December 17, 2001
'Lord of the Rings' hits big screen with Christian themes
___By Craig Bird
___FaithWorks magazine
___ASHEVILLE, N.C. (ABP)--On the heels of the Harry Potter movie, with magical themes that some criticize as un-Christian, another popular fantasy novel is about to hit the big screen.
___The anticipated blockbuster "The Fellowship of the Ring" is expected to take the already legendary renown of author J.R.R. Tolkien to another level. Scheduled to hit theaters Dec. 19, it is the first installment of an ambitious attempt to translate Tolkien's classic "Lord of the Rings" series into film.
___New Line Pictures reportedly budgeted $50 million to promote the first installment. Next year will see the premiere of "The Two Towers," followed by "The Return of the King" in 2003.
ELIJAH WOOD plays the role of Frodo Baggins, hero of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien.The evil Ring Wraiths pursue Frodo in search of the ring.
___This continues an unlikely prominence for a conservative Oxford don who made up entire languages for his private amusement.
___In fact, he wound up writing "The Hobbit," the prequel to "Lord of the Rings," after encountering a blank page while grading exams. He impulsively jotted down, "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." Not knowing what a "hobbit" was, he wrote an entire novel to answer his own question.
___Tolkien's three-volume set has sold more than 50 million copies since publication of the first volume in 1954. A special edition released by Houghton Mifflin this year has sold 250,000 copies.
___Tolkien, who died in 1973, despised machines. He only briefly owned an automobile and never a dishwasher. One must wonder what he would make of the high-tech special effects that pervade director Peter Jackson's film version of "The Fellowship of the Ring."
___Another question is how audiences that objected to mythical themes in Harry Potter will receive similar fare in Tolkien's writings. While Tolkien was politically conservative and a devout Christian, his works have been subject to broad interpretation by various groups. For example:
___Songs by the popular rock band Led Zeppelin in the 1970s borrowed images from Tolkien. The Hobbit habit of ingesting mushrooms and smoking "pipe weed" got translated into drug use for counter-culture readers.
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___os Angeles Gnostic Society put Tolkien on level with the Bible in leading to spiritual salvation.
THE EVIL Ring Wraiths pursue Frodo in search of the ring.
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___Often overlooked, meanwhile, is the subtle Christian message underlying Tolkien's fiction.
___In fact, Tolkien persuaded C.S. Lewis, who himself later wrote several Christian classics, to become a Christian. The two are credited with paving the way for a new genre of devotional literature, influencing authors like Charles Williams, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers.
___Tolkien omitted overt references to God, worship, prayer and Christianity in the 500,000 words of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. It wasn't an effort to hide his Christian faith, he said. Rather, he believed the technique communicated Christian values more effectively precisely because they were less obvious.
___According to Tolkien and his close associates, the writings were grounded in an unstinting Christian conviction that, at the end of time, God would finally and forever defeat evil.
___Tolkien rooted that conviction in his own faith in Christ.
___Tolkien said the only criticism of "Lord of the Rings" that ever bothered him was that it "contained no religion."
___He described his fictional Middle Earth as "a monotheistic world of 'natural theology.'"
___The fact there are no churches, temples or religious rites and ceremonies "is simply part of the historical climate depicted" in his fiction, he said.
___"I am in any case myself a Christian," he said, even if his "Third Age" was not a Christian world.
___Tolkien believed eternal truths established in creation would be recognizable even in his fictional "sub creation."
___"We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth which is with God," he told C.S. Lewis during their late night discussion that resulted in Lewis becoming a Christian.
___More insights into the hidden spiritual currents that drive Tolkien's work are found in an acclaimed but lesser-known work, "The Silmarillion."
___The bible of Tolkien's mythical world recounts millennia of history, along with the mythological structure of Middle Earth, including an all-powerful deity, angelic beings and a version of "the fall" of some of those beings.
___The deeper framework allows Tolkien to explore profound questions of destiny and free will, the reality of evil and the task to struggle against it.
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