Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "The Critical Drinker"
channel.
-
I think there's enough material for a trilogy, if it's done right. A good writer could expand on things that were only suggested in the book, like Bombadil, Beorn, and maybe even tie things together between some of the entish trees in Bombadil's valley with the Ents, themselves. And there was a lot of "meanwhile" going on. Aragorn was busy doing ranger things.
I'm not saying it would be easy, but bring in a room full of LOTR geeks and writers, and it's such a rich world with so many stories to be told, I bet. But they just hacked it all up, instead of treating the canon with reverence.
Some of the issues with the movie(s) are actually issues with the original material. Tolkien still hadn't figured out whether dwarves were helpless buffoons or doughty warriors. In The Hobbit, they couldn't get out of their own way, but in Two Towers, Gimli kept up just fine with Legolas and Aragorn. They made a bit of a thing out of Gimli lagging behind in the movie, but near as I can tell from the Lore, mobility hierarchy is elves > orcs > dwarves > men. If anything, Aragorn was superhuman keeping up with Legolas and Gimli, and Legolas could've run down the Uruk-Hai pretty easily, if he wanted to. Tolkien just decided that the 3 would be as fast or as slow as required for the purposes of the story.
Someone(s) with a strong vision and (a) tightly-written screen play(s) could've done something good/great here. More has been done with less. Usually much less is done with much more.
But I still think the root problem is Tolkien himself was still feeling things out when he crafted a fun story for his kids. Are dwarves feckless and helpless fools who couldn't make it out of the Shire without a Wizard's help, (which begs the question of how they EVER managed to make it to Bilbo's in the first place) or are they super-awesome semi-superheroes? It depends on what the plot calls for, I guess.
One of the things I could never figure out was how Smaug could terrorize Lake Town, which was supposedly built in the middle of the lake so that Smaug couldn't get to them. It's where all the residents of Dale moved to, after Smaug's first appearance. But Smaug could fly, right? Just one of the inconsistencies in The Hobbit that were never clearly explained.
They could've exercised some creative license to flesh things out, rather than injecting the interracial couple. Heck, they could've made some real gender-bending without contrivance, just by showing some bearded dwarf women!
Anyway, as a geek, I always wanted more of Bombadil's story. They could've spent 20 minutes or a half hour on Beorn. In the book, he had Warg hides nailed up, outside. There's some good bear-on-wolf and bear-on-goblin action, there. Fans would've loved some Beorn action in Battle of Five Armies, too.
The time Bilbo spent fighting the spiders... "Addercop!" Bilbo's time in the Elf palace as a true burglar, piecing together a pretty clever escape plan would've been good. I think that episode got a 5-minute montage, maybe. Instead, they injected a massive and massively impossible Spielberg-style chase scene. The dwarves were sore and cramped from an otherwise uneventful barrel ride.
For the record, I thought Radagast was pretty rad.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Eventually, as the entertainment market continues fragmenting, good writing will emerge, and the acting will follow, although I look forward to when actors stop with the too-long pause in statements like "It'll be fine, John." In spoken English, there's not much pause there, between "fine" and "John," but not when it's a modern actor or actress. They see the comma in the script, so they pause, instead of saying it like they would to their friend, .......... John. See? That didn't sound.... right. It sounds affected.
We can criticize up and down, but eventually they'll find a formula that doesn't alienate everyone earning a paycheck the old-fashioned way.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@karencoyle3011 Chani and all Fremen were much better-trained to the rigors of the desert, silent passage through the rocks, and the non-rhythmic way of walking on the open sands, to fool the sandworms. But from the trailer, it already looks like they're taking it places Frank Herbert never did.
The idea of a male Bene Gesserit being able to peer into the future, where women dare not, is probably a tough sell in feminist circles. We'll see how they handle that.
My take on the Bene Gesserit is that their pursuit of their Holy Grail - a male Bene Gesserit - is pursued without regard for human cost, human rights or human progress. They basically run everything from behind the scenes and the best they could come up with was feudalism for the masses? Really? Within their own ranks, they have something like a democratic republic, informed by all their genetic memories and the ability to read each others' minds while Sharing.
But as a practical matter, they treat their own sisters like serfs. All humanity must be subordinated to their One Goal, kind of like COVID-19 priests in our major institutions of today.
1
-
@StudSupreme Long as we're talking male and female in the Dune saga, I'd like to point out that the most powerful and transcendent character in the whole story is Norma Cenva, who basically invented suspensor technology and made interstellar travel possible without "thinking machines." She is the main protagonist throughout, even though her presence isn't explicit until the later books, where she's revealed as The Oracle.
Of course, Herbert (and his kids) make the final installment your basic, "trust your heart" Hollywood ending, where Duncan Idaho (with ALL his reincarnations inside of him), rather than DESTROYING machine intelligence, BONDS with it, for the betterment of human and machine civilization and the survival of both. I think the Oracle is the implacable foe of the machines from the prequels clear up to the end, when Daniel and Marty are revealed to be Omnius and Erasmus, respectively. Erasmus plays the female aspect "Marty," and "she" turns out to be the key to the eventual hybrid solution. The Oracle DOES, if I recall correctly, sit back and let Duncan Idaho decide.
In the end, I think there's a clear recognition of strengths and weaknesses of masculine and feminine. Herbert, himself, takes jabs at both. Men fight their wars, while the women pick up the pieces. Leto II breeds a bad-ass female army of SHE-Men, on the grounds that females attach their loyalties to the leader more than their sisters in the ranks, AND women do not RAPE.
1
-
1
-
Hollywood USED to have rules - I think it was even federal law - against bad guys winning in movies. I don't recall the particulars, but you couldn't show a crook prospering by their crimes, etc. "Hollywood endings" was an actual thing. Then you started seeing them chip away at that with anti-heroes. Clint Eastwood wasn't the first to come along with an ambiguous kind of hero in Westerns. But he stands out among the first few who had anti-heroes in it, with movies like "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," and "High Plains Drifter," etc.
Part of Eastwood's appeal in those Westerns was he was "edgy." And against the cultural backdrop of the time, it WAS edgy. But when it becomes FASHION, it's no longer edgy (or brave). It's a new form of brain-dead conformity in its own right. Nowadays, you have mediocre (and just plain bad) writers, who think that "subverting expectations" is "art." First of all, it's insipid, copy-cat writing. Then throw in the heavy-handed political messaging, and it's as if your Sunday-School teacher got ahold of the script and injected all kinds of Christian messages in a film, only these guys' religion is left-wing identity politics.
That's the weird thing about movies and other art forms. There's ALWAYS been "a message" built into almost all of them. It's ALWAYS been an establishment-elite sort of message, and was no better or worse, when establishment elites were over-the-top nationalistic, my-country-right-or-wrong types or over-the-top anti-capitalist globalists. The only difference is the intersectionality just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. You might argue that Christian-nationalist messaging doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but in its day, when 80%-plus of the country WAS Christian and WAS very nationalistic, there wasn't much push-back against it.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1