The "Lord of the Rings Trilogy" 4K HD remake was re-released in China in April. Before watching the movie, what should we do to experience the unique charm of the childcare golden grandfather's masterpiece when we return to Middle-earth after 20 years?
I. The Father of Middle-earth - Tolkien's Biography
Tolkien was born in 1892 to a devout Catholic family in the British colony of South Africa. His father, Arthur, was a bank manager and his mother was a full-time housewife. According to Tolkien's own recollection, his childhood in South Africa was as exotic as a fantasy, and his living environment was very different from birmingham, where he later lived.
But good times were always exceptionally short-lived, and when Tolkien was 4 years old, his father died of cerebral congestion. This unexpected change caused the unemployed mother to have to move her family back to Birmingham, England, and use the savings left by her father to raise Tolkien and her brother with difficulty.
Fortunately, Mother Mabel has an excellent cultural attainment. In her spare time, she tells her two sons a variety of children's books and classic mythological stories. One of the things that impressed Tolkien the most was Edda (Norse mythology).
The war that broke out at the beginning of the creation of the Asa and Warner gods, Odin, the god king with wisdom and courage, Loki, the scheming and fickle god of lies, the powerful and heroic Thor, and the incomparably tragic twilight of the gods caused by the war between the kingdom of the gods and the giants, all became valuable material for Tolkien's future creations.
At the same time, his mother would also teach Tolkien some basic Latin and French, which was his first language initiation. Tolkien, who was extremely gifted in languages, became more and more interested in languages during his studies. In the end, he knew as many as 35 languages. Among them are not only modern languages but also ancient languages that have become fossils, such as Old English and Old Scandinavian.
This exposure to linguistic talent allowed Tolkien to create a language for each of these races in the future when he wrote The Lord of the Rings novels. Elven, Hobbit, Half-Orc, Treeman, and he even designed a sign language for dwarves who worked industrially in noisy underground mines all year round. The "Kunya" and "Sindarin languages" he created for the Elves were fully capable of being used as a separate language because of their vocabulary and perfect grammar.
Tolkien himself was at the Fairgrounds: if it could be published, I really wanted to write in elven language.
Although his family was poor, Tolkien was admitted to the King Edward School of the Nobility with his extraordinary talent and hard work. There he met three talented friends, Weissmann, who was proficient in mathematics and music, Gilson, who was a theatrical genius, and Smith, who was a poet, and together they formed a tea house called "Barofan". They regularly meet at the tea house to share the joy of thinking and exchange their feelings about life.
In the later process of the creation of "The Lord of the Rings", this small quartet, including Tolkien, undoubtedly became the prototype of the four brave and kind hobbit ring squads of Frodo, Pippin, Mellie and Sam.
When Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904, she entrusted her remaining £800 and two sons to a Catholic priest named Morgan, who served as guardian of her two children. Morgan not only arranged for the two brothers to live at their aunt's house, but also regularly took some of his salary to help. Under the supervision and guidance of the priest, Tolkien was admitted to the Department of Linguistics at Oxford University
When World War I broke out in 1914, The 22-year-old Tolkien enlisted as a second lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force. He crossed the English Channel to France to fight the Germans and experienced the Battle of the Somme, the worst of the First World War.
The battle lasted four months, with The Anglo-French and German forces repeatedly tug-of-war over positions along the Somme, with craters and bodies strewn across the riverbank, and some of the surrounding areas burned to the ground.
His special experience of war has made him extremely disgusted with modern industrial civilization and the killing machines it derives. Therefore, in the magic capital ruled by the demon king Sauron, there are huge machines with huge gears and flames driven by ogres and half-orcs.
In The Two Towers, after the wizard Saruman was blackened, he drove the half-orcs to cut down all the trees in their territory of Eisinger, while mining iron ore underground and casting weapons, which is undoubtedly a "projection" of modern industrial civilization in Middle-earth.
After the war, Tolkien was hired editor of the New English Dictionary and later professor of linguistics at Oxford University. In 1930, when grading students' examination papers, he found that one of the students had handed in a white paper, and he involuntarily wrote a line on the blank test paper: "Once upon a time, in the cave underground lived a hobbit. Since then, Tolkien has been attracted by a magical force, creating a vast and magnificent middle-earth world.
2. Where did the king come from: a mythological symbol in The Lord of the Rings
Before Tolkien became a brilliant writer, he was first and foremost a Catholic. From an early age, under the leadership of his mother, he regularly went to church every week to listen to the priest's sermons, and after becoming an orphan, he continued his education under the teaching and upbringing of Father Morgan. As a result, he was extremely religious in his faith and had a good study of the Bible.
Tolkien himself once said that his Lord of the Rings was essentially a Catholic story.
In addition, Tolkien was an excellent scholar. His familiarity with the Chinese and myths and legends of ancient Europe was enough to earn him a professorship at Oxford University.
The Lord of the Rings series can be said to be a perfect whole that Tolkien forged all his life, faith, knowledge, and emotions into an artistic way. The characters and plots in the story are naturally closely related to the religious literature and mythological stories he has read.
First, let's talk about the central imagery of the trilogy, the Supreme Lord of the Rings. It was created by the Demon King Sauron in the lava of the Volcano of Doom. Inside and outside are engraved a line of elven inscriptions: The Supreme Demon Ring rules the rings and returns to the net. The Supreme Ring imprisons the rings and is dim and dark. All creatures with it will become invisible in reality and teleported to another dimension, where only Sauron's magic eye on the Dark Tower can be seen emitting a terrifying red light.
The "invisibility" of the Lord of the Rings actually derives from a story in Plato's Republic: Giggs was originally a servant serving the king of Lydia, and once there was an earthquake, Giggs followed the cracks caused by the earthquake into a catacomb. There he found a gold ring worn on the giant's remains. It has a special magic that once the base of the ring is pointed towards the wearer, his figure disappears. Giggs was ambitious, and after wearing the ring, he killed the Lydian king and married the queen, taking the royal power for himself.
In both stories, the ring symbolizes an extraordinary ability, but it is also a temptation to break through the ethical and moral constraints of each person who possesses it, to do whatever he wants to satisfy his own selfish desires. Gollum went from an ordinary hobbit to a monster in order to get it; Bilbo Baggins, though tried and tested, could only barely resist its temptations; the human emperor Aragon did not dare to touch it for fear of his own depravity; and even the beautiful and powerful elf queen, Calantrell, once showed a fierce light under its temptation.
Next, we look at the image of Gollum, the most faithful servant of the Lord of the Rings throughout the trilogy. This image actually derives from the Bible and the Old Testament. At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the director tells us the story of Gollum's past.
Gollum was originally a hobbit named Smig, who fished on the river with his brother Digo on his birthday. Diggo is dragged into the water by a big fish, but accidentally finds the Supreme Ring at the bottom of the river. The two brothers quickly fall under the lure of the Ring and turn against each other, eventually Smig kills Diggo and captures the Ring. Then, he was expelled by his clan for committing murder, so he hid alone with his treasure in the deep mountains and old forests, gradually losing his humanity and losing his original appearance and even forgetting his name.
Seduced by the Supreme Ring, Gollum's personality splits: one is ruthless and selfish, unscrupulous without ends, and the other is weak, incompetent, timid and fearful. In this way, Gollum's soul was completely manipulated by the Rings and became its eternal follower and most faithful servant.
The story of Smug's fall into Gollum is borrowed from the biblical story of Cain killing his brother Abel: Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve's first two children. They offered sacrifices to God at the same time, With Cain offering grain and Abel offering lamb.
In the end, God chose Abel's sacrifice, which made Cain jealous and resentful, so he set out to kill his brother, the first murder in human history. As a result, he was sentenced by God to be exiled forever and to be with the lone ghost, never to die and never be liberated.
Both Smug and Cain, seduced by evil thoughts, committed unforgivable crimes. Driven by evil thoughts, they can even ignore blood ties. Therefore, their souls must be twisted and must atone for their sins with eternal exile.
Finally, let's look at the human character that many viewers particularly liked, Aragon. He has a dual archetype: the hero of ancient Greece and the heroic knight of medieval legends. First, let's look at aragon's illustrious life:
His ancestor was Ellos, the twin brother of Elrond, lord of the woods, the first king of Numenore.
In the Battle of Wrath at the end of the First Age, due to their half-elven bloodline, the "Noble One" Van la gave the twin brother the right to choose to become a human or an elf. Elrond chose to be an elf, while Ellos chose to be a human.
Ellos's descendant, Ilandir, was the founding king of the kingdoms of Arno and Gondor.
Secondly, Aragon first met Elrond's daughter Elvin at the age of 20 and fell in love at first sight, and the unshakable love between the two of them is also an important emotional line throughout the story, facing Elrond's opposition, Aragon is not humble and persistent in his own way to love Elvin. Eventually, after the Holy War of the Lord of the Rings, he became Emperor of Gondor and married Alvin.
Aragon's meritorious service was closely related to his noble bloodline, he was a direct blood relative of the first kings of mankind, half of the elven blood and a lifespan of up to a thousand years. As a result, he was able to be invincible on the battlefield and unmoved when facing the Lord of the Rings. This idea of success or failure based on birth is actually born out of ancient Greek mythology, in which the heroes who have achieved great feats are often demigods born of gods and humans, such as Hercules, Achilles, and Perseus.
Aragon's unswerving pursuit of love is born from the medieval legend of knighthood, in which each knight must find a noble and beautiful woman as his source of motivation before embarking on an adventure, and dedicate all the glory he has achieved to her, such as Lancelot and Tristan. It's like Aragon's obsessive pursuit of elven princess Elvin.
Third, thinking about the end - evil does not suppress the right or cure the evil with evil
I believe that many fans of the Lord of the Rings must be impressed by the final chapter of the trilogy - Frodo has gone through all kinds of dangers to bring the Lord of the Rings to the edge of the Volcano of Doom. But as an ordinary hobbit, he failed to resist the powerful temptation of the Supreme Ring and put the ring on his hand.
At this time, Gollum, the most loyal servant of the Lord of the Rings, also followed all the way, and he would never agree to let his treasure fall into the hands of others.
Gollum and Frodo wrestled on the edge of the Doomsday Volcano, and Gollum bit off Frodo's ringed index finger and retrieved the Ring. Frodo, who had broken his fingers, refused to give up and rushed forward to grab the Ring. As a result, the two fell off the cliff, Gollum took the Supreme Ring with it and was swallowed up by lava, while Frodo happened to be lucky enough to grab the edge of the cliff and avoid being buried in the sea of fire.
Can we say that this is a simple end of good and evil? Frodo went through many hardships, and at the most critical juncture, he fell under the temptation of the Lord of the Rings. At the last moment, he completely gave up the idea of destroying the Lord of the Rings. The most ironic thing is that the reversal of the situation was completely accomplished by another grunt that was even more greedy and cold-blooded than him, and it was its supreme evil thoughts that led to the destruction of the Ring.
In fact, the fall of Frodo in the film is not the fall of Gandalf, Aragon, Legolas, Golden Thunderbolt, Elrond, and all the characters in the film. It conveys to us the truth that no one can remain rational and calm under the temptation of absolute evil thoughts. If you can't buy control of your independent personality with a hundred million, then a billion, ten billion...
So, is human nature capable of self-salvation? Or is it just a fatalistic coincidence that the wicked happen to commit many unrighteous deeds and kill themselves, and the good man happens to grasp the stone protruding from the edge of the cliff?
Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" re-release has more to offer us than you might think.