#this was just me trying to give context to a dumb meme i made afhrgbthbgt

[the-blue-sandglass]

So my Tales from Earthsea thoughts are back again as I do quite enjoy this movie but-

I have my own grievances with how they handled certain things from the books (cough whitewashing cough) but the thing is, I feel they would have been a lot better off if they'd just kept to their own coherent plot even if that meant diverging a lot as opposed to trying to Frankenstein so much shit from different books together-

Spoilers ahead for the movie if you've not seen it by the way, and trigger warning for mentions of m//der with parts of the plot-

But I feel one of the bigger issues is that with the shift towards Arren and his personal shit, we never actually get much explanation as to what provoked a lot of his ways of thinking throughout the film or why the fuck his shadow came into being beyond his anxieties and fears overwhelming/consuming him and like...okay, that's fine as an explanation for how the shadow came into existence, but what specifically prompted that? Where did his fears specifically come from? What is the 'living in fear' that he mentions being so tired of?

I mean, he's supposed to be royalty yet that trait feels completely incidental to the plot, like if you cut that part out it would have zero bearing or impact on the events of the narrative. What bothers me is that him being royalty could have been used to good effect to account for this new troubled aspect of him!

Like imagine if they took some time to go into at least a little bit of what his life as royalty was like; he could very well have dealt with assassinations, potential kidnappings, political bullshit and backstabbing as the heir to his kingdom in the past, and even that being mentioned could have gone a way to explain where this desire to avoid/flee from what terrifies him so much could have stemmed from. More aptly, what was his relationship with his father like?

I know in the film he says that his father was a good man and didn't do anything bad to him, but I do think they could have expanded on that; his father could still be a good man, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was the best parent - he was a king after all and I don't imagine they would have had a lot of private/personal time, or at least not what Arren might have needed as pressure mounted on him.

In general, him purposefully murdering him just adds a lot of problems story-wise in my opinion. Arren's whole behaviour throughout most of the rest of the movie struck me as avoidance, attempting to escape his problems/fears in any way he can find - whether that be through him being tempted to accept Hazia, the eternal life Cob seemingly offers to help him get or just by accepting death - so why the fuck would he purposefully kill someone that important when all it would do was bring more trouble onto him, more problems to run/avoid?

I feel even going for something like...maybe Arren purposefully trying to split himself up so he can be rid of the heroic side of him that he blames for his problems, as that side would likely contain the dutiful, noble side that keeps him bearing a crown with a weight he struggles to handle - i.e messing about with powers he shouldn't be as a mirror to Cob for example, or to Sparrowhawk in the books arguably - and then being caught in the act, prompting him to panic and instinctively gut the person thinking they're going to hurt him only to realise it was his own father would have potentially worked more. It would still give him a reason to flee, since not only has he fucked around and found out but he's also killed both the king and someone who seemed to be very dear to him, and it still allows the parallel later with Sparrowhawk, except this time he isn't wounded.

Obviously, these are just ideas off the top of my head - but I do really feel that having a more focused narrative or going all the way with leaning into the shift of things between characters wouldn't have been amiss.