The Playground Battle

The

Lord of the Rings Reflection

From what I saw of the cometary of Lord of the Rings I found a few things interesting. One of the things I thought were interesting was that they had to make a lot of double sets so that the hobbits would look smaller than all the other characters; like the bar and Bilbo's home. They also do a lot of long shots to show how big of a place Middle Earth is. These shots give people watching the movie an better understanding of how long of a journey this really is. I remember seeing parts of this movie from a few years back so while I was watching the commentary I would get lost in the scene behind what they were talking about making me want to just watch the movie. I think that if we ever saw a commentary again we should watch the movie first and then watch the commentary.

The Lord of the Rings Paper

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson have a huge variety of screen arrangements, framing, color and lighting, movement and positions of the camera, points of view, and music. These two films are also perfect examples of an epic. There are several epic points to this movie, but I’m going to cover three of them, courage, supernatural, and vast setting.

Courage is the first epic point I’d like to talk about. For me courage means to find something deep down in yourself to do something that takes a lot of bravery. Frodo is the main hero in this series because he is the one carrying The Ring. This itself shows that Frodo has a lot of courage. No one but Frodo would or could take it. Then later on in The Two Towers Frodo goes off alone with Sam who chose to go along because he didn’t want to break his promise to Gandalf. Sam also has an abundance of courage for the fact that he stands by Frodo through everything; he is risking his life time and time again to be a loyal and true friend to him. In almost every screen shot the camera is moved to show Sam just behind Frodo’s shoulder. Sam also has the courage to look beside the bad and find the good in all situations. Sam accepts Frodo’s decisions and tries to make the best of everything.

The second epic point I’m going to hit on is Supernatural. My definition for supernatural is a quality or material item that the ordinary world doesn’t possess. The Ring is like a spirit that can see and draw others to it, this is supernatural. Watching the movie I noticed the camera zooms in on The Ring showing its point of view giving it a sense of power. When Frodo puts The Ring on he goes into a different dimension seeing The Eye see him. Everything goes into slow motion and is either light blues and white with the Ring wraiths or black and red showing a close up of the fiery eye. A prime example of supernatural is in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship when Gandalf and Saruman have their battle using nothing but their staffs and magic. Gandalf also brings the King back to normal with his magic in the second film, The Two Towers. Watching Gandalf bring the King back was very interesting. First he is this old man and slowly his eyes begin to clear, and his face becomes young again; transforming him into his normal self. Not only are the wizards supernatural beings, but the elves are as well, they are immortal, meaning they will never die of natural causes or old age. They also have material gifts that are extraordinary. Sam’s rope is one of those gifts, the rope won’t untie until its owner wants it to let go. They also have robes that the elves let the entire fellowship borrow. These robes have the power to making the owner become invisible.

Most every epic story has a vast setting with mountains, rivers, valleys, and several different towns. In the very beginning before everything is dark and evil, The Shire is a very peaceful, ideal, fairy tail-like place. When Frodo goes to leave The Shire, there are high angle pannings of the Middle Earth showing the mountains, rolling hills, and waters. Rivendale is where the elves live and it is a world of silvers with a feeling of calmness. In contrast to Rivendale and The Shire is Moria that is the dark and scary. Moria is where the fiery demon (Balrog) tries to kill Gandalf. In this scene the camera is at a high angle looking down throwing his tail into slow motion for a dramatic effect. In The Two Towers, Helmsdeep is where the major battle is with thousands of orcs are. There is a long shot showing all of the orcs file in and then the camera switches to Aragorn showing his determination with a medium close up. Frodo is on a long journey having to travel over all of this land, this vast setting.

As one can see The Lord of the Ring films have characters full of courage, several supernatural incidents, and a huge setting. Not only is this movie a great entertainment, but also it has many good characteristics and moral aspects to it. Peter Jackson did an exceptional job of bringing different lighting techniques, musical emotions, and viewpoints within the film. This is an amazing movie that I would suggest to anyone.