He's noticed my DVD box set sitting in one of our shelves and had curiously inspected the cover. Many times over the past couple of weeks, he asked if he could watch it. At first, I refused because I thought the scenes and some characters might frighten him (i.e., Ring Wraiths and Orcs), and I thought the plot is a little too complex for him to understand.
Of course, how can a mother possibly win against a very persistent five-year-old? And so we went ahead and watched, with many caveats from me, telling him not to blame me if he gets scared.
My son surprised me yet again. He absolutely LOVED the trilogy! Actually, it seems he enjoyed it more than he did the Harry Potter series (of which he suffered only through half of the first movie, and hasn't since asked to watch it again). He did get a bit nervous seeing some of the scary characters - evidenced by very sweaty hands and feet, hahaha - but he got over it easier than I expected him to. Of course, I was right in predicting that the story was a bit hard for him to understand, but, hey, we're talking about a five-year-old, remember? And to his credit, he did comprehend most parts of the movie, and is able to summarise portions of it when I reviewed him. It goes without saying that his understanding came after hitting Mommy with questions at the rate of one bazillion questions per minute.
Amongst his many questions was about the colour of the characters. I saw it as an opportunity to educate him about symbolism in movies and literature in general.
SON: Mommy, how come the Ring Wraiths are black?
MOMMY: Because they're evil, and in films and books, black is used to symbolise very bad things.
SON: (faraway look, meaning he's digesting the piece of information)
MOMMY: See, even the Orcs and Uruk-hai warriors are black. Because they're evil. And Gandalf, who's good, is white. LOTR shows us a lot of battles between good and evil, so it's like black versus white.
SON: (blinks) So black is bad and white is good...?
MOMMY: (self-assured smile) Yes, that's right!
SON: (frowns) Then how come Saruman is white?
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| Gandalf and Saruman (from theonering.net) |
Ahh, to have a precocious child...!
2 comments:
hahahaha! Reminds you not to be too self-assured. :D Remember, you're dealing with a very smart 5-year old who happens to have taken after his ninang. Hihihi!
I thought at the time that it was a good idea to get smart godfathers and godmothers for my son. I see the mistake now hahaha!
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