Film Critique: The Lord of the Rings

Film Critique: The Lord of the Rings

The selected work for review is the movie, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” A decisive moment in the film is when Frodo breaks the One Ring and the volcanic activity of Mount Doom goes off unexpectedly, and much to his and others’ consternation (Jackson, 2003). This scene is one of the most important plot elements, and it typifies the decline of Sauron’s power and the redemption of Middle-earth.

The real-life volcanic eruptions are explained by complicated geological processes. Gas and tectonic pressures force magma through deep reservoirs under the crust of the earth (Donovan, 2022). The warning signs that precede the eruptions usually include earth shaking, ground deformation, and release of gases. As an illustration, Mount St. Helens exhibited a bulging on the side of the volcano up to 2.5 meters per day, as well as weeks of heightened seismicity prior to its 1980 eruption (Schlieder et al., 2022). The magma, which was contained in Mount St. Helens, was buried a few kilometres under the surface and came up gradually, leaving clear geological evidence that can be measured prior to the eruption.

In contrast, Mount Doom explodes as soon as the Ring lands in the lava. As a scientific matter, the instance of a small object, such as the Ring symbolically speaking, falling into the molten rock alone would not cause an explosion of large magnitude and scale of the volcano (Fraknoi et al., 2022). The heat and physical effects of such an object would not be matched to the huge amounts of magma, already experiencing pressure (Selling, 2008). Also, the film presents the lava flows, as well as the explosive ash clouds happening simultaneously to an extreme degree, but volcanoes tend to present both effusive or explosive trends, and not both to such an extreme degree at the same time. Conclusively, although the representation of volcano science in the film is dramatic, it greatly undermines scientific knowledge about volcanoes to enhance the emotional peak of the story.

References

Donovan, A. (2022). Volcanoes and the human and physical geographies of risk. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.013.367

Fraknoi, A., Morrison, D., & Wolff, S. (2022). Astronomy 2e. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/24-5-black-holes

Jackson, Peter. (Director). (2003). The lord of the rings: The return of the king. New Line Cinema.

Schlieder, T. D., Cooper, K. M., Kent, A. J., Bradshaw, R., & Huber, C. (2022). Thermal storage conditions and origin of compositional diversity of plagioclase crystals in magmas from the 1980 and 2004–2005 eruptions of Mount Saint Helens. Journal of Petrology, 63(8), egac064. https://doi.org/10.1093/petrology/egac064

Selling, K. (2008). JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’: The book, the film, and genre criticism. Sydney Studies in English, 29(2003), 39–56. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/SSE/article/view/572

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Film Critique: The Lord of the Rings

You have the freedom to select a science fiction movie or novel to express knowledge of science in the plot, indicating when science has been extrapolated to science fiction.

Film Critique – The Lord of the Rings

In this assignment, you will identify and critique the use of science in a popular science fiction film or novel. The critique will comment on if the science is correct or incorrect, using references to popular books on the subject, or other popular science readings focused on analyzing Hollywood science. The student is directed to Saint Leo University Library, LibGuide for films and novels referenced for this course.

SCI215 LibGuide

Please cite all sources used in your analysis according to the style guide of your choice using in-text citations and a works cited page. One of these sources should be the film/novel itself, one should be a primary source used to explain the science concept and at least one additional source which may include a credible article found on the internet about the science in the film.

The paper should be approximately 250 words (single spaced page) in length, so you should narrow your focus to one or two instances of science being used correctly or incorrectly in the work. Please type your review.

Make sure you do the following in your review:

Identify the work reviewed.
Identify and describe a scene in the film or a passage in the novel where a science concept becomes an important plot device.
Identify what we know about the scientific concept today. Explain this concept as if you are describing the phenomena to a neighbor.
Evaluate how the plot takes liberty with bending science or using correct science in the situation to move the plot along?
Write using correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Construct and organize ideas into paragraphs.
Reference your citations at the end of the paper. Remember you should have at least three citations, as described in the instructions.
You will find many sites commenting on the science contained in popular science fiction films. Please be careful about evaluating the credibility of these sites.

Using Google to search the web will also help find sites describing science in science fiction. If your search begins with the phrase “Science of [Insert name of work]” you will usually find a few sites that will critique the work according to how well the science is portrayed in the film/novel (main chunk of your points). You may or may not agree with the website critique. Reference the website, if used in your critique. You must not copy and paste from the website, and your work will be checked for this before grading.