![]() ![]() The Elves were the most prevalent race in the First and Second Ages of Middle-earth. The Fourth Age & The Dominion of Men Began There are, however, a few confirmed details. This period of Middle-earth's timeline, unlike its pre- Lord of the Rings history, isn't covered in great detail. Shortly after the conclusion of The Return of the King, the Fourth Age kicked off. The Third Age, which lasted for a period of 3021 years, is the setting for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies. Tolkien wrote a surprisingly large amount about The Second Age in his appendices and books like The Silmarillion. ![]() The Second Age is the focus of Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV series, The Rings of Power. The timeline of Middle-earth is broken up into several long eras, and the Third Age is just one of them. Most of these events took place in an era known as the Third Age. Aragorn lived a long, full life with Arwen for many years after The Lord of the Rings, and passed away at the age of 210. He married the Elf, Arwen (Liv Tyler), who willingly gave up her Elven immortality in order to share a life with Aragorn. Meanwhile, also seen in the movie adaptation, Aragorn took his rightful place as the King of Gondor. As seen at the end of Return of the King, Frodo left Middle-earth for the Undying Lands. What most viewers know is that Frodo wasn't content with his life in the Shire, due in part to injuries he sustained in The Lord of the Rings. This film shows us that it is not.Some of this is depicted in The Return of the King movie from Peter Jackson's trilogy, and more is covered in the extended editions. Like all the people who buy expensive automobiles to give them a feeling of power and independence, only to discover that no matter how snazzy their car is, they still feel powerless and unhappy, James and Catherine have bought into one of our culture's Big Lies, that sex is the answer. But not even the horror of mutilation or the adrenaline rush of near-death experience can lend James and Catherine's desperate coupling the depth of feeling that they so desperately crave. They begin to watch films of crash tests and fatal race accidents like other people would watch erotic films, and to have sex with people whose bodies have been mutilated by car crashes. They have sex in crashed cars, and start touring crash sites on the freeway as a form of foreplay. They attend staged recreations of famous car crashes, like the one that killed James Dean. With Helen, at first James, then Catherine too is drawn into Vaughan's world, where sex and death (eros and thanatos for you Freudians) meet in the twisted metal of wrecked cars and the mutilated bodies of the victims of fatal car crashes and the survivors of near-fatal ones. James is hurt in a car crash, and during his stay in the hospital he meets Helen (who was in the other car) and later Vaughan, a man who like James and Catherine is in desperate search of feeling, only he looks for it in the violence of car crashes. So they instead seek more and more extreme forms of sexual stimulation, only to be disappointed again and again. Unfortunately, in Crash, there is no one to suggest to David and Catherine Ballard that maybe it isn't through sex that they will find the transformation and connection they are craving. In the more recent movie Pleasantville, the Jennifer/Mary Sue character is unable to feel anything either, and remains stubbornly black and white no matter how much sex she has, until her brother suggests that "maybe it isn't the sex" that is the key to moving from black and white to color, from passionlessness to feeling. They crave connection, they are starved for a glimpse of transcendence, but no matter what they do, no matter who they do it with or how often, while their bodies may feel passion, their minds and hearts remain cold and empty. Instead, they discover to their horror that even during sex they still feel nothing. ![]() These are people who have been told all their lives by their culture, by TV and movies, that sex is, on the one hand, the most perfect form of communion and connection with another human being and, on the other hand, that it is the ultimate in transcendent and transformative experiences. Even in the midst of frenzied lovemaking, the characters remain distant, their voices quiet and abstracted, their gazes directed inward. Crash is a very sexually explicit film, but if you buy or rent this movie expecting it to be an evening's erotic entertainment, you are going to be disappointed, because it is also an anti-erotic film. ![]()
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