Trilogy: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)

Or, The Time of the Elves is Over

21 min readJan 7, 2017

Hope, Despair, Hope

Mountain peaks fly below and ancient longing sings through the air. Snow capped, the Misty Mountains reach for worlds above, while down in their depths, a small band of wayfarers, a Fellowship of Nine, makes their way through darkness and fear.
In the heart of the mountain, where the Dwarves delved too deep, another power is aroused. A balrog, Durin’s Bane, rises from the depths. Cloaked in dark ash, shadow and flame, the creature rises and falls. Ancient beyond reckoning and filled with a might rivalled only by the great serpents of the North, this creature threatens to tear the Fellowship apart.
Hope falls into the abyss along with the balrog, and the Fellowship falls into a spiral of grief. In spite of their grief and pain, they must move on. It’s move or die.

Shore’s soul-caressing score lifts Jackson’s visual storytelling and compels me. It compels me to remember my first viewing of this scene. To remember the sadness and surprise that The Fellowship of the Ring felt, and I with them.

It compels me to engage directly with the heroes in a new way. To reminisce that moment when the unthinkable happened (no spoilers here!) and all the adventures they’d been on since and to wonder what could possibly be next.

Finally, I was compelled to remember an ancient time, a time of deep and dark mystery. As we fall into the abyss, the music drives us on with majestic fury matched only by the visual treat of that cavern, that water and those characters.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers certainly opens with a bang and draws me right in to the characters, their plight and the possibilities of hope in the midst of hopelessness.

How do you do justice to three epic movies that have contributed so much to the world of cinema and visual storytelling? I’ve tried to do homage to each of these movies individually and this time, I wish to do homage to the trilogy as a whole. I might be so corny as to say it’s one article to rule them all, but that’s not something I’d ever venture to say out loud. While not as epic as the movies in scope, I hope to capture something of the epic life-changing stories Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth and The Lord of the Rings carry for us all. Hope in the midst of hopelessness.

For me, the pacing of these movies is bound up with a story of hope in the midst of hopelessness. It’s about a time when things were dark and the characters are driven from one hopeless situation to another. Like telegraph poles with wires draped between them across a great distance, the moments of hope and light prop up the whole end-of-all-things feel that the trilogy inevitably moves toward.

Yes, there is great darkness here. Saruman and his puppet have control of the Rohan. The Nine Ringwraiths move with power and terror throughout the lands, seeking the Ring. Shelob and her spidery ways threaten to bring the whole quest to a halt. The Eye, lidless and wreathed in flame, watches and schemes in the hope that men and elves can finally be wiped from Middle Earth.

But then the White Wizard is revealed in all his power. Aragorn comes to the rescue with flame and Arwen Evenstar carries Frodo to the safety of the Last Homely House. Galadriel, Lady of Light, appears to Frodo and offers him the strength he needs to take this next step, when all other lights have gone out. Aragorn and company remember Frodo and take one last step to foil the Eye’s plans and draw his vision away from their friends.

Like telegraph poles with wires draped between them across a great distance, the moments of hope and light prop up the whole end-of-all-things feel that the trilogy inevitably moves toward.

Here, hope is never tacky. It’s mixed with an unapologetic loss. This is a story about love, yes, about hope and friendship and it’s a story of war. It’s the ultimate battle between good and evil, dark and light, purity and corruption, innocence and guilt, power and powerlessness.

Jackson managed to move the viewer from hope (the Shire), to hopelessness (Moria), to hope (Fangorn Forest), to tragedy (Helms Deep), to hope (Helms Deep, at first light on the fifth day, at dawn, looking to the East), to hopelessness (Pelennor Fields), back and forth, back and forth, until finally, when all seems lost, Sam finds the strength to carry Frodo. And we cried. Well, I did.

Once, there was a time when Hobbits shaped the fortunes of all …

Placed throughout the movies, we discover the moments of glory, moments of humility, of courage and hope. Times when the powerful overwhelm and the small seem so insignificant. The heroes in those moments are forged and forever changed by their journey. In times when we feel overwhelmed by our own balrogs, it’s easy to forget that once, there was a time when Hobbits shaped the fortunes of all …

The Shire and a Hole in the Ground

Turning Point

It’s not until 30 minutes into the first movie that we get to meet the Ring as a character. Sure, we’ve already had our introductions — I’m looking at you, Isildur — but we haven’t seen the Ring interact with one of our main heroes.

Enter Bilbo. Here was a fellow who epitomises a life that is good and he tells us the story of the good as it’s seen in The Shire, that place where things are made to last. This, I suspect, is the perfect time to introduce the Ring’s malice and its pervasive power. The way it seeps insidiously into your life and replaces your beauty with something else, invisible at first.

How marvellous that we should have almost half an hour of setting up the beauty and innocence of the Shire, and the centrality of Bilbo to that life, and then be shown in an instant how powerful the Ring’s hold can be.

If you’re anything like me, you have your demons. I’ve read many times that on this platform, in order for people to read my works, I should be very transparent. Completely open. But there’s a danger in that. I’ve learnt the hard way that being open and transparent with everyone can be more detrimental than good.

So my demons shall lay hidden in the dark places of the world, for only my closest loved ones and confidants who have proven themselves to know. They’re not necessarily very black but they’re there.

Suffice it to say, though, that I have them. Those demons, those habits, thoughts, beliefs that won’t dislodge from my pysche no matter how hard I try to remove them.

You have them, too. Ours may not be the same. They may or may not be the same substance, the same depth, the same darkness. Some of mine you might say are not so bad after all — not compared to yours. It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?

Bilbo’s darkness — his attachment to the Ring — was not as dark nor as powerful as Gollum’s. It was the same power that held them but its corruption was not as deep. Then when we look to the end, with Frodo, we see that having come so far, in the end, there was nothing he could do. And that’s why Sam and Gollum were there. They played a part — both for good and for ill — that not even the wise could foresee.

In our own lives, we have turning points where circumstance reveals our demons. Perhaps it’s a bit of covetousness — we show how jealous we are of the neighbour’s car. Or our insecurities about making the same mistake at work pop up. Or we return to our habit that we swore we’d give up.

It’s only as we get to know people that the true colours surface. And that’s why friendship is such a beautiful thing. It’s something that reveals its true colours — demons and all — and chooses to stick with it anyway.

That turning point is the moment when we can choose to confront the demon (“Bilbo! The Ring is still in your pocket …”). Do we, like Bilbo, deny the Ring is there? Or do we take it out and reluctantly, painfully, drop it on the floor, in the open, for our closest friends or counsellors to see?

In seeing, perhaps we can finally return to living a life of substance. Giving it up, letting a trustworthy someone see our ring, can result in a new journey where we, too, can get to see mountains again.

In short, the movie story begins with the hopefulness of the Shire, which is punctuated with the insidious power of the Ring. This power, though obviously evil, can be relinquished, as with Bilbo. In that moment, we see that the movies, though dark, have a place of light to which they’re moving. With Bilbo, we can feel light again.

What must I do?

Frodo sees the need for the Ring to be removed from the Shire. The Ring is not safe there and as long as the Ring is in the Shire, the beloved Shire isn’t safe, either.

In a moment of grim determination, he clasps the Ring and queries Gandalf, “What must I do?”

His question evokes this response from Gandalf:

My dear Frodo. Hobbits really are amazing creatures. You can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you.

Thus begins the journey of the Ring to Rivendell and eventually to Mordor. Samwise Gamgee, faithful gardener and friend, accompanies Frodo, as do Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took.

This attitude of Frodo’s is shared at various times by all of the hobbits. There are times when all you can do is enough. Whether that’s in the middle of war, in the face of certain defeat, at the mercy of a Nazgul or at the end of all things, sometimes all you can do is all that you have to do.

Frodo understood that and in the movies, this propelled the characters and the story along at multiple key moments.

I suppose we all have moments like that. Times when life seems too overwhelming. For me, in these spaces between doing, there is always a choice.

When no one else can pick me up and I’m faced with the reality of my own agency – that I alone am in charge of how I respond to my destiny right now – in those moments, I can ask myself one simple question: What must I do?

The Time of the Elves is Over

Sorrow and beauty weave mingled throughout these movies. We see once great ruins overgrown with weeds. The mighty Tower of Amon Sûl is now the ruinous shadow of itself upon Weathertop. The Argonath, their arms outstretched with might, betray the truth: that there once lived majesty here but now? No more.

Nowhere is this more real than with the Elves. The colours of autumn permeate their existence. Bronzes, greens and browns gather in the windswept scattering of leaves throughout all their buildings.

They still possess their might. Galadriel is still a mighty sorceress of light. Elrond is Lord of Rivendell and gifted with foresight. In their presence our heroes often find respite, healing, joy and friendship.

But that is all coming to a close. The time of the Elves is ending and those that remain only do so briefly. It’s a matter of time before the seas in the West call to them, beckoning them home.

It seems that time itself is a character in these movies, a force we can’t see but whose effects are all around us.

The Slow Decay of Time

One of the most beautiful scenes of this trilogy is when Elrond speaks with Arwen about her choice to stay in Middle Earth. It is visually stunning, musically profound and lyrically evocative.

In it we see an Elvish idea of time and its inevitable destruction of mortality:

Elrond:
Arwen. Tollen i lû. I chair gwannar na Valannor. Si bado, no círar. (Arwen. It is time. The ships are leaving for Valinor. Go now, before it is too late.)
Arwen:
I have made my choice.
Elrond:
He is not coming back. Why do you linger here when there is no hope?
Arwen:
There is still hope.
Elrond:
If Aragorn survives this war, you will still be parted. If Sauron is defeated and Aragorn made king……and all that you hope for comes true……you will still have to taste the bitterness of mortality.
Whether by the sword or the slow decay of time……Aragorn will die. And there will be no comfort for you……no comfort to ease the pain of his passing. He will come to death……an image of the splendour of the kings of Men……in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
But you, my daughter……you will linger on in darkness and in doubt……as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Here you will dwell……bound to your grief under the fading trees…… until all the world is changed……and the long years of your life are utterly spent.
Arwen. There is nothing for you here……only death.

This scene is visually gorgeous. We’re confronted with an image of Aragorn’s funeral, Arwen mourning on the far side of Aragorn’s body. Time passes and the body becomes a sarcophagus, which remains a sculpted reminder of what once was — as Elrond said, “An image of the splendour of the kings of Men, in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world”.

A scattering of leaves blows past the sculpture.

We soon see Arwen wandering the woods alone in mourning, living out the fate Elrond describes. The direction and performance is magnificent. Elrond is in no hurry as he brings to life what awaits the most beautiful of the Elves left on earth. The music is in no hurry, reflecting the slow breath of death and the inevitable wear of time.

Until all the world is changed and the long years of your life are utterly spent.

For the Elves, the fate of the mortal is inevitable. Time will wear life away. It’s no sudden change but a decaying, dying light. Like a rusted ship undersea that shares some of the shape of its former glory, so time eats away at the beauty we all possess.

This scene evokes in me such sadness, yet it’s a beautiful sadness. I can’t describe how deeply this scene touched me when I first watched it. And again and again. It is immensely sad and phenomenally beautiful all at once.

It evokes in me the same feeling I get when I look at photos of mighty medieval castles. There’s something so large, so old and full of history. Untold lives lived there, births, deaths, love and destruction. Histories forged and untold, never to be known. The ageless beauty of decay, the slow beat of time that’s never bested, no matter how hard we try.

One day we will all die. I may never know the day on which I‘ll die. In my job working with myeloma cancer sufferers as the Holistic Care consultant for the Myeloma Foundation of Australia, I am privileged to come in contact with many people who confront death every single day.

Myeloma has no cure. There is no chemotherapy or radiation run that you can do to kill it off. It’s an insidious, horrid thing that gets inside your blood, inside your bones, and eats them away, disrupting how your white blood cells work. It’s a true terrorist attack on the body.

There are amazing medication treatments now. Amazing. And there is some great research coming out for myeloma treatment. But still, all we can do is delay the inevitable.

What do you say when someone comes out of remission? When they’ve had a taste of the life they use to live before this cancer stole it from them and then threatens to take it all away again? What do you say?

When the slow decay of time reminds them of its inevitability?

I never know what to say. And I’m never sure how to process it.

Sometimes, all I can do is go to my bookshelf, take down my Extended Edition copy of The Two Towers, put disc two into my DVD player and watch this scene. There is catharsis in weeping. Or even just feeling like it and letting it be.

There is catharsis in weeping.

Sometimes, all I can do is feel and let that feeling express itself. This scene helps me do that. Its beauty reminds me that life goes on right up until it doesn’t, and that as long as it goes on, as long as it’s there, there is beauty. Even in the great autumns of life, when the sunshine of our hope seems to set, we can find immense glory all around us.

The breath in our chest, the sky above us, the family around us, the children laughing in the playground yet to live the life we’ve already lived, all of these things are things that we remember. Things I can hold on to.

Elrond wished to hold on to Arwen and shield her from her pain. He wished to keep her from the inevitable fate that would befall her, but he forgot one important thing: That is her story to live.

I can’t take the pain away from the myeloma sufferers or their carers. I can’t do that. They must live their life and they will.

What I can do is offer them hope and remind them of the beauty all around even in the midst of their autumns. The leaves will blow, the mourners will come and we will hurt. I cry even as I write this, for the pain of all those people I meet, the loss, the struggle, the massive misfortunes they never knew would come upon them and my inability to help them when all I want to do is relieve their pain, ease their suffering!

When we’re young, we dream of better days. The world is ahead and we never dream of death, of hurt, of destruction, but there it goes. We know it will happen but we rarely realise what that might look like.

For me, the time of the Elves is over and there is a death looming. What was once great and mighty must sooner or later give way to something new. I can try to hold on to the old, to keep it close to my chest and stop it waning, but all I do is delay the inevitable.

Time will bring change. Change will bring opportunity and with it, something new and with a beauty all its own.

While the time of the Elves might have come to an end, the time of Men was just about to begin. And who knows what amazing things that might result in?

Home Is Behind, The World Ahead

Denethor:
Can you sing, Master Hobbit?
Pippin:
Well … yes, at least, well enough for my own people. But we have no songs for great halls and evil times. We seldom sing of anything more terrible than wind or rain.
Denethor:
And why should your songs be unfit for my halls or for hours such as these? Come, sing me a song!

As it turns out, Pippin did have just such a song fit for Denethor’s halls at such an hour as that. Sorrow lay etched on his face as he sung the end of so many lives.

With death and terror on all sides, far from home and standing at the edge of night, Pippin found himself drawing on the pools of joy and sorrow that sourced the life of his happy upbringing. Even here, so far from home, he found the resource from his past to draw a picture of hope in the middle of a hopeless situation.

He found the words — the lament — to say what he felt when he thought there could be no words. Not just to speak but to sing from his heart the loss and uncertainty he felt:

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow
Cloud and shade
All shall fade
All shall fade

Much as the Elves faced the certainty of their own departure from Middle Earth, and even as Frodo looked into Gandalf’s eyes and asked, “What must I do?”, now Pippin was faced with a choice. Would he sing a song fit for this moment? Or would he choose not to?

In this one moment, as in many others, Pippin found his courage.

I’m reminded of the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where the Fellowship departed from Lothlórien. Galadriel, Lady of Light, walks among the Fellowship and grants to each of them a gift. To Merry and Pippin, she gives a dagger each. She speaks first to both of them and then to Pippin:

Galadriel:
These are the daggers of the Ñoldorin. They have already seen service in war.
Do not fear, young Peregrin Took. You will find your courage.

For Pippin, staying at home would never have afforded him this opportunity. It’s not really an opportunity you’d want to be afforded, if you could choose. But then, neither is never finding your courage.

Galadriel saw in his face uncertainty and fear and as she gazed into his future she also saw his potential. She knew that he would find his courage.

The Road Less Travelled

There are times when everything — all the stuff of life — has so much weight. Times when every day is a burden and it takes all our energy to simply choose the next step. Perhaps it’s our own little Pelennor Fields. In those seasons, to think about the future is an immensely difficult task. On some of those days, it may be easy to feel too intimidated by it all and just want to pack it in. Sometimes I feel less than courageous and much more akin to a timid dog hiding under the bed in the middle of a thunderstorm.

In those moments, like Pippin, we are confronted with a choice. Do I do this or that? Choose this or that? Go here or there?

I was recently encouraged by a mentor of mine. He gave me a poem by Robert Frost entitled, The Road Not Taken. One stanza in particular stands out to me:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In these moments, when we’re confronted with a choice, which do we choose? Isn’t it so that we can feel so intimidated by our future, so fearful of what may come and so sure that we lack the courage, that to choose not to do the fearful thing just seems like the best choice?

But I wonder if we, like Pippin, wouldn’t be better served by making the choice to follow the fearful road, the one less travelled by. I wonder if we took a chance, would we discover that courage is not something you feel before you go, it’s something you discover as you go?

For Pippin, I think his true courage was discovered as he made the decisions. Courage and motivation are two close cousins. As you make that decision to travel down that path, you find that you’re able to make the next step. Then as you lift your foot and step forward once again, you discover that courage has found you and you’re motivated to take the next step and the next.

And so you step again and again and all the while your path diverges further and further from your beginning. Further from home you travel, under branch and cloud, over leaves and twigs and logs. Further from home you travel, often on unknown trails through unknown lands until at last you discover new countries you’d never known before. Home is behind and you’ve discovered a whole new world.

Like Pippin, your courage comes when you make the decision and when you make the decision you discover the motivation to move forward.

Like Pippin, you’ll discover yourself in some uncomfortable and painful stories.

And do you know what? Like Pippin, if you ever return home, you’ll be a wiser, more colourful version of yourself. Still you. Just not the you that left home in the first place.

Courage is not something you feel before you go, it’s something you discover as you go

I wonder if you have a choice in front of you today and I wonder if it’s a difficult choice to make. Maybe it’s one that’s marked with the unknown. Maybe it’s really well known and you’ve even been here before.

I wonder, if you chose to take that first step, would you discover the courage to do the next one? I can only wonder.

But you — you can choose to make that step and find out for yourself. When you make your choice — and you will choose one way or the other — you may be pleasantly surprised at what happens.

A Crown for a King

There’s a subtle scene in The Return of the King that sings the story of a small, whispering hope. Here it is:

Isn’t it beautiful? Just after we’ve had Frodo speak his fears of never returning, we see this possibility. The sunlight breaks through the clouds and smiles upon the sculpted head of the king of old. The ancient head is crowned with a wreath of white flowers.

“Mr Frodo. Look! The king has got a crown again”, says Sam.

It’s a foreshadowing — or perhaps a forelighting — of what may yet happen, if they can only finish their quest. Maybe there is a time of hope, maybe there is sliver of possibility that a king will one day return to these lands.

Strider

Alone in a darkened corner of the inn sits a man in a cowled cloak. His brooding face obscured by shadow, on his lips a carved pipe hangs and his piercing eyes watch the hobbits.

It’s one of my all time favourite visual moments in the stories, the introduction of Strider. He comes across rough, gruff, and we’re not sure if we can trust him.

It’s Frodo who sets our minds at rest. In his opinion, a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler. In this brief statement, Frodo sets the scene for everything we discover about being human.

Strider, as we soon enough discover, is rightful heir of the throne of Gondor, cast into a theatre he has no desire to perform on. I won’t go into his story here, as that’s what the movies (and books) are for. I wish to focus on just one important aspect of his story.

Elven-kin and Human King?

Aragorn son of Arathorn was brought up by Elrond, Lord of Rivendell. He was schooled in the things of the Elves and Men. His right as heir to the throne of Gondor was that he was the direct descendant of Isildur, the one who should have destroyed the Ring in the first place but didn’t.

Aragorn carries around inside himself a doubt that he can fulfil his destiny. He sees in himself the same weakness that flowed through Isildur’s veins and fears that he will make the same — or a worse — mistake.

Like Pippin — and like you and I — Aragorn struggles with his humanity and with a choice. Two paths are before him: One to become the king he was born to be and the other to remain a vagrant Ranger.

Aragorn, I think, represents the humanity in all of us. He desires to be a healer of people and to see good prevail but he knows too well his own failings. How can he possibly be the person he is destined to become without succumbing to his weakness?

Self doubt is crippling. I know it is. I live with it every day.

We get to watch as Aragorn’s story unfolds. We’re not sure who he is, who he could possibly be until we reach Rivendell. But he never claims this as his right or his identity. In fact, it seems he wishes to disown and keep it quiet.

Fast forward to Rohan and we see King Theoden somehow threatened by Aragorn’s presence and council. Fair enough, I suppose, because he’s had Saruman and Grima whispering in his ear all this time, usurping his authority. Still, we can see, as the people of Rohan meet in Helm’s Deep, that there’s a history here. Theoden knows who Aragorn is and what he is destined to become.

At Helm’s Deep, Gandalf also allows his beliefs about Aragorn escape. He assures Aragorn that Theoden will yet need Aragorn’s help before the end of the battle. And so he did.

Then we discover one last hope, after Arwen Evenstar chooses a mortal life. Elrond approaches Aragorn and encourages him to finally take up his mantle as king.

I don’t know about you, but the journey Aragorn took is akin to many of my own journeys. My self doubt and self deprecating stories pull me down, in spite of so many people encouraging me.

I see what is in me — or I think I do — and I fail to see clearly the good that’s there as well. The murky waters of self debasement are no mirror you’d want to cut your hair with. They stink and the reflection is terribly inaccurate.

It often takes me a great many words from friends, family and mentors to bring me to a place where I believe the things they say. Where I think I can actually achieve the successes I am apparently destined for.

Because you know what? It’s hard being human. It really is. I see my failings, my weakness and it’s easy to falsely believe that because I fail, I am a failure. But that’s not true. Failing doesn’t make me a failure. It makes me human.

There is still hope

And then there’s the fears I have around failing. Maybe I will fail. Like Aragorn, I allow what I think could happen seem an absolute. I think that I know what will happen, so why bother trying, right?

The thing is, so what?

So what if things don’t go according to plan?

So what if I make a mistake again?

So what if someone gets offended, or I hurt myself again, or I don’t finish another thing I promised to get done?

When I make the choice, as Aragorn had to, as Pippin had to and as Frodo had to, then I find my courage. When I find my courage, then I become motivated.

As I step out into the unknown and discover the less traveled path, I am confronted with this undeniable fact: There is still hope.

That’s one of the beautiful threads throughout these movies as a trilogy. They move from beauty and life, through deepening dark to a place of gut wrenching despair. Along the way, we get to know some of the characters and discover how they grow and finally respond to the terrible situations they find themselves in.

Then, at the very end, we are brought back to the place of beauty and life. Hobbits really did shape the fortunes of all. As the credits roll, we discover that we, just like these characters, are forever changed by this journey.

You may be interested in my other articles on each of the LOTR movies:

I work as a coach, science communicator, and writer, and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience as an Accredited Exercise Physiologist, Change Fitness coach, and martial artist.