Tag Archives: J.R.R. Tolkien

The First Precious

21 June 2024 By in Philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Before the One Ring, created by Sauron during the Second Age, Plato created, as a thought experiment, the Ring of Gyges which gave its wearer the cloak of invisibility. Gyges discovered that when he was invisible, he could commit immoral acts and crimes without suffering any adverse consequences or retribution from society.

Plato in his Republic, using the ring of invisibility as an analogy, explores man’s ability to remain honest and moral in the face of immunity from all consequences. He concludes that if one is free of any consequences he will act in his own self-interest, justice be damned, or as the 19th century historian and writer, Lord Acton states, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This leads Plato, through the lips of Socrates, to suggest that justice is not a social construct but an inherent quality of one’s soul. The soul must be in harmony with one’s actions and a harmonious soul contributes to a just society. Socrates believed and advised, and he followed his advice, that a harmonious and pure soul leads to true happiness and fulfillment or as the ancient Greeks called it: eudaimonia. For Aristotle eudaimonia is the highest human good and the only human good that is desirable for its own sake, an end in itself. Justice is a by-product of true happiness. Unhappy people and unhappy societies are not just people and just societies.

J.R.R. Tolkien, not only a writer but also a philologist, most certainly was aware of Plato’s Ring of Gyges as an analogy of ultimate power when he used his One Ring in the Lord of the Rings as the definitive symbol of man’s quest to resist and fight evil.

Source: The Republic by Plato. Reason and Meaning.com. Philosophy Terms. Oxford Reference. Graphic: The One Ring, Good Free Photos.

Enough Already

5 September 2017 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Alien ConvenantAlien: Covenant

Theaters:  May 2017

Streaming:  August 2017

Rated:  R

Runtime:  120-122 minutes

Genre:  Action – Adventure – Fantasy – Horror – Science Fiction – Thriller

els:  2.5/10

IMDb:  6.5/10

Amazon:  2.9/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics:  6.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience:  3.3/5

Metacritic Metascore:  65/100

Metacritic User Score:  5.9/10

Awards:

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  John Logan and Dante Harper, screenplay; Jack Paglen and Michael Green, story

Music by:  Jed Kurzel

Cast:  Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterson, Billy Crudup

Film Locations:  Australia and New Zealand

Budget:  $97,000,000

Worldwide Box Office:  $240,900,000

The year is 2104, a little more than a decade since the ill-fated Prometheus was destroyed, denying humanity’s creators from undoing the birth of man, and the Weyland Corporation is sending another ship: the Covenant, carrying several thousands humans, to populate another, distant planet.  The ship has all its human occupants in stasis for the trip and all are watched over by a new and improved version of the psychopath David: Walter.  A starburst, looking a lot like a meteor shower, pierces the ship’s hull and kills the captain while he sleeps in his stasis chamber.  Walter wakes up the 14 members of the ship’s crew, including those married to each other to repair the ship.  The newly revived crew receives a human-like transmission from a nearby planet that appears to be a perfect place to start a new colony, better than their original destination.  The new captain, with the commonsense of a milk cow, diverts the ship putting in motion a series of explicable bad decisions that endangers everyone, the ship’s crew, the ship’s occupants, and the ship.

Samuel Coleridge, author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, stated that a written unbelievable narrative that was shown to have a “semblance of truth” could be enjoyed by the reader or audience by suspending judgement on the implausible parts. This is usually stated as the willing suspension of disbelief or to believe the unbelievable.  J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, took this concept in a different direction by suggesting that the narrative could have a secondary belief system within an inner consistency of reality.  Tolkien believed that suspension of disbelief was only required when the story’s plot line does not maintain an internally consistent fictional world.

Alien Covenant fails not because of poor direction or bad acting but because the writers of the story and screenplay put forth an unbelievable and implausible plot that destroys everything else the movie has to offer, and that’s before you even discover it is a complete rehash of the five previous Alien movies (I refuse to add in the Predator vs Alien movies).  The writers, mainly John Logan, somehow believe that the Peter Weyland Corporation is willing to put up a fortune of bitcoins and pieces of eight to build, outfit and send off a colossal starship, containing thousands of human embryos and adults, capable of traversing the vast parsecs of empty space, to find a suitable planet for human colonization; then staff the running of the ship with unintelligent and irrational beings that are incapable of assessing risk or following protocols, all the while compounding the silliness of their decision-making by having spouses or significant others amplifying their emotional buffoonery.  Gads, why not just leave it to Mother, Father, David or Walter.  With computers or androids running the show the writers can at least insert some plausible scenarios for illogical scenes that don’t have to rely on the characters and or audiences being absolute morons.  If  all else fails maybe the space faring chimps: Albert, Ham and Gordo have some offspring that are up for the task.  Hopefully Logan will return to writing plays and leave science fiction to those that can formulate plausible plots.

Alien Covenant goes where the previous Alien movies have already gone. Good androids, bad androids. Sniff and closely examine all gooey eggs, repeat endlessly. Find the Alien, lose the Alien. Burn, nuke, melt, freeze, shoot, chop, slice, dice, mince, atomize the Alien. How about we just bury the concept so deep that all the Alien acid combined will not be able to uncover it again.