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Time magazine featured The Two Towers in several articles that focused both on the movie and on fantasy in general.
After several paragraphs that covered the usual "Fantasy is childish and infantile and is a dangerously seductive and simplistic way to think" they end up on a more intelligent note than I would have expected. After all, it's a more acceptable and less challenging choice to simply dismiss fantasy as being a feckless desire for easy answers. I was surprised to see Time not taking that easy way out, but actually going through the effort to see LotR as not simply another children's story.
I really liked the ending thoughts:
And at its core, The Lord of the Rings isn't a story about frilly shirts and talking frogs; it's a tale about temptation. Frodo isn't a knight in shining armor; he's not even a wizard in a pointy hat. His only claim to fame, his sole superpower, is his uncommon ability to resist the seductive, corrupting temptation of the all-powerful Ring he carries. And as hard as he fights against that temptation, in the end he fails.
Is there a message there for contemporary America? As the world's only superpower, we're carrying the Ring on behalf of an entire planet, and our burden is every bit as heavy as Frodo's. Seen in that light, The Lord of the Rings looks like a very grownup story indeed, one that can't be told often enough. Frodo lives
After several paragraphs that covered the usual "Fantasy is childish and infantile and is a dangerously seductive and simplistic way to think" they end up on a more intelligent note than I would have expected. After all, it's a more acceptable and less challenging choice to simply dismiss fantasy as being a feckless desire for easy answers. I was surprised to see Time not taking that easy way out, but actually going through the effort to see LotR as not simply another children's story.
I really liked the ending thoughts:
And at its core, The Lord of the Rings isn't a story about frilly shirts and talking frogs; it's a tale about temptation. Frodo isn't a knight in shining armor; he's not even a wizard in a pointy hat. His only claim to fame, his sole superpower, is his uncommon ability to resist the seductive, corrupting temptation of the all-powerful Ring he carries. And as hard as he fights against that temptation, in the end he fails.
Is there a message there for contemporary America? As the world's only superpower, we're carrying the Ring on behalf of an entire planet, and our burden is every bit as heavy as Frodo's. Seen in that light, The Lord of the Rings looks like a very grownup story indeed, one that can't be told often enough. Frodo lives
