I watched the second "Rings" last night, and just couldn't follow it (much to my daughter's chagrin: "Come on, Dad!"). Could you or anyone here explain the plot and why it's such a successful enterprise?
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It's been awhile since I read Tolkien so I'm going by relatively distant memory. Still, I think I recall the essentials.
You wrote that you couldn't follow the second film, 'The Two Towers" so I'm going to assume that you understood the first and skip describing its plot.
I'll focus on the skeleton of the second story.
"The Two Towers" is about many things but at it's heart is the story of a massive military feint designed to fool Sauron (the Satan figure) into committing resources and, more importantly attention, to the field of battle while the true threat to his grab for temporal and spiritual hegemony - the slow advance of halflings Frodo and Sam towards Mordor (the land Sauron rules) - goes entirely unnoticed. As I recall, this strategy was worked out by Gandalf (a sorcerer).
There are various subthreads which mature in the third book, "Return of the King" (and presumably, the movie) but if you watch the film with the dual tracks of warfare going on in mind - large scale battle between vast armies on the one hand, quiet psychological warfare going on within Frodo on the other - it will seem much more intelligible.
There's much more to say but I don't want to write a lengthy essay on something with clearly limited appeal to listmembers.
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Why is it so successful?
The films are successful because they are beautifully made and faithful to the spirit of Tolkien's work. Also, they're excellent fantasy adventure cinema.
The books themselves are successful because there is an underlying psychological subtlety present (at the most critical moment, the hero fails and all is saved by the reviled Golum) which speaks to different readers in infinitely different ways at different times in their life.
Children love the adventure story, strange settings and characters. Teenagers love the combat and feats of strength and endurance (and appreciate the strangeness more deeply). Adults who return without prejudice discover that its a different work from the simple monsters, orcs, sorcery and swordplay epic they thought they remembered.
It's an odd and grand work and much more interesting than market-realists, socialist-realists, real-politikers and other brands of 'clear-eyed' citizens realize.
DRM
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