the Rings says: history becomes legend, and legend becomes myth. Middle-earth mythology is no more discolored or unfounded than Greek mythology or the Bible's Genesis.
This practice of creating a world has inspired a large number of role-playing (RPG) games and the birth of virtual universes: creators establish the rules of a world, readers/players linger in it, constantly examining and supplementing, self-producing experiences, and enriching the world.
Marvel Universe
While it is widely believed that it is wrong to be overly obsessed with the secondary world, the original intention of these people is also dissatisfaction with the poor reality and the desire for a better world.
Tolkien tells us in poetic terms that material reality is not the only reality, and how powerful imagination can be. And the reason why people choose not to indulge is also because even the best secondary world has its limitations, and they also want to create their own world.
02, peel off the cloak of fantasy
The relevance of The Lord of the Rings
"The Lord of the Rings" is caught in a double embarrassment because of its seemingly historical fantasy. When the original novel was published in the middle of the last century, some intellectuals, because of the fantasy setting of the novel and the lack of response to the political and social problems of that era, considered it to escape reality and refused to regard it as serious literature, and this view still has a market today.
However, the recent re-screening is unfavorable, probably because it is not fantastical enough. You don't see "Avatar" next door, the planet Pandora is beautiful, from the environment to the creatures are not half similar to the earth. The 3D special effects are immersive, and although the story is a bit old-fashioned, it definitely allows the audience to get great audiovisual satisfaction.
Avatar
In contrast, "The Lord of the Rings", which takes place on Earth and the protagonist is on the road for a long time, tests the patience of the audience. But for me, The Lord of the Rings is the movie and the novel that can stand up to being re-watched over and over again, because I can always feel connected to it at all stages of my life.
Tolkien also said that he preferred history over fables. Because history can evoke free associations from different readers, fables are deliberately controlled by the author and become boring after the only answer is guessed.
In this way, The Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly more historical, and everyone can see what is all in himself.
Take, for example, the central characters of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron and the Lord of the Rings. Some have criticized the villain Sauron for being too old-fashioned. Thanos in "Reunion" at least has the ideal of maintaining the ecological balance of the universe, Sauron does not, he just wants to rule the world and enslave everyone. I think that Sauron's bokeh treatment is precisely the brilliance of the author and director.
A touch of red that symbolizes Sauron
In the original book, Sauron was also an assistant to the main god Vera, who was knowledgeable and eager to create, but after experiencing the pleasure of dominating others, he fell into depravity. He forged a ring that would arouse the power and greed of others and lead them astray. But before forging the Ring himself, wasn't he seduced by the "ring" that already existed, the wrong desire?
So the question is not who Sauron is, but who everyone can become.
This reminds me of the ordinary people of Germany and Japan in World War II, up to the top of the government, few people think they are doing evil and then commit heinous crimes. It is of course easy to draw a line with words like "anti-human" and "demonic", but it is more prudent to check yourself for similarities. Some people also interpret the Lord of the Rings as nuclear energy, mechanization, as long as it is reasonable, it is also the freedom of the reader.
Lord of the Rings
Perhaps the meaning of the Lord of the Rings and Sauron can also be reversed from the other direction. The hobbits in The Lord of the Rings love nature, are hospitable by nature, and are indisputable. Aside from some careful thinking that craves risks, the greatest quest is simply to maintain a life of non-enslavement and non-slavery.
The place where they live
Later, when the demon kings rose and the catastrophe came, they did not make a contribution to the cause, but rose up to defend this life. When you think of today's world, it seems that there is no such big devil as Sauron, but many people's lives are as precarious as the hobbits. So what exactly is threatening people's lives?
At the end of the movie, the four hobbits who died nine times and became the heroes of the world, in the face of the disgust of the elders "where did these bastards come from in the wild", just laugh and do not say anything, and then bump into glasses in the familiar tavern, look at each other and smile, as if nothing had happened.
Returning to the everyday is the best ending, and the magnificent experiences of the past will forever be transformed into precious memories. Such a scene is touching, but also conveys a thought that runs through the book: since the use of force for good purposes also has the possibility of evolving into evil, the strength to resist evil does not come from a strong person, but from the persistence of goodness in each weak individual.
In addition, there is so much to explore in The Lord of the Rings: loyalty and friendship, despair and hope, the inevitableness of death... In Tolkien's entire mythological system, elves, though immortal, age with the earth, and even if they die unexpectedly, their souls do not perish.
Elven Prince Legolas
The "death" of human beings is seen as a gift from the creator god Iluvita, and no one knows where they went after death. If a work is always talking about how people exist and how they die, there is no reason not to regard it as serious art. If these questions never go out of style, they will always have contemporary significance.
Finally, with regard to the criticism of the film's "protracted plot and slow pace", I would like to tell myself, who once dozed off: maybe it is not that there is a problem with the rhythm of the film, but that we have become impatient. It takes time to do what is worth doing, and the film uses so many shots to tell the story of the Ring Squad climbing over the mountains, Frodo and Sam climbing the Doomsday Volcano, just to restore the psychological time to do a difficult thing.
Under the clouds and the stars, above the snowy fields and fire-breathing fissures of the cold wind, in the boundless ocean that connects the Western world, there must be something firm and grand, which exists there like a rock.
Like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it doesn't preach, but it's a role model.
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