Up 2: Next Year in Jerusalem

“He caught him up, and, without wing
Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
Over the wilderness and o’er the plain,
Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,
The Holy City, lifted high her towers . . .

. . . There, on the highest pinnacle, he set
The Son of God.”

– John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book IV

The kindness of the world toward your existence turns out to be an illusion of youth, and all love dies. Man must keep his faith and promises, even as he ages toward death — find a place to stand firm, even as he falls.

Pixar’s Up and John Milton’s great poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are about more than what they have in common. A laundry list of their similarities would hardly be interesting (especially if you haven’t read the poems). But they meet at a critical and compelling place in what I like to call the Artistic Project.

This balloon is about to get heavy, so if at any point you need a little extra lift, bookmark this.

Now, let us go, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, to find our solitary way —

At one point in The Return of the King, Gandalf tells Pippin:

Sauron has yet to reveal his deadliest servant. The one who will lead Mordor’s armies in war. The one they say no living man can kill. The Witch King of Angmar. You’ve met him before. He stabbed Frodo at Weathertop. He is the lord of the Nazgul, the greatest of the Nine.

And I thought to myself, “Oh, you mean that dude they chased away with a torch?”

Everyone in these movies talks about the Nazgul like they’re Jason, the Terminator, and Anton Chigurh rolled into one. As far as I can tell, they are pretty much useless. In fact, I think Sauron would have been better off sending a labradoodle, and I’m going to prove it.