by Mimi Chong
Most people in Taiwan may believe that the most awaited Hollywood movie of the year is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and they’re only partly correct. The other book-turned-movie phenomenon that legions of fans are eagerly waiting for is The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which comes to theatres in December, and is based on the famous fantasy novel of the same name. The Lord of the Rings was published in the 1950’s, and it was written by J.R.R. Tolkien, a Professor of English at Oxford University, whose expertise and interest in Old English, linguistics and Norse and Celtic legend influenced the creation of Middle-Earth, an imaginary world woven entirely of the stuff of myth and folktale. Magnificent in scale and meticulous in detail, Middle-Earth is the backdrop for The Lord of the Rings and its companion stories, and home of many peoples and cultures that each have their own history and language, peoples like Humans, Elves, Orcs, Ents, and Hobbits. The humans of LotR are a young race, living under a code of sword and honour; Elves are austere, near-immortal beings of an ancient race that is slowly dying out. Dwarves are short and fiery-tempered; Ents are more akin to trees than anything else; Orcs and Ringwraiths are the misshapen minions of evil. But The Lord of the Rings is mainly the story of a hobbit. Hobbits are furry-footed, short-statured folk with a deep love of home, hearth and a pipe after a good dinner – the least adventurous of people. Misfortune or fate brought the One Ring into the possession of Frodo, a young hobbit with no inkling of its corrupting power until Dark Riders came to hunt him down; and with his companions he embarks upon a journey that spans over hill and under ground, a war, and a thousand pages of epic novel that changed the future of fantasy fiction and drew generations of devoted fans. Peter Jackson is such a fan, and is also the film director who had the audacity and vision to bring Tolkien’s masterwork to the screen. The movie-making technology required to bring a completely invented world to life is was now available; so Jackson, with an amazing, dedicated production crew and cast took the plunge and took on Tolkien. It took him and his screenwriters over three years to adapt the three-part novel into a screenplay trilogy, the first installment being The Fellowship of the Ring. Great pains were taken to preserve not only the storyline but also Tolkien’s carefully crafted language, which gives LotR its air of ancient authenticity; in fact, the production crew’s resolution to abide by nothing less than the Word of Tolkien in every single aspect is a quest worthy of Middle-Earth heroes. By no means was The Lord of the Rings going to be a computer-generated movie with cheap “magical” effects. No detail was overlooked in the making of costumes and props: real weaponsmiths and artisans were appointed to fashion over 23,000 individually designed and functional Middle-Earth items like armour, furniture and utensils. The hordes of orcs in the movie each have different silicone faces. To teach actors how to speak the invented Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin, fluently, language experts and Tolkien scholars were brought in. Peter Jackson’s native New Zealand in all its pristine and varied splendour provided the backdrop: for a year the crew filmed nonstop in New Zealand’s mountains, forests, and volcanic landscapes. A nest of small green hills became the location for a replica of Hobbiton (naturally, the Hobbits’ town) so perfect that actor Ian McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf, said “it was an actual open-air village with growing crops and flowers actually sprouting in gardens, birds singing, insects … nothing was plastic or fake.” Sir Ian is part of a stellar cast that includes Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Liv Tyler, Sean Bean, Sir Ian Holm, and young Elijah Wood as Frodo. Many of the actors were readers of Tolkien themselves, and they treated the filming not as just another job, but with the gusto of people realizing a dream. The most finicky of LotR fans couldn’t find fault with an actor that loved his character as much as they. The most finicky of film critics were also impressed, at a Fellowship of the Ring sneak preview at Cannes this year: not even part of the Film Festival proper, the half-hour showing generated more headlines than any of the movies presented. The Lord of the Rings promises not only to please established fans, but also people who know nothing of fantasy, of elves, dwarves and hobbits; if you’re a moviegoer, this is a film that shouldn’t be missed. You’ll see me waiting in line. #Volume 7 Issue 1 a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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