31Dec
Open Thread-Last One of 2021
Talk about whatever you want but it must be pop-culture related.
All others will be deleted.
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Comments (29)
Tolkien briefly considered writing a sequel to Lord of the Rings*, set during the kingdom of Eldarion, the son of Aragorn and Arwen, a hundred years or more after the fall of Sauron. It would have concerned a revolutionary plot against the king led by “a centre of secret Satanistic religion” making use of the fact that “the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless”.
Tolkien wrote about 13 pages before abandoning the idea, because: “it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. […] I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.”
Do you think Tolkien was right in putting it aside, or did we miss out on a masterpiece?
*If you want more information, go here: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_New_Shadow
I doubt it would have added anything good to middle earth
The destruction of a great peace from within is depressing
They all lived happily ever after, is and always will be a good ending
“They all lived happily ever after, is and always will be a good ending”
No argument there, but:
1)LotR doesn’t really have an easy-peasy, straightforward happy ending anyway; neither does The Hobbit, for that matter – and certainly not The Silmarillion.
2)No member or ally of the Fellowship would still be in Middle-Earth by the time of this sequel, so their happy ending is preserved.
3)You could say the same thing about LotR itself. “What’s this about Bilbo being slowly corrupted by an instrument of evil? Just let him have his happy ending! And is a full-blown war for survival really approriate for the nice, whimsical world of The Hobbit?”
Not saying you’re wrong, but we may have missed out on the Middle-Earth version of That Hideous Strenght, and that’s just sad to contemplate.
Yes there was some bittersweet, but I suspect that the inhabitants of Mordor had an unappealing end
He made the right call. What good is it moving from the twilight of the elves to the nighttime of the elves after that has already been trod. And what of the further decline of the secluded dwarf kingdoms? Such sadness needs no dwelling.
No one wants to read more about Rehoboam after all.
Good topic though.
I think he was right to put it aside. There’s already a bittersweet return to the Shire in LOTR, and the loss of what the Shire was before the arrival of Saruman. Ditto for those of us in Gen X who grew up in the America that still remembered the post-war 50s (with our grandparents still alive to tell us about a time before the Hippies started ruining it).
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Also, Tolkien already gave us Wormtongue as an example. The only thing he didn’t include was a surveillance state within the city of Gondor, with 10-15% of the population taking Sauron’s coin to spy on their fellow citizens. Maybe open the gate at 3 a.m. when ordered. Because that would be unrealistic, right?
I know this is a controversial opinion, but I think the Star Wars universe should have ended after the OT. It was a nice, self contained story about the restoration of the Jedi and it didn’t need a “prequel” telling us about the setup nor a sequel telling us about how it all went to s*** again within 30 years. The Star Wars universe is a fun playground,and I can see why millions of fans want to keep it going, but I really think the story should have been confined to the Original Trilogy.
how is this controversial?
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pretty much everyone who was an adult when the Prequels came out thought that they were crap. hell, RedLetterMedia built their damn brand name off of critiquing Ep1-3.
“It attracted significant attention in 2009 through Stoklasa’s 70-minute video review of the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The review was posted in seven parts on YouTube, and was presented by his character “Harry S. Plinkett” (often shortened to “Mr. Plinkett”). While Stoklasa had published other video reviews of several Star Trek films before that, his Phantom Menace and subsequent Star Wars prequel reviews were praised for both content and presentation.”
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people have just forgotten how dogshit the new Lucas films were because Ep8 and 9 make them look good.
Most of you are probably aware that Ghostbusters (2016) director Paul Feige humiliated himself by whining on Twitter about how his movie was left out of the huge boxed set that Sony was about to ship. Feige jumped up and down and stamped his little feet over the fact that his Kid’s Choice Award-winning movie had been excluded.
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Consequently, Sony announced that they were including Ghostbusters: Answer the Call with the boxed set…
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…as a digital download.
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What Feige was mad about of course is that the real money is in the physical copy. And he was counting on riding the coattails of much better films to a nice little payday.
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As funny as that was, the postscript was funnier. The digital download was always going to be included with the boxed set.
I guess this means there won’t be a crossover between the three generations of Busters, then.
Such a tragedy.
Netflix or marvel assembled a talented team with Daredevil did any of that migrate to Disney after they were shut down? When Netflix can produce a better product than all the Disney marvel with far less money why wouldn’t cheapskate be interested?
We’ll have to wait and see if No Way Home was a fluke (or an accident) since Jon Watts is slated to direct Fantastic Four, but he and the writers showed that it’s still possible to make a decent superhero film if the wokies can get out of the way.
It’s a digital download that no one will actually bother downloading. Sony saved its customers the trouble of finding shelf space for a movie no one wanted to see in the first place, let alone ever again. It was excluded from the physical box set because it’s a reboot of the original concept and doesn’t follow the canon of the other three movies. That it screws Feige out of some money is just icing on the cake.
Sony has been literally giving away digital copies of it for years.
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I was startled to find Ghostbusters (2016) in my Amazon Streaming Library.
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I have absoltuely no idea how it got there because I sure as hell never paid for it.
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I tried watching it and didn’t even make it to the opening credits.
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It’s that GOOD!
I made it to the queef joke and I was out like a trout as our country boys say. The women were relentlessly unappealing
It’s a bit late to the party, but I wonder if you’ve seen Tokyo Godfathers? It might be the only anime I’ve heard of that qualifies as Christmas viewing. And while there is irreverence displayed, it is the most sincere, and authentic, use of Christianity in any Japanese media I’ve ever seen.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it but yes, it was excellent.
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It’s also a little odd for Japan. They don’t really view Christmas as a time of miracles.
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Yet, the climax of that movie absolutely had one. It had several now that I think of it.
Yes, that was fantastic. Even beyond the symbolism and coincidences and ‘turns of luck’, seeing God himself intervene was an astonishing treat.
Saw “The King’s Man” yesterday. While it had some wokeness, including the obligatory Strong Independent Womyn, it was also fun. If you follow the Kingsmen series, you kind of know the ending but it was still pretty good.
I’m curious if The Dark Herald will be doing a review any time soon.
I saw it a few days ago, just before Christmas. I loved the first 2, but hated this one. Rasputin was disgusting in every bit he was in. The movie shifts tone several times and there are are some stupid plot holes that I just couldn’t get past. There were some fun bits, but they were surrounded by bad bits.
I think Rasputin was *supposed* to be disgusting considering the other folks in “The Shepard’s” little group. I agree about the tone switching; the trench scenes were pretty different from the other scenes but, again, I suspect that was intentional.
Finished up the Halo Infinite campaign today (I’m a solo Legendary player). Overall I’d rank it somewhere in the middle of the series. It feels great to play and is fun as hell, but a lot of the story setups aren’t paid off, most of the important events happen off-screen, and there’s not a ton of variety in either the open-world or story levels. The boss fights also have a 50/50 split between fun/challenging and stupid/frustrating.
The short review is that it’s a solid and incredibly well-executed foundation that I’m excited to see them build on in the sequels.
“Buck Danny”, has anyone ever heard of it? Or the DB Cooper comic from Germany?
Never heard of it, but please do share.
Good bad?
I watched Spiderman No Way Home and it had no right to be as good as it was. Did the script writers who wrote Infinity War leave Disney and start working for Sony? I won’t spoil anything but if you want a review with some spoilers you can watch the Critical Drinker. As was pointed out by one of his fans in the video’s comments, the Critical Drinker liked the latest Spiderman movie so much he did the entire review completely sober.
Finished the Witcher Season Two. It was OK. They thought they’d console the fans by making the west Asian woman playing Triss Merigold dye her hair red. Doesn’t work.
Finished Wheel of Time. What a hot mess. Nothing like the book. The book was slightly above Dragon in my opinion. The show was ruined by having to appeal to the strong Women trope. The Dragon Reborn was not the most important character. I never read past the first volume and probably won’t. Won’t watch season two either.
>David Keyser
Critical Drinker’s review of the Spiderman flick is good. Mostly he praises it for the right reasons. But I don’t agree with his saying Spidey’s appearance in the previous MCU movies was too lighthearted. The previous Marvel movies had enough freakin’ drama what with (spoiler alert)
Thanos killing half the galaxy,
Vision, Natasha Romanov, and Tony Stark sacrificing themselves to save everyone else,
Cap losing the woman he loved then finally finding a way to reunite with her,
etc.
etc.
The last thing we needed was more personal drama in the MCU. And just based on sheer TIME, how could they have shoe-horned another plot thread in?! By the time they got to Infinity War and Endgame, the thing was so densely packed it practically generated its own gravitational field!
Watched Klaus on Netflix with the family yesterday. Dark Herald is wise and true with his recommendation. It was very strong in the ‘show, not tell’ form of storytelling and has a deep resonance with sacrificial love without mockery. Easily 25 minutes of healthy conversation about it afterwards as a family.
It was interesting to see how the story developed.
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Originally, Jesper was a poverty-stricken chimney sweep. Hence his talent for using them to B&E.