The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: what age is it for? 13, alone or with a parent

The codes, for parents

A small peaceable creature inherits a ring that turns its wearer invisible and turns out to be a dark lord's weapon; eight companions set out with him to destroy it where it was forged.

The lexicon

• The One RingNot an ordinary magic object: it corrupts whoever carries it, whoever they are. The whole story rests on that, which is why nobody powerful will take charge of it.
• HobbitsFrodo's people: small, home-loving, fond of food, without ambition. They are chosen precisely because power does not interest them.
• The ShireThe Hobbits' country, green and quiet, shown at the start so we know what they are defending. Tolkien put the English countryside of his childhood into it.
• Sauron and MordorThe dark lord, reduced to a burning eye, and his land of ash in the east. He never appears in person: he is a will, not a character.
• The Nazgûl, or RingwraithsThe nine hooded riders hunting Frodo. They were human kings, corrupted by rings, and nothing is left of them but empty armour.
• Gandalf, an IstariThe wizard is an envoy from elsewhere, not an old man who learned tricks. He is forbidden to impose his power, which is why he uses so little magic.
• Elves, Dwarves, OrcsThree peoples who dislike each other: immortal Elves leaving the world, Dwarves who build and hold grudges, Orcs made for war. Their old quarrels drive most of the tension at the Council.
• The FellowshipThe nine companions of the title: four Hobbits, two men, an Elf, a Dwarf, a wizard. Nine against the nine riders, which is not a coincidence.
• Helm's Deep, Isengard, MoriaPlaces rather than sets: a fortress, the tower of a wizard gone over to the enemy, and a Dwarf city carved into the mountain, abandoned for centuries.
• Middle-earthThe world of the film, with thousands of years of history written before the story starts. When a character cites a name nobody explains, that is normal: the film accepts being the tip of something enormous.

How the world works

This is not a magical world but an old one: very few spells, swords, horses, walking. Magic is rare and costs its user dearly. The three films are one story cut in three. The first ends mid-sentence, deliberately, and the extended version adds an hour that many families prefer. Evil comes not from a monster but from a seductive object: each character is tempted in turn, and temptation, not battle, is what moves the story.

The references

• J. R. R. Tolkien's novels, published in 1954, were written by a professor of Old English who invented the languages first and then the peoples who speak them.
• Tolkien fought at the Somme in 1916 and lost almost all his childhood friends there; the Hobbits' march towards a land of ash and trenches owes a great deal to it.
• Almost all fantasy vocabulary comes from here: elves, dwarves, orcs, quests, the maps at the front of books, down to the role-playing games whose rules your child may know.
• The New Zealand shoot ran fifteen months straight for all three films, with the same cast and sets, which is why the whole thing holds together.
• Gollum and his "my precious" are imitated everywhere, including by children who have never seen the film, and several lines have become images circulating online. New Zealand, for its part, sold itself as Middle-earth for twenty years.

Why they love it

• The hero is the smallest and least powerful of them all, and wins through endurance rather than strength: the opposite of a superhero film.
• The friendship between Frodo and Sam is what young viewers remember most, long before the battles.
• The world makes you want to stay in it: maps, languages, songs, and the sense that it continues outside the frame.

Three questions to ask

• Gandalf says he cannot carry the Ring because he would do evil while trying to do good: do you see why?
• Nobody asks Frodo before giving him the task: could he have refused?
• Boromir wants to use the Ring to defend his city: he is wrong, but do we understand him?