#lotr films negative

[lesbiansforboromir]

the demonic force that lives on the landing outside my bedroom made me relive Galadriel's opening monologue to the fotr film in the millisecond it took to pass through the doorway and now I am struck still and petrified, compressing my guts into diamonds with how much malice I am generating "and nine were given to the race of men who above all else desire power" I- hrrgrh hcrscchhh hrrgggrrr

Galadriel. Is literally. She- THE ENTIRE REASON. SHE IS EVEN IN MIDDLE EARTH IN THE FIRST PLACE... IS BECAUSE SHE WANTED POWER. THAT'S IT. IT'S THE UNIFYING MOTIVE ACROSS ALL TWELVE BILLION OF HER DRAFTED BACKSTORIES FOR WHY SHE LEFT VALINOR AT ALL. IT'S HER PURPOSE FOR EVEN REMAINING THERE, IT'S HER SUCCEEDED GOAL, SHE HAS HER RING OF POWER THAT SHE USES TO LITERALLY EMBALM A SILVAN SETTLEMENT IN TIME WHICH SHE THEN RULES OVER FOR 3000 YEARS I- I can't even breathe just the- like it's certainly in character for her but the HYPOCRISY and played totally straight in the films like I'm wheezing I'm choking on my lust for violence right now and GOd especially given the rest of that monologue which might as well have been;

three were given to the elves who are the ontologically superior race seven to the dwarves who make things I suppose and nine were given to the race of men who invented bigotry and hate god

Like no ffffucking wonder the whole lotr fandom is so at home with dabbling in racial superiority and morality hierarchies when it's so brazenly displayed in the opening scene of this film like it's entirely correct, how did Peter just get away with this how did everyone just believe him, local elf queen recounts history of how her race is perfect and the world was pure until those fucking humans came along and ruined everything, groundbreaking!! Reliable source!! Citation not needed, we! will! trust you bro!!

[queer-ragnelle]

I've been working on that post about Little People in Arthuriana by collecting and reading lots of articles and documenting the portrayals in Medieval Literature, Modern Retellings, as well as Film/TV; it's... disheartening. So I just watched Willow (1988) and not only is this what Hobbiton from LOTR should've looked like, but why can't we have characters like this in Arthuriana? When there are plenty of examples of kings and queens and knights and ladies with dwarfism right in the source material to utilize?

I know this movie was an outlier and many of the negative Arthurian examples also come from the 80s, but this proves it's possible to do better. Meanwhile Disney deleted the Willow TV show (also archived at the above link for your viewing pleasure) and just released a remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Bad enough to rehash the story at all, but not only did they fail to hire Little actors to play the Dwarfs, they didn't hire actors at all and used CGI. For a "live action" remake.

I tend to include gifs on a lot of my posts. Yet for this, making gifs of Little People in Arthurian legend feels like furthering the exploitation. They're unanimously neglected and depicted as nefarious bad guys or lackeys, often unnamed and without lines. Sometimes they're even physically assaulted on screen. Perhaps the Little man in Knightriders (1981) is a neutral-positive exception, but he's very much a background character.

I don't really have a point here besides wishing I had a positive alternative to highlight, which I usually strive to suggest whenever I make a critical post, but there isn't one. And that's a huge bummer.

[lordoftheringsmusical]

Aotearoa is not Middle-earth

As you've probably noticed, the marketing of the Aotearoa stop of The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale focuses prominently on the idea that Aotearoa is Middle-earth because Peter Jackson's massively popular film trilogies were filmed there.

This is immediately obvious upon checking out the production's Instagram, which features countless film-inspired posts (screenshots and clips from the movies, photos of scenic filming locations); the slogans used to promote the musical ("Coming Home to Middle-earth" x); and the cast's extensively covered visit to the Hobbiton film set (x).

If you're following me elsewhere (my main blog and Instagram in particular), you've probably read my criticism of that marketing strategy. Until today, I've focused mostly on how this affects the LotR Musical negatively by setting false expectations and devaluing the show as an independent adaptation in a different medium.

Today, I'd like to draw attention to a far more important matter: namely, how a close association of Aotearoa with Middle-earth and the ensuing Tolkien tourism, enabled by the film trilogies, affects Aotearoa and the Māori in particular negatively. The following article is eye-opening; well-written and important, and I highly recommend it:

[myrsinemezzo]

You’re not a real Tolkien fan if you—

Ok, I’m gonna stop you right there (theoretical person I’m talking to). Because that is just a ridiculous take. I’ve seen a lot of posts in the past several months and especially lately about published and unpublished lore that are all about tearing each other down for supposedly not understanding Tolkien or TROP or just not doing fandom correctly because you don’t “know” enough, and that’s really just…sad.

Recognizing LOTR canon and Legendarium stuff makes for a rich (not a richer, necessarily) experience when watching Rings of Power since it informs what choices were made to be seen and heard onscreen. I know I had only read the trilogy and the Silmarillion way back in high school and a bit in undergrad and loved a lot of what ended up in the Peter Jackson movies before sighing, giving in, and watching TROP.

And yeah, I shrieked in delight when Halbrand said “call it…a gift” and when Isildur and Elendil showed up onscreen in season 1 to the point that my partner probably thought I was having some kind of attack, but that was it for me when it came to recognizing a lot of things. And I still managed to enjoy the show on its own terms and have things to contribute in fandom here and elsewhere if I wanted to.

I relied on people who became my friends here and on twitter who posted explanatory things of “see this detail from the various books? Cool, right?” and getting to say, “That is cool!” in return only made me enjoy the show even more in rewatches like they were easter egg offerings to the fandom.

The concept of you’re “only” a fan of the show or not a “real” Tolkien fan framed in such a negative way over the past several months creates a real barrier for participation and enjoyment of community from people either new to the fandom or those who don’t have the sheer time or the inclination to read 20 books and memorize every detail or even use the search function on ebooks they might or might not have to weigh in on things they like or dislike or get excited about or hope to see.

Instead we get debates that are less “Cool, right?” anymore and more “I’m right and you are lesser”. If I wanted that, I would go hang out on Reddit where that is what conversations revolve around and people shit on each other over the texts.

This is getting long (sorry) but where I do live for scholarship on Tolkien, it is not the be all end all. It does allow for a deeper understanding of content and the context of the content depending on the specialty of a given scholar, but you don’t have to read it to prove to some faceless person on the internet that you’re a Tolkien fan. I also love JRR and Christopher Tolkien and the trop showrunners and Peter Jackson as primary sources, but they are also not the be all end all of what constitutes a correct way to experience these works. That way lies stagnation and more of an idea that there is somehow only one true way to interpret texts and films and our beloved television adaptation through the lens of only what the creator possibly intended.

This is certainly not intended to be a callout post, I’m just waxing sad on my blog about fandom today. But hey! We can always change that narrative! So be well and welcome or mae govannen fellow fans and trop fam in the broadest of terms possible.

[spookieloverslittlemind]

Their favourite movie…

includes: Michael Myers, Pinhead, Brahms Heelshire, Art the Clown, Sun and Moon (fnaf), Marta (Outlast 2)

spoilers: mentions of Saw and LOTR endings but tried to keep it vague just in case

Michael

I wouldn’t say he’s “happy” to watch anything, because Michael doesn’t really express “happiness” in any context, but he is content to sit completely still for hours on end, watching whatever you choose. He doesn’t form opinions on films so doesn’t have a favourite, but when you watch a gory horror film together, the SECOND the end credits are rolling he is up and grabbing his knife, heading for the door; Mike loves some inspo x

Pinhead

Fascinated by human media, having long forgotten that aspect of humanity. Pinhead enjoys films that he finds mentally stimulating, thrillers and mysteries mostly (gory films have him scoffing because he could easily make a far more gory scene in the blink of an eye). That said, Pinhead doesn’t like rewatching films because if they have a mystery and he’s solved it, he has no interest in seeing it again because “It is done; an experience that cannot be repeated”. His favourite film is Saw because he was completely blindsided by the plot twist at the end - obviously, a body on the floor of the entire film is nothing more than furniture to Pinhead, so when bro GOT UP?? Pinhead was losing it. Had to pause the film to pace for a few minutes. Couldn’t comprehend how he didn’t see it coming.

Brahms

Every Barbie movie from the early 2000’s, classic animated Disney princess films, and Peter Pan; Brahms thinks the princesses are very pretty (often comparing them to you regardless of your gender because he romanticises every fibre of your being) and believes himself to be the boy who never quite grew up, ironically. Doesn’t mind gory films, but doesn’t like complicated ones because he gets very frustrated; prefers to cuddle up with you and watch something wholesome. Will get pouty and is not above begging to start a movie over the second it’s finished.

Art

He’s pretty casual about the films he likes, he prefers classics that have decent remakes and his favourite is Carrie - a revenge plot with magical powers that cause a gory rampage? Count Art in. What he is passionate about, though, is the film he hates more than any other that fits the same criteria of a classic with a decent remake: It. And it’s literally because Art thinks he himself is the best scary clown. Sometimes you put it on (either the classic or new, the reaction is the same) just to piss him off and Art will come storming in, signing angry gibberish with flailing hands until he’s sulking on the couch beside you because he will insist on watching the entire thing again so that he can complain throughout.

Sun and Moon

Sun likes exciting films with happy endings, a very big fan of action movies. Contrary to this, his favourite movie isn’t just one, but the full Lord Of The Rings trilogy - Sun loved reading the books in between watching the films to digest every scrap of lore, but after watching the end of Return Of The King? Couldn’t bring himself to read the last book, because it was too sad. Sun is adamant he will never rewatch the trilogy because it upset him but objectively, that’s his favourite. He’s overjoyed to watch anything with you, because he loves spending time with you, but you have to tell him in advance it has a happy ending or he wont watch it, and if you lie? Moon pending.

Moon prefers quieter, calmer and darker films, with a particular love for gothic horrors based on the supernatural rather than slashers/gorefests. His favourite is An American Werewolf In London, the negative aspects of the transformation being very relatable to Moon.

Marta

Say hello to the biggest film critic of all time. Marta will insist that watching movies is a waste of good time that could be spent praising God or eradicating heretics, so will turn her nose up at almost every suggestion you make, but when you show her John Wick? Oh, Marta’s sense of justice is PREENING. She’s all about that. By the end, her internal monologue is begging God not to let her joy show on her face. As long as you tell her a film is like John Wick, she’ll give it a chance, but John Wick remains her favourite.

[dylanndr]

The Character of Sauron

Just finished watching S2 of Rings of Power. As a fan of the Jackson LOTR trilogy, and lukewarm-to-negative on the Jackson Hobbit, I wasn't sure to what extent RoP was necessary [the TV series is intended to mesh visually with the Jackson LOTR trilogy but Jackson is not involved with RoP]. Do we really need the world-building backstory fleshed out in detail? But I've been watching, and enjoying, and I think it's doing one thing exceptionally well that does indeed add richness to the overall LOTR story: it's showing us why Sauron is scary as fuck, how he came to be the nearly-unstoppable force that he is.

[Caveat: I read the Appendices once, literal decades ago. They are not fresh in my mind, so I don't know how much liberty RoP is taking with them. Probably a lot, because they're building narrative out of what is functionally academic material. But the LOTR films took a lot of liberties with the books as well, it's just a thing that's going to happen in adaptations, and the real question is whether or not the liberties lend themselves to a good and cohesive story. Anyway.]

Big ol' Rings of Power spoilers to follow.

So, Sauron. In LOTR he is presented as this immensely powerful, mystical being who corrupts and consumes. But it's kinda abstract. He's a burning eye; he uses the palantir and the Ring to get into people's heads somehow or other; his One Ring is bad for you, don't use it.

What RoP is doing is showing how Sauron gets into people's heads and manipulates them. He figures out what your ambition is, what your desires are, and uses them against you to further his own goals. For Galadriel, it's revenge. For Celebrimbor, it's acclaim as a legendary craftsman. And at first, Sauron has to interact with someone personally to suss out what it is they want, and how he can use that for his own advantage.

But then he figures out that he can put his own essence into these exquisite rings that Celebrimbor is crafting, and then use the rings as conduits to manipulate people from afar: he's able to warp King Durin's mind remotely, pushing him into physically attacking his fellow dwarves. The more of Sauron's essence that goes into the rings, the more easily he can use them as vessels, and he escalates accordingly with the rings for men. The rings that will ultimately turn those men into his nazgul servants, their own will utterly subsumed into his.

I also appreciate how the writers have shown that Sauron can *appear* sympathetic, but are not actually portraying him as a Poor Misunderstood Villain in the narrative. In S1 we, like Galadriel, are fully led to believe Halbrand is basically a good guy, a bit of a rake with a mysterious past. Until we find out the truth about who Halbrand really is and, whoops! We were *deceived.*

The way Sauron shifts back and forth between kind and cruel indicates there's no underlying attempt to rehabilitate him as a character, but rather to show just how cunning manipulators can be at their craft. Even after the other characters *know* who he is, they still have a hard time resisting him. This persists for Galadriel for 3000 years, culminating in her immense relief when Frodo offers her the One Ring and she's able to turn him down, albeit with some effort. If the Hobbits have special resistance to his wiles, perhaps it's because their ambitions and desires tend to be "eat a food, drink an ale, smoke a blunt."

The actor playing Sauron (Charlie Vickers) is IMO doing a *fantastic* job of shifting from "I'm just a mostly-wholesome person who's here to help you do the thing you need to do" to "I'm absolutely using your desires to manipulate you into doing the thing *I* want to do," his expression gliding from warm to cold as Sauron shifts modes. The way a very slight twitch of a facial muscle conveys Sauron's anger without devolving into chewing scenery or over-the-top bombast. Sauron does commit acts of violence, but by far his preferred go-to is getting others to do his dirty work for him, and he almost always gets people to go along with him willingly, even against their own best interests. Far more scary than a guy who just yells a lot and stabs people.

[motovilka]

Thank you once again lovely @endof-vanity for tagging me, I love these things :3

So I'll go right to it:

favourite colour: Red and Teal respectfully.

last song: Porcelain by Moby.

last film: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (I'm rewatching the trilogy after so many years).

last book: The Vegetarian by Han Kang (for my book club).

last tv show: I rewatched the first season of Interview with the Vampire :3

currently reading: Various stuff on Japanese cultural identity and traditional performing arts for college exams.

currently watching: The Last of Us.

sweet/savoury/spicy: Definitely savoury, although I love sweet and spicy as well.

coffee/tea: Coffee, though I love tea as well.

currently craving: For my anxiety to stop, (sorry for the negative vibes but it's true) it's been going on for days.

relationship status: Single.

last google search: What 'antique prie dieu' means xD

looking forward to: Watching more LOTR and moving on to some new things on my watchlist :3

current obsession(s): LOTR, the Vampire Knight soundtrack (the ost is a banger but please don't watch the anime if you want to keep brain cells, it's my guilty pleasure).

For the next victims I tag:

@the-vampire-library, @queer-is-future, @tolovaj, @pozaba, @antisocijalni-kaktus, @vomitvacillator, @longingquiet, @reticent-vampire, @my-republic-my-throne, @ghstbrd, @baclavasuiti, @poetrydystopian and @all-the-spindly-roots,

as always, no pressure tags! ✨️

[the-bogginses-are-gay]

Hello, lovely!! This is for the nosy ask game: 6, 16, 17, 21, 27, 41, and 43!!!

Ahhh, thank you so much for asking ily bby!!!!

6 - Age I get mistaken for: I often get told wildly varying things about my appearance, but most commonly people think I'm 16 or 17, as I still have a childlike face.

16 - I'll love you if: Hmmm, this is a tricky one! I will love and appreciate anyone who takes time out of their day to ask me how I'm doing, or pays special attention enough that they realise I'm having a bad day. I also love people who put up with my incessant fandom ramblings too lol

17 - Someone I miss - I had a friend a year or two ago who started acting really bitchy to me and our group before moving away to another country. She reached out to me a few weeks ago apologising for the way she treated me. I don't know if I want to rekindle the friendship, but I miss the friendship we had.

21 - What I love most about myself - This is really difficult, I tend to be negative about myself so I'll try my best ... I really like my intelligence (that feels Iike a weird thing to say), it gives me a confidence boost around other people. I can't really think of things about myself that I really like atm sorry!!

27 - A description of the girl/boy I like - Okay, I like this question!! The boy that I like is decently tall, with skinny, pale but really strong arms. He is overall a very skinny person (my friends call him a stick figure) with long legs, big cloudy blue eyes and short light brown hair. His ears are slightly sticking out, but in a cute way. He is really smart, but clowns around sometimes and is really funny.

41 - Where I want to be right now - Honestly, I just want to be in New Zealand. I've been there before, as the place where lotr was filmed, and it felt like my true home. If I could live or just exist anywhere, I would be in New Zealand, at home in Middle Earth.

43 - Sexiest person that comes to mind immediately - Oh god, this is embarrassing, but probably the guy I like, even though he isn't that sexy, he's more of a pretty boy.

[ijustreallylikecaptainamericaok]

Hey, Nonnie!

I hope you don't mind that I screencapped your ask in order to answer it. I'm kinda paranoid about things like this ending up in searches and getting harangued for it.

Anyway, more importantly, I'm so sorry the fandom's made you feel that way. It sucks to love something for so long, only to have your fellow fans ruin it for you. I'm not sure what you can do to mitigate that beyond blocking liberally, keeping to the spaces you know are positive, and maybe taking breaks from it all if you have to. Though I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know with that.

I'm a fandom old, too, and I've also spent most of my fandom time over the years in music fandoms, so I extra-extra don't get the whole my-ship-needs-to-be-real-or-I'm-gonna-pitch-a-years-long-fit attitude. I get being disappointed when things don't go the way you want and I even get being irritated about story choices years later (girl, I could go on an hour long rant about certain choices made in the LotR films regarding Faramir and Sam and it's been over 20 years, so I get a grudge.) What I don't get is letting that grudge overrun everything and just stewing in it endlessly. Like, at some point you (the royal you) gotta either let that grudge go or let the fandom go, because they're no longer serving their intended purpose and it's making all involved miserable. I don't get why they insist on sticking around when it clearly makes them so unhappy. I think it's a combo of 1) how social media rewards anger and negativity and maybe some are genuine asshats who do just want to ruin it for others and 2) that because it was baby's first ship for many that a lot of them built so much of their online identities and/or social circles around the ship and now they don't know how to walk away. I feel like it also doesn't help that, from what I've observed, a lot of St*ckies police the fuck out of each other, especially when it comes to changing or expanding interests. It's... very odd, to put it mildly.

[jedinightsister]

1. How did you find out about Rings of Power? What was the one thing that drew you to the show?

[click here for the trop ask game list; see below/click read more for my response]

Found out about it through social media. Not necessarily the loud, negative voices (thankfully), plus, as a frequent listener to Star Wars podcasts (special shout out to Ken Napzok of Force Center and Jacob Boushh of the Cosmic Force), I observed quite a handful of them watch and thoroughly enjoy the show. I did have a phase for the LOTR and Hobbit films a few years ago, so I knew to some extent I was gonna enjoy it, but I wasn't prepared for how much I'd actually adore the show. Even more than any of the movies, if I may say so.

Aside from the fanfare from podcasters whose taste in fiction is similar to mine, I just know the concepts being delved into are the type I enjoy. Yes, it's a fantastical realm, but the themes are very grounded and can be seen through a realistic lens. Escapist fiction in some ways, but a reflective medium as well.

Lastly, and I'd be remiss not to mention this, cuz it is pretty much the very thing that truly made me finally start the show after delaying myself from it, is a fan art by Bryan Ward

I've been reading the High Republic novels and love them. I also enjoy people's fancasting, and this fancast/fanart was so good, I just needed that visual of Morfydd as Jedi Master Avar Kriss. Pilot episode did not fail me, Galadriel was pretty darn badass there and had so much emotional depth that really carried a througline of the story. 👌

Here I am now, months later, still very much deep in my love for the show (even if my posting has died down a little). It's still a fandom that I can reliably count on, and I'm especially grateful to the small but wonderful Mirendil homies I've met 💖

[thisworldisablackhole]

The Lord of the Rings The War of the Rohirrim

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑

The War of the Rohirrim sounded like such a good concept — pick some random tidbit of lore from the LotR universe and make an animated film about it. What could go wrong? I've always had fond memories of the original animated LotR films from the 70s, so this idea immediately hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Unfortunately, this film was a pretty big disappointment. I already had low expectations due to the already negative Rotten Tomatoes score, but I was expecting my deep rooted love for LotR would take the brunt of any shortcomings, and to a degree it did.

I definitely think this is worth a watch, I just would avoid seeing it in theaters. Pirate it or wait 'til it lands on streaming services. The story was surprisingly dry, which I almost appreciated. They could have gone full on Marvel with this, but they showed some restraint, despite it still having a few tired LotR clichés shoehorned into it (oh no another dramatic slow-mo death scene in the heat of battle, but don't worry cause the guys on horses come down from the hill and save the day again!) There were a few scenes in here that seemed to exist only to fill time so that they could sell this as a feature film. Now that I think of it, it probably could have made a killer 30 minute short. Unfortunately the characters had almost zero depth and I failed to connect with any of them, so the stakes just felt really low the whole time. It sucks because this was the first piece of LotR cinema featuring a woman as the main protagonist, and they failed to give her a fleshed out personality, along with everyone else.

The mix of art styles also screamed of laziness to me, like they purposely cut costs and resources to pump this thing out as fast as possible. The characters were all decently drawn, but all the environments and backgrounds were muddy, grainy CGI "sets" that didn't match the foreground at all. There were also some laughably bad effects, like when one of those gigantic elephants crashed through a gate and the animation for the wood breaking to pieces looked like it was thrown together by an intern who just figured out a new trick in Blender. This whole thing just reeks of a low effort cash grab, but at the same time, it's hard to hate it. It's more Lord of the Rings material. If you're obsessed with the lore and just want a fun animated movie set in a familiar world, then you'll get something out of this. I just wish they tried harder to make it good.

[misplacedmidlanders]

Saturday, May 11th 2024. Wellington.

Today was our final day in Wellington before we leave early tomorrow morning for the south island, and it was a refreshingly relaxed coach-free affair (childhood me could never have imagined travelling this much all week and not vomming every five minutes, I guess my years of increasing the profits for Megabus has paid off).

We met and had a talk from Daniel Reeve, a lovely chap who was responsible for nearly all the calligraphy and many of the maps and illustrations in the LOTR and Hobbit films. We weren't allowed to photograph any of his illustrations as he technically doesn't own the rights, but if you've literally seen the title for the films or bought yourself even a mug with Frodo's name on it then you'll have seen his work. Here's a link to some of his stuff:

https://www.danielreeve.co.nz/

Jake and I decided that the thrashing our wallets received yesterday was insufficient, so we decided to pick up a couple of posters between us that Daniel kindly signed. Jake got a poster of the Shire, and I got a poster of Gollum because he reminds me of my would-definitely-betray-you-the-moment-you-stopped-feeding-him-chicken cat (Wilson if you're reading this I haven't forgotten about you, two more weeks to go bb xo). 

Afterwards, Jake and I decided to temporarily part ways for our the rest of our afternoons in Welly (not in a negative way or anything like that, we're just completely sick of each other). I finally did my laundry and ironing (the most satisfying part of this trip so far) and then I had a wander around the harbour before popping into Te Papa Museum. Having already been to Auckland's museum I didn't spend too long in here, although in contrast to the hobbits we've encounteted they had these gargantuan figures of soldiers of The Gallipoli Campaign (about 4x the size of an actual person, and coincidentally made and supplied by Weta).

For dinner, we went to Mama Brown - New Zealand's finest American diner with McKenzie and Joseph (the Alabamians, which is a nickname I'm sure they'd really appreciate). Tomorrow, we're off to NZ: 2 The South Island via ferry and then a coach down to Nelson. Apparently, there's a notable temperature drop in the south, so it might be time to finally hang up my beloved shorts for good (RIP, you were the real Frodo and Sam of this journey).

[mushiver]

I haven't been a movie nerd even ONCE on this account. Here's my top 10 movies in 2023

1. The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)

IT STILL COUNTS AS ONE

Can't go wrong here. There's fantasy, action scenes, friendship, romance, badass dialogue, comedy. There's refreshing masculinity where men are close friends, fight for each other, die for each other, kiss each other on the forehead, sing, etc. The Aragorn Arwen romance is sweet and isn't overblown, and the main theme is to fight for good. If you're tired of anti-heroes and want a clean good vs. evil, this is it. The downside is not having poc representation and only 3 important women, but they are extremely awesome and play pivotal roles. If you've heard about LOTR for forever but never actually seen it, here's your sign.

2. The Lego Movie

This movie sells itself, but I have seen it maybe. 40 times. And I could quote it from start to end as a kid. It's funny, has crossover characters along with the main ones (like Batman, Superman, Gandalf, Abraham Lincoln, Han Solo), lots of references, and the main message is that you're special in your own way. It's very autism coded, I think

3. Jaws

Classic man vs. monster, and it's great if you don't watch thrillers and need something "dip your toes in." While the majority of the town goes all rambo trying to kill the shark, the main characters are the opposite. The chief of police is ultimately empathetic and wants to stop more people from being hurt, Matt Hooper is a shark expert "city boy" coming along, and Quint has a boat that needs to be bigger

4. My Cousin Vinny

Vinny is a lawyer taking a case to prove his cousin didn't murder a clerk, but he's the worst lawyer in existence. He forgot everything he learned in law school, can't stop wearing a leather jacket to court, and his fiancée saves him most times. It has some of the most quotable lines and 10/10 I recommend to Alabamans for the southern jokes

5. Knives Out

A modern "whodunit" mystery that shines the most because it's a comedy. The main character Marta is the only one who thinks she knows what happened, but she pukes every time she tells a lie. Benoit Blanc is also the most iconic detective to me and one of my favorite characters ever

6. Tommy Boy

This has a very similar tone to My Cousin Vinny, but it's a road trip movie. After Tommy's dad dies, he and Richard (a jerk coworker) try to sell autoparts to save his company. They're the worst salesmen in existence, but ultimately are creative and pull some shenanigans (Tommy and Richard go from rivals to buddies). It's from the 90s and not very chill with the r-slur and some fat jokes, but it's ultimately a feel-good movie if that isn't a dealbreaker for you

7. Jurassic Park

Like Jaws, another classic pop culture movie. The score is so good, and they make a world full of dinosaurs have the same magic feel as the wizarding world. It's an adventure movie with great action scenes and characters. (This is a trope I love personally but) Alan Grant is a grump who doesn't like kids, but later he looks after them. Ellie Sattler is one of my favorite characters ever, and Jeff Goldblum lays on a table. Survival movies are fun 10/10

8. Joker (2019)

DROOLING OVER THE CINEMATOGRAPHY. It's such a well-made movie, and you never know entirely what's real with unreliable narrating. It makes you feel for Arthur and understand his actions while knowing he made the wrong decisions in the end. Some think it's negative for mental health representation, but it can be used as a cautionary tale for the ways mentally ill people are mistreated and how the events that led to the start of the film weren't his fault. Ultimately, I think it inspires more empathy, and it's a piece of art

9. Signs

I'm a sucker for the "everything makes sense in the end" trope. A lot of people didn't like the combo of two supernaturals (the existence of God and aliens), but I don't think it ruins the movie. It centers around a family struggling with the death of their mother (or sister or wife, depending on the character), and the ex-priest dad had lost connection with his faith. He happens to find it again because of an alien invasion. Normal Tuesday

10. Arsenic and Old Lace

From 1944, it's a weird movie and the acting is iconic. Mortimer is trying to get to his honeymoon, but when he visits his aunts, he finds a dead body in the house. It's a comedy involving shenanigans, avoiding the police, and an uncle who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. (It's a bit outdated as far as mental illness goes, but Mortimer's goal is to put his family in the care of a mental institution rather than shipping them off or telling the police.) As a drama queen, I also appreciate Cary Grant being a drama queen

10 honorable mentions: Lego Batman, Napoleon Dynamite, The Goofy Movie, Clue, Psycho, Marriage Story, Into the Spiderverse, Avengers Endgame, Dead Poets Society, Muder on the Orient Express. Swag thanks for reading

[sadgirl69420]

👀 lotr

I struggle with this one because…my experience with the tolkien fandom around 2014-16 was such a negative one it made me not want to engage with the source material either. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling of being a “fake” fan and I suppose these days I am in that my memory of them is quite hazy 😔

I suppose it’s rare/unpopular to be a 90s kid and to have read the books before seeing any of the films, and to advocate doing it that way around? But that’s a rule I have for almost every book that’s been adapted to TV/film, so I don’t know if it counts.

[yourstormthlaylirahh]

I really try to avoid negative reviews on mdl, I really do, because they tend to be mind numbingly stupid takes, but there is one I see so consistently and asserted with such confidence I'm gonna briefly rant about it.

People are allowed to not like shows such as Kiseki and My Dear Gangster Oppa, of course, but they are all the time getting compared unfavourably to shows like Kinnporsche because they 'aren't realistic' and are like 'kids imaginings of the mafia.' This is partially a fair point, they aren't realistic, but what gets me is the implication that Kinnporsche is realistic and is ergo better.

Kinnporsche is not realistic, because organized crime is not glamorous. It's not flashy, it's not glorious, it's not stylized choreography for emotionally fraught fight scenes. Frankly, a lot more tedium assorted with business, such as money laundering/running illegal businesses/infiltrating unions/etc is involved than would initially pop into your head when you hear the word mafia. I'm not saying it isn't violent. It is, and there are gruesome killings, and people tend to die in awful ways far before their natural lifespan. But it is often a more boring, day to day type of violence than what we find in a plotted story.

The thing is, those don't tend to make accessible television or movies (I'm sure there are realistic media treatments I am not aware of, but here I'm referring to stuff intended to have widespread appeal rather than indie or art film). It's glamorized, you are agreeing to suspend some disbelief when you watch the story. It's fine if it feels more realistic to you to watch KP because the sex is more graphic and there are some (frankly incredibly fanciful) torture scenes, but to pretend it is inherently more realistic comes across pretty naive. Some examples are the hospital they have access to and apparently never use, and the plot armour the main characters have to survive fights and situations that would have realistically killed them.

It reminds me of when people claim GOT is sooooo much more realistic than a story like LotR. Setting aside things like dragons, it may be bleaker and more violent, but where are the scores of people dying from sepsis due to stab wounds hmm?

It's fine to like different types of stories, I myself did enjoy at least the first half of KP so this is not just me trying to shit on the show. I just find it really frustrating when people try to use their flawed view of 'realistic' as this gold standard in media analysis.

[newzealandmozsombi]

Hobbiton

Today I finally visited probably the most famous Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit movie set.

A bit of backstory.

The location scouts spotted the area from a helicopter while looking for places to shoot Lord of the Rings, back in 1998. The area belongs to a local farming family and after strucking a deal constructions started. I think it took about 2 years to build the set but don’t quote me on that. The three LoTR movies were shot in one go and it took about 14 months to shoot the scenes that took place in the Shire while in comparison the Hobbit movies (also 3) were shot in 14 days, I mean the parts in the Shire. After principal photography was done for the LoTR movies the whole set was torn down and when they returned to shoot the Hobbit movies (around 2009-2010) they built it up, but this time with the intention to make it last so that people can visit it afterwards.

Anway, I had high expectations of course, where were actually met, but I struggled a bit with how touristy the whole thing felt. You gotta park your car at the main visitor area, where you check in and take a 10 min bus ride that takes you to the edge of the set. The car park was already really full (around 11), tours were going every hour and they were booked out weeks before, I booked my spot, about 3 weeks ago I think and at that point there were barely any spots left for this week.

I actually had to go pretty fast due to extensive roadworks which meant I barely made it 5 min before the tour starts so I got lucky that I even made it to the bus.

Long story short already during the 10 min bus drive the tour guide who was with the group the whole time told us fun facts about the place and the short history that I tried to sum up above and a short film was playing on the TV. The tour was guided but not too tight, the guide was a local girl who turned out to be a real nerd herself so after my initial negative feelings (she seemed a bit burned out or something) I realized that she actually seems to like what she does and knows a whole lot. She led the group through the winding trail that goes through Hobbiton, where she stopped every few min to give us more fun facts or let the group take pictures from iconic spots like Bag End or Samwise Gamgee’s Hobbit hole. Some of the hobbit holes were aboue 3/4 size of an average human, some were half the size to trick you into thinking that Gandalf was way taller than the hobbits (while in reality the actor, Sir Ian Mckellen is around 177 cm). I found out that the gardens are actually real, I mean the vegetables they’re growing there are edible and there are whole bunch of gardeners taking care of the place to keep it fresh and green all year round. There was a stark difference between the set and the surrounding hills, which were pretty burned out from not having any rain in a good while…

The tour starts literally at the spot where the cover picture of this blog was taken and I was tempted to recreate the picture and the guide even offered it to people but I did not have the courage at that point..Oh well.

In general I noticed that the set and the whole thing being so touristy just annoyed me somehow, I like to go of the beaten path and this was as beaten as it can be and it took me half of the tour to get over this feeling and just try to soak in all of it. There is a picture with me on it. That is Bag End (duh. That’s where Frodo and Bilbo lives). There is a tree on the top of it. That tree is fake. The leaves are made of plastic and each one was hand painted (by university students from the Artsy faculty in Wellington or Auckland, can’t remember). The original tree from the LoTR movies was cut down and this one was made for the Hobbit movies. The rest of nature is very much alive though!

Two hobbit holes were open for public (as most of them are not actually done on the inside, only the doors and like a meter or so behind the windows), and the group could walk through them and take some time to check out the details. Looked really cool and all but these were actually made for tourists and not for the movies which took away a bit of the appreciation. I know it’s silly but that’s how it felt.

There were a lot of fun facts about the movies and I can remember some, like Bilbo’s birthday party scene needed a lot of extras (people) and a lot of kids to be exact who were given a lot of candy and whatnot to keep them going throughout the night while the adults were given beer that only had one percent alcohol but they were not told that the beer is light so due to the placebo effect they actually got pretty drunk which was needed for the scene. You remember the scene where Merry and Pippin steal the big dragon firework and they blow up a tent and the whole thing goes flying? That scene was not CGI or any special effects, it was all practical, the tent did go flying and as it turned out the actor who played pippin was actually scared of fireworks and let out a big scream while shooting the scene and asked the director to use another take in the movie, well guess which one was used in the end?!..That’s right.

I’ll leave it at that cause I have doubts how many people who are reading this actually seen the movies..

At the end of the tour everyone was invited for a drink at the Green Dragon Inn, which was also in the movies of course, Pippin and Merry dancing on the tables, Sam being too shy to ask out Rosy. I had a ginger beer, as all the other drinks were alcoholic and I still had to drive a bit afterwards.

Anyways, it was great to visit this place even with the less than ideal mindset in the beginning.

I didn’t plan much for the rest of the day, booked a spot at a campsite nearby and spent the afternoon doing necessary things like laundry, the campsite had a hot pool (two actually, but I only tried one of them that was 37 degrees, the other one was 39 and this was already almost too warm, even in the evening) and I tried to do some research on what’s next after New Zealand.

On that note, not sure who’s reading this, I told a few people already, I landed myself a volunteering spot on Vancouver island in Canada for two weeks at the end of April so I’ll be going there from here and since Andrea invited me to the Bay area (San Francisco and surroundings) I’ll be probably going there afterwards (with some stops maybe). Nothing is fixed yet (besides the volunteering dates) I have a rough plan in my head of how it could work out. Still a lot of question marks especially regarding how to get around but new ideas and possibilites arise every day so I am fairly confident that things will sort themselves out. Next thing is probably booking a flight to Vancouver and we will see about the rest. I am excited to see how it all turns out!

The main idea was that since I am already so effin’ far away from Hungary, it’d be silly to go home straight and since I have time until I start the Integral Psychology course in Budapest in September why not make a few stops “on the way” home. There you go.

Obligatory song recommendation:

Concerning Hobbits - Howard Shore

Well I hope this one needs no explanation.