Word: balrog
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...afterlife, and ghosts, but there is certainly no God, and no devil. There are also no immortal, all-wise elves, as in Tolkien, nor are there any mystical Maiar, which is what Gandalf was (what, you thought he was human? Genealogically speaking, he's closer to a balrog than he is to a man.) There is certainly no benevolent, paternal Aslan to turn up late in the book and fight the Big Bad. The essential problem in Rowling's books is how to love in the face of death, and her characters must arrive at the solution all on their...
...First Age has a different feel to it: it's younger and wilder somehow. The elves, distant figures in The Lord of the Rings, spend more time outside their secret spa-resorts mixing it up with mere mortals. When, in the midst of a huge battle, a balrog rears up and whips down a warrior like it's no big thing, right there in the thick of the press, you realize the rules of the First Age are a little different...
...eerie strobe light, a black rider rears its steed (a man and puppet on stilts), sending fearful hobbits scurrying. Dead men rise from the Marshes (a roiling silver sheet) to make war against Sauron's legions. In the Mountains of Moria, Gandalf battles the enormous Balrog (an Erector-set confection with steaming orange eyes) as the sound effects roar and a strong wind gusts from the stage, spraying the audience with a blizzard of black confetti. As for Frodo, he not only lives, he also sings in the new version of The Lord of the Rings, opening this week...
...robbed McKellen of his passion for the stage. "You deliver a story in the present tense. Cinema is essentially dead. The actors may well be dead. In the theater you feel everyone's excitement and that feeds your performance." But in the theatre there are no flaming, computer-generated Balrog monsters to fight. McKellen laughs. "Special effects only mean you often act in front of a blue screen and imagine the scenery. It's exactly the same as Macbeth, where you say 'Is this a dagger which I see before me?' There is no dagger. And I never...
Like a sleepy Balrog in the depths of Moria, fantasy fever is stirring again. In 1997, voters in a bbc poll named The Lord of the Rings the greatest book of the 20th century. In 1999, Amazon.com customers chose it as the greatest book of the millennium. The Tolkien revival began when the Internet bubble was bursting, the market for consumer electronics was nosediving like Harry Potter chasing the Golden Snitch, and America's long summer romance with technology was fizzling. "Change and technology are so pervasive a part of daily life that for the most part there...