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Farewell 2024! Let's Discuss The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim || Chatsu-Nani?!
45 Plays11 days ago
In the final episode of Chatsunami, join Satsunami and Andrew as they discuss the latest Lord of the Rings film The War of the Rohirrim. After discussing this with Martin MacAlistair, the dup have had time to think about it.
But after middling reviews, was it really that bad? Why would someone be drumming on siege equipment? And will Peter Jackson ever reply to our letters?! For one final time this year, let's find out!
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Transcript
Dealing with Negative Reviews
00:00:02
Speaker
There's too many of them. The negative reviews just keep coming in. So much negativity. What can podcasters do against such reckless hate? Review it with me. Review it, and meet them. For podcasting, and glory!
Introduction to Final Episode of 2024
00:00:15
Speaker
For the Pandalorians. Remember what Martin once said. No, don't get that trending. No, do not do it for me.
00:00:24
Speaker
And second thought, maybe let's not. Chatsunami shall sound out in 2024, one last time. Yes! Let us draw opinions together. Ooh, good thing I brought my pencils. Not that kind of drawing. I knew that, kind of. Now for Wrath, now for Ruin, and the Red Panda. Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Satunami and joining me for the final episode of 2024 is none other than my one and only Rohidoman Arms. It is Andrew. Andrew, welcome back for the final episode of Chatsunami this year. How are you doing?
Christmas Gifts and Cinema Snacks
00:01:07
Speaker
I'm good. A giant eagle has just dropped off the final Christmas presents that were late arrivals here but I'm opening it just now.
00:01:14
Speaker
ah It's the War of the Tahiran popcorn bucket. I've always wanted it, and it extends out of my eye. Hey, careful there. You nearly hit me in the face with that one. but Okay, before we start, did you get the bucket? I got a popcorn bucket, but it wasn't that one. We did get this deal that had a Christmas ornament, the biggest soda you've ever seen. Like, I had to go to the toilet twice during the movie, and candy as well. But like, it was way larger than I've ever had for popcorn and drinks before, so it felt like a bit of an event piece in itself. one large soda please here you go pretty yeah
00:01:48
Speaker
ah some sense make you never die with our entrances yeah i have to say i was and again i wasn't actively hunting for this popcor bucket before the listeners start wondering what the heck are we talking about here there was
00:02:08
Speaker
One large soda, please. Here you go. Warhammer. Our theatre did do it. I don't know where they were though. They were displayed on the screen though when we were getting it. I don't know how you got one of those ones. There was other ones that were like a gladiators or other like a coliseum bucket for the gladiator 2 movie but I didn't see where the Warhammer one was. Yeah because I mean if I wanted a wicked themed drink or I don't know a sonic cardboard popcorn bucket then. His shoe. Yeah oh my god don't start that. You're putting out the worst on the internet with that.
00:02:41
Speaker
Although I don't know what's worse than that or the fact that the real popcorn bucket is just these decapitated heads. I hope it's like the original Sonic with like the weird cumuloid teeth. but You just open up the teeth. You have to like open wide his mouth to get into the popcorn.
War of the Rehiram: Poor Marketing Strategy
00:02:55
Speaker
And in case you're wondering what we're talking about today, it's popcorn bucket. Welcome to popcorn nami. Please sponsor us any theater listening to that.
00:03:06
Speaker
But yeah, today we are indeed going to be talking about a topic that we were discussing a couple of weeks back with the amazing Martin McAllister, who drove all the way out just to sit in my car for about an hour to talk about this film. We are indeed talking about War of the Rehiram. This is indeed the proper chat tsunami review. Screw you, Martin.
00:03:30
Speaker
but All I'm saying is, when we do these reviews, I'm not living in fear that someone's going to come out and toot at me at the middle of nowhere or yell at us when we're sitting in the car with microphones. The episode's still early. I might do that. Yeah, well true, true. Open your gift! maybe but open Sonic's mouth real wide. Anyway, my fanfiction aside, today we are indeed going to be talking about the new War of the Ruhiram film, which I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to get this big olefon out of the way first. The marketing for this film, the news for the film, everything to do with the visibility in the PR department was absolutely horrific. and I know we joked about it previously, they are saying about the popcorn bucket, ha ha, shaped like a warhammer. I knew more about that than I did about the release of this film. So turning that on to you, did you feel the same way about this film? Sort of, yeah. It did creep up on me quite unexpectedly. I think I first heard about it in maybe August.
00:04:30
Speaker
For the fact that there was only four months between hearing about a Lord of the Rings film and it coming out is crazy. You think about all the buildup when The Hobbit was announced, when the Amazon Rings of Power series was announced, there was so much buildup to that. It felt like this film just came out of nowhere all of a sudden. It was like Oprah telling you, hey, look under your seats. Guess what it is? It's a Lord of the Rings anime. It did feel very out of nowhere that we kind of were given this film. And I was pretty interested in it. It felt pretty cheap that the trailer used scenes from the Lord of the Rings live action film to promote it because the film itself, large parts of the animation is very, very pretty. So I feel like they could have used more of that and sold what actually the film was about as well. Being a bit hypocritical there though, as I do have a pet peeve of trailers giving away too much of a movie. So I think that you kind of need to strike that perfect balance of having enough faith in the film to use more of its
00:05:24
Speaker
content to show in your trailer versus giving away too much because it does this film a disservice to link it and compare it to the Lord of the Rings live action movies. You can't and it's not fair on this film to do that. They really missed a mark in terms of that and I think a lot of people weren't aware of this film as a result. We were there pretty much opening weekend in one of the largest cinemas in our city, if I think it is the most popular cinema in our city. We were one of maybe 30 people in our theatre. It was pretty empty on a Saturday mid-afternoon, late evening. It was pretty crazy that we were in there for a Lord of the Rings film. There was no one like hardly anyone around us. It's so, so weird how poorly this film was marketed and that there was just no kind of hype and buildup too, other than, as you said, the popcorn bucket.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah because going back to what you were saying before about the marketing for this film, I remember seeing that trailer and being quite excited initially because they of course showed off the clips from the two towers. I was like oh my god what are they cooking up here? Are they going to be making something groundbreaking because they are working on i think a live-action film. I say soon but you know there's still in talks about who's gonna be involved and so on and so forth but yeah as soon as it transitioned from that into anime it was such a whiplash for me because I was like why did you do it like this? Why did you announce it? And I've course unfortunately because of the character that they presented and the trailer which I have to say the trailer did not do the plot of this film any justice whatsoever because as soon as I saw the main character with the red hair and the fact it was a female protagonist we all knew what was coming on the internet that people were going to moan about that they were going to playing. That is something that we will be going into in the main part of this episode but as soon as I saw that I thought oh great here we go but then I thought okay that's fine it'll come out in streaming services soon and then we'll be able to judge it and then the weeks turn to years eventually I started looking more like Bilbo this time.
00:07:31
Speaker
i'm getting all crinkly and old. And then all of a sudden, I remember you saying, oh, do you want to review this as the last episode for a chat tsunami? And I was like, oh, hell yeah, of course. Why is it coming out in streaming services? And you were like, no, no, no, no, it's coming out in the cinema. And I genuinely had no idea that this was coming out as a theatrical release.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I know now the reason for that is so that Warner Brothers could retain the rights for it. Yeah, New Line had to bring out a Lord of the Rings film every five years or so. And so they had to rush this out. And animation is a much cheaper medium to produce than live action. And so they just set about doing this as quickly as possible. It does show, unfortunately, in the production of the movie. because I have to say referring to something you said about your theatre being relatively empty. Ours was exactly the same because the cinema we went to was in Glasgow and although it was an audience cinema, we were put in quite a small theatre room. I think there was only maybe seven rows or something? Or eight? You know, it was in comparison to what it usually is. It was tiny and it really showed when you walked in and there was maybe, I wouldn't even say ten, maybe eight people max.
00:08:43
Speaker
I mean, one of them ended ended up leaving as we've mentioned in our First Impressions episode, but it was a really empty screening for us and I have to say that really annoyed me as well when people were rustling their papers and things and usually I don't mind that. I don't know if it's because the theatre's usually a lot more busy so you don't notice it as much, but I really couldn't concentrate in the beginning because all you heard were people just immediately ripping open their popcorn buckets and swinging their warhammers literally in there So the PR for this one, the marketing was absolutely horrific. It was terrible. The animation style as you said, it was a little bit dodgy, which again we'll come on to later on, but it wasn't really giving off a very good first impression.
00:09:30
Speaker
which is such a shame because before we jump into this, would you say that the film and maybe slight spoilers, but would you say this film was better than what the trailers gave off? well the trailers didn't really give anything from what i remember of the trailers you get the oli fan being attacked by the swamp creature and harra riding across a field i can't think of really anything else from the trailer that is shown from the movie those are the only two things oh she climbs up the side of a mountain at one point in the trailer. You see the Eagles maybe? Correctly wrong, do you remember much more from the trailer that they show? No, I remember the main antagonist, Wolf. He looks quite angry at her and she's riding down in the wedding dress and I think the way that they portrayed that, that everyone thought it was going to just be her versus, you know, this entire army and everything and the way they framed it was just so bizarre. This is only one of the few times that I will say that I could probably do a better top of editing the trailer and I'm not that good. I'm going to be honest, this I'm not better than any professional but I think anybody could have at least, I don't know, just given an impression of what this film was about because I'm completely with you there. I hate it when a trailer just gives everything away. There's been a few films like that recently where I've watched the trailer and I've been like, well there's no point watching this because
00:10:53
Speaker
you have essentially spoiled the whole film for me but at the same time it gives us nothing and not in a kind of oh what mysteries will you give and as of the publication of this episode the third sonic film has come out and i have to say they did a really weird thing with that as well where they gave nothing away about the film and then it wasn't until the last month or two that they really started just hammering every single trailer out and i feel as if they'd given away a a wee bit too much of the forum and you know what it's about, don't get me wrong it's a sonic hedgehog but at the same time, Maria dies. Aw come on!
00:11:31
Speaker
There was cheering in that cinema. For legal reasons, that's a joke. But yeah, it just it seems as if it's a company standard thing. You know, it's a Hollywood thing that they do. But at the same time, Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema, they had no excuse for this.
Chatsunami Podcast Promotions
00:11:45
Speaker
So see without any further ado, and for the last time in 2024, will we dive into it? Yeah, let's jump straight into the heat of battle and talk about this movie. And without any further ado, we'll be right back after these messages.
00:11:57
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and journal interests. Previously on Chatsunami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises. Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Beyblade series. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
Film Plot and Character Critiques
00:12:39
Speaker
So before we start talking about this film, Andrew, do you want to give up somebody of what the hell the water that Adam is actually about? Yeah, for sure. I think you gave a pretty good sum-ups of it in your post-film review with Martin. But essentially, the film takes place 183 years prior to the events of Lord of the Rings. The main character is the daughter of the King. Her name is Hera. And Hera is the daughter of King Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan. And she's about like the girl from Brave Meredith. where she's this red headed girl, her dad wants her to marry off and be lady and be safe and whatnot. And she's like, No, I'm not about that. I'm a warrior girl. And so she befriends the Eagles, she throws some meat at them and then gets back and hangs out with her family and the lords of Rohan rock up and one of the bad lords who's all like, I'm technically your underling, but I think I'm hot shit comes in with his son. And then he's really passive aggressive to the King and is like, I hear you're marrying off your daughter to a Gondor Lord instead of one of us guys, which is pretty uncool, bro. And Helm Hammerhand's like, I take offense to that. Let's go have a fist fight outside. And then King Helm Hammerhand, one punch man's this guy, literally one single punch, the guy's dead. And he's like, I didn't even hit him that hard. I don't know why you guys are so mad. What do you mean you want to kill me? I just love to see that scene where he's like, get up, you fool. And everyone's like, bro, that you went too far. And he's like, I didn't. I'm sorry. It was actually quite real. It felt very real in that moment where you see like a sense of panic come across him. You all saw it. He tripped.
00:14:14
Speaker
He repeatedly fell into my fist. Once. My God. Helm Hammerhand is an absolute unit in this film and by far my favourite part of this film. Bro, Absi wallops him. He's like Fist of the North Star, one hit and then all of a sudden like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. The bad dude, he's got a leoffel leaf tear or something. He's from the western lands, I think. He's like Dunlin. Dunlin. He's a lot of Dunlin, yeah. Is that where the crows are from? Yeah. been from Dunwood or something. Yeah. Yeah. So he gets killed his son who's like very attractive. And my wife who is watching with the film, she was like, Oh, choose him. He's hot. She was very disappointed when he was not actually the love interest in the end for any of the crossover law the rings chat to listeners who also read Sarah J masses, very smart books. Apparently he's very night court if you guys know what that means. So my wife being very interested in this character side, he gets all upset because his dad's killed. brought up Bro, it was five seconds ago. Get over it. He is like, I'm going to kill you. And then the king's like, like hell you are. No, you're not. Yes, I am. No, no, no. Holds him off very easily. It was kind of pathetic, actually. And then tells him, you leave now. And that was the end of that. There was no conflict that could be had from letting this kid who tried to kill me go. Turns out that's actually not what happens. And the kid ends up being a warlord and rising an army up against Rohan. You have Hera just on her jollies out in the field, gets attacked by an elephant because, you know, why not? Well, I'm sorry, pushes his glasses up his nose. An ollie phant or a murikil?
00:15:52
Speaker
I think. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It's been like in Princess Monoke. Call back to a fantastic episode of Chatsunami. You should definitely check out the Princess Monoke episode. The only episode that I'm not on. I mean, there's no relation to the fact that it's such a great episode and you're not on it, but like. The Chatsunami scientists, they've been paid off. I mean, sorry, it's inconclusive evidence. It's what they were saying. Yeah, I'm sure. So it felt very Princess Mardot, okay, you have this like wild beast staring down, almost demonic in its desire to kill this small group, mostly Hera. Because she has like a horn that she blows and the elephant's like, I guess I'm chasing you now. It's the beast tamer's horn that she steals. Oh, that makes sense. He just falls to the sound of the Beast Tamer. Yeah, it's not like the Eurovision Sax guy.
00:16:39
Speaker
but She plays Bakersfield. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, not the same song, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Bakersfield plays Carolus Whisper. So she leads Elephant Thing into the woods. And then she's like, I'm gonna go to the swamp thing because I know there's some absolute Witcher level creature in there. And the thing, is it the same thing that like grabs Frodo outside the mines in Moria?
00:17:01
Speaker
It is supposed to be the watcher in the water from what I've been told but I don't know if it's the same one or just the same species. I would imagine it's the same species because it's in a different location. It doesn't look like the kind of thing that likes to travel. Yeah. We're not next to Moria right now so it's not the same place. You don't know that.
00:17:20
Speaker
but my bomb mean middle that's pretty big i don't think it is the same place bow baby So she lures the elephant into the water and this island tentacle creature grabs this gigantic beast and pulls it in. And I was like, initially you see its mouth and you're like, Oh, that's too small for it to go into its mouth. And then it just gets very big. And then it swallows this elephant whole. Where does it go? Because there's like no evidence of it torso getting bigger or anything by having this elephant in. It just sucks in this elephant and then just plops itself back in the water. I was like, I'm good now. I'm full. Well, I was so dead. I was so dead. Yeah, exactly. That plant tentacle creature is gonna get indigestion. That's the one thing I was worrying about watching. Let's go! My god, I hope he's got a gavis gone up his sleeve or something. He's gonna have some be hella has heartburn. The fires of Mount Doom going through his esophagus. She's all like, oh, thank god that's over. And then JK. War. of the Rohirrim. The right hand man of Wolf is like, please to see you again. But actually, I'm gonna capture you now. They put a bag over her head, but they don't tie up the bag or anything like that. And her arms don't seem to be tied up either. So I don't know why she doesn't just take it off at any point. Yeah, that was a really weird scene. She was just like, let me go you brutes, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, take the bag off your head. but I know, yeah, that's what I was saying in the film, and then and it makes her very damsel in distress, which she's very much not. So, see before you go on with that, can we talk about Hera for a second? Sure. I suppose the character's at large, because I feel as if this is the first half of the film where we get introduced to everybody, and then the second half is, as we were joking, but literally, is the Lord of the Rod. that goes on right after he one-punch man's, as you said. Big fat lord man. I can't remember but his name, guys. He's the most anime- sleazy guy you've ever seen. Is that just an anime thing where it's like, how could we make this guy the most repulsive person ever? You're actually fat. Anyone who's fat is just immediately a bad person in anime logic. What was laughing at was, in some of the trivia, they were saying things like, oh yeah, it's inspired by the work of people like Hayao Miyazaki and things, and I'm like, hmm, what other creator just hates fat people?
00:19:24
Speaker
but the I'm going to see Miyazaki as up there. But yeah, he's a totally repulsive. Brecker. His name is Frecka. Wait, Helm didn't get the name Hammerhand until after he killed Frecka. So what was his last name before that? That's what I'm wondering. Helm Johnson? Helm Smith. You've got a firm grip, of Mr Helm. Maybe he didn't have one? Maybe he was just like Helm? He's Tom Madonna? Of course.
00:19:50
Speaker
send daya But yeah, so going back to the characters, one of the things that I saw and I have to admit is driving me up the up so wall here. You know, if you didn't guess by now, this is the point where spoilers are about. I mean, there have been spoilers so far, but further spoilers will be coming, so please brace yourselves. When I saw people reacting to the trailer about this red-headed woman who had a sword and she was riding out, you can really divide the people who have actually seen this film versus the one who just want to moan about women. And it really, really irritates me because it's things like Oh my god, this is a girl boss movie and oh my god, did you see that discourse pop up with this film? Not as much as I would have expected, but I also haven't didn't see much discourse about this movie until like yeah yeah I did listen to one review prior to coming to see the movie of someone saying his kind of thoughts of the film and they were kind of pretty middling. He did criticise Hera as a character, but I didn't really feel like it was from that kind of perspective, it was more of just that he didn't think she was very fleshed out. because that's the thing though. Hera as a character is relatively basic, and again I'm not calling that a basic you know her but she is quite a basic character because she is essentially the avatar for the viewer, as it were. She's the one who's seeing all these events unfold, such as the literal order of Hyrum, the hammer-hand Genesis as it were, seeing her father be an absolute unit but we'll get to him. So she ends up going through this and there's something that Martin brought up in our first impressions episode that she goes through, the hero's journey, that she's not the worst character. She does have, as you said, she has very damsel-y moments at times where she has a literal bag on her head but her hands and legs are free so, you know, she can just throw it off. Not that she would be able to do anything, obviously, but at the same time, there was a lot of detractors of the film who were saying, oh my God, she's like a Mary Sue, she's so perfect, bla blah, blah, blah. And you can tell these people didn't watch this film because she's the opposite of that. She's quite and grounded, actually. It is quite refreshing to see, not even just someone like them and said a female character isn't so OP kind of thing, but just like in general, that as any main character isn't super OP, that she isn't the best fighter kind of thing. Her first kill is pretty accidental. when she kills one of the lords later. Oh that's such a good scene though. I brought this up before. ah ah See the fact that her horse got an assist kill for that. I said this before but the horse hits him and then I was laughing because I'm like it would be so funny if that horse hit him again and of course it did. Falls into the pitchfork. Yeah I was like this is the best horse i've ever to
00:22:38
Speaker
notes You know what the saddest horse is? That one that like runs out of energy. Oh yeah. Getting the brother out of there. That was heartbreaking. I'm not gonna lie, even though I was sadder that I was like, oh man. It was also like one of the best animated points of the movie where they animated that horse trying to catch its breath. I was like, that's really well done. It's like so sad. It was really, really well done.
00:22:57
Speaker
The rest of the film does not animate quite as well as that scene. Well, this is the thing that bothers me about the animation because when you see it, especially at the beginning, I said this before, but I genuinely thought this was a photorealistic opening. I genuinely couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be a rotoscoped kind of thing where they're like animate over live action. um or if it was just a real life footage at the beginning. I'm still not sure, to be honest. You can see the settings, genuinely. The settings and the backdrops are gorgeous, they are incredible. But the characters, and this is the way I've described it, the characters remind me of, you know in the old cartoons where there's like a door or an object that is clearly animated differently or it is drawn differently, and you can tell that the character's going to interact with it. So it looks as if it pops out from the background. Like a wall you can blow up in a video game. Yeah, that's exactly what I felt like. It felt as if you had these gorgeous backdrops. Like Ediras looked brilliant. Helm Steep or Hornberg. Hornberg. That looked amazing. All of the setting looked great. But then my immersion was ruined when immediately we got an ass shot of See the Eagles coming down. And I was like, oh
00:24:14
Speaker
are we keeping to this design choice?" And I was like, oh, okay. Zoom in on the Chloe. Yeah, we just saw Hera riding through and it was supposed to be like this. On a horse and on the eagle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. On a horse. I thought she was going to be riding an eagle when the armour arrived at that one point. I was like, is Hera going to be riding that? See, that's what I thought. I laughed because he dropped the armour and I was like, wait, where's Hera?
00:24:38
Speaker
she just plopped on the ground. Did she just fall off halfway through? Going back to the characters, I have to say for the most part they were all pretty serviceable. Wolf is one of the worst yet most hilariously incompetent bad guys I think I've seen in a good while. He reminds me of, you know, the old 80s films where it's like you need a child-friendly villain, but like Home Alone. Going off the thick of Christmas, they're incompetent. I'll catch you next time, Gadget.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, but it's no dangerous degree, because every time it was getting baited, he'd write to have mads like, my lord, this is clearly our trap. And he's just sitting there like, I see what you're saying, but I'll win a spring this trap. He keeps doing the whole work. I'm trying to get fired.
00:25:25
Speaker
That's exactly what it is. It's like, why are you doing this? You are just such a... ah It was terrible, but he was also really entertaining to watch, fumble, everything. And he's like, no, I'm the king. You don't deserve it. And I'm not saying that because you're the villain. I mean, literally, anybody is better than you. The guy that was dressed up as a hobbit was better to rule no-hand than you. Why did that lord betray Helm to side with this guy? Like, what was he hoping to gain from this? A comfier seat. maybe he seemed to be a right hand to the king already he wasn't gonna get the throne from wolf wolf clearly was gonna have the throne seemed like he's had a bunch of barbarians rohan was not gonna be a better place with him in charge it wasn't just like he was also upset about the gondor betrothal thing Yeah, it seems as if after he one punches Frecka, the film just kind of skims over that part. I love that he punches it and it literally cuts to him sitting in his chair just sad and he's like, it was a long winter, I'm not gonna lie.
00:26:26
Speaker
Did it say how long the time jump was after that? Because Wolf accomplished quite a lot and I had no concept of how much time had passed. He seemed to have conquered Isengard and I think it was Isengard and had the tribes that normally wouldn't side with him were now like under his banner. Yeah, I actually can't remember how long it was. They took their sweet time. That's all I'll say. They took their sweet time to build up that army. The thing that threw me off about that, and this goes back to a problem that I do have with the film, is there's a lot of nostalgia bait in this film. Some good and some not so good, like the certain scores that they put in the film where I thought, okay, that's really nostalgic. You've got Edoras, the capital of Rohan, which I totally did not forget for Lord of the Rings months, I'm redeeming myself. but then you get some of the other ones where it's like, oh there's the Oliphants. And again, any Lord of the Rings enthusiasts or Tolkien heads out there, seriously feel free to reach out and correct me if I'm wrong here. But I thought they were only exclusive to the Easterlings, or maybe things have changed 200 years between the War of the Ruhiram and the events in Lord of the Rings. I was like, did they just pull Oliphants out of nowhere?
00:27:40
Speaker
I did read something about that there was a concern over when they were writing the story that they didn't want to include too much. The inclusion of the giant elephant in the concert art had led some of the fans thinking that the armies of Harad were like going to be in the story when Tolkien didn't mention it in the appendices of the war that were here. And so they didn't want to include that to extend. I think maybe the idea was that they were passing through to a different part or something and then. I should do. I mean, Hannibal, who's that? I knew you were going to mention Hannibal. Just a wee bit of vinegar and yeah, when I draw Han. Oh, history jokes. Anyway, sorry. You know they've seen a lot of the rings when they're crossing over the snowy mountain and it's like, we can't keep going like this. We have to go back. Hannibal with the ollie fans is going through. No, the ollie fans are too tired.
00:28:23
Speaker
I feel as if of all the things that happened in this film, and there's a lot of things to suspend your disbelief over, but I feel as if that was, again, that is a very nitpicky thing to be like, why are they there? Someone had suggested that it might be that Fricko's wealthy enough to buy mercenaries from Harad and they'd brought over some of the Beastmasters who'd have all the fence.
00:28:43
Speaker
and that one had just kind of gone rogue, or maybe it was intentional, because it seemed pretty coincidental that the right-hand man of Wolf and also other dude was there to grab Hera at that point. So presumably, my best guess was that they had set up that whole Oliphant encounter like a Dungeon Master. Initially, I was going to say don't be silly, but then I remembered this is the same film where a giant elephant hides behind a tree and Hera doesn't notice.
00:29:11
Speaker
I was cackling at that scene where it's like, where's the oliphant and he's hiding behind a tree. That was also kind of weird because the elephant was in a rage and it was like charging constantly and then all of a sudden it was stalking. That did seem kind of weird, but it was scary. That scene of the elephant looking through the trees are is generally one of the scariest scenes from a movie I've watched in a while.
00:29:32
Speaker
My partner and I watched films over Halloween or we've watched like horror films and both of us were like, Jesus Christ, that's freaky. So they did a good job there of making it very unsettling. Yeah, they definitely made them a lot more, and this is going to sound so silly, but they made them a lot more animalistic.
00:29:49
Speaker
you know, it was more like kind of reptile-y eyes, you know, like the Mordor contact lenses. Let's just say it was like the yellowy orange eyes and the slit in the middle for the iris. It was really, you're right, it was really creepy. And obviously that tension was swiftly diffused when the watcher in the water just gobbled it up like a M and&M. That was terrifying as well. But also it was just like, oh,
00:30:13
Speaker
Okay, I was wondering if the watch in the water was gonna have more involvement as well if it was gonna be of danger to coat the watch. up one nothing Everybody gets one. He just got back. Chaotic neutral, isn't he? Yeah. So Hera gets captured by Wolf's leader, his cronies, taken to Isengard. And then Hera escapes pretty easily considering her cousin, who was with her when she got captured and then helped her escape again. And also her maiden, who is revealed to be a shield maiden, which is something we didn't discuss earlier. Earlier on, they're like, there's a secret group of maidens called the shield maidens who were warrior women, but like, they're not really around very much. And it's like, oh, I wonder know where this is going. Again, she wasn't really fleshed out overly but I actually really liked her character in it because again it was a bit grounded and I liked the idea of the shieldmaidens that it would kind of make sense for a group like that to pop up and then I suppose when things went back to normal that they would not die out into obscurity but you know they would kind of take a step back. I thought that was a really cool idea. I do like the Shield Maidens as a concept. I felt like it was a little bit clumsily done oh yeah in the
Battle Scenes and Realism
00:31:20
Speaker
film. The introduction of them, of the little squire boy being the audience insert and was getting a little bit an exposition dump as to who the Shield Maidens are. It's explained to him. Sorry, it's like, and I don't know, who are these ones? The only ones with the woman in them. ah
00:31:33
Speaker
You know, but but that's what I was so confused about. I was like, they're the only ones that are particularly unique. You would remember those so easily. um And he was like, I don't recognize this one. If you want to be devil's advocate, you might want to say, well, if you've not encountered them before, because they are very rare, yeah then maybe you're like, what is this sigil? I've never heard of it before. Then that might make sense. And also misogyny, maybe they don't talk about the women's ones anymore. I like how the guy's like, ah, yes, they're from a darker, more archaic time. And it's like, sure, that was a more progressive time. as opposed to now. Have you seen what lives in Dunwood? There's hell tribes and everything. They eat their own people for God's sake. So she gets captured, she escapes. The water that her head starts. Yeah, cousin to the rescue. There's been plot armor with the archers being killed in the order that they are about to fire at her, so none of them actually hit them. And then he jumps off of a wall at one point and I'm like, how did you survive that jump? He jumped a good two or three stories down off of this wall. And then they they ride off away, they get home. King dad is all like, nephew, you're absolutely useless. And then he's like, we saw that they're assembling an army, we should probably get the people to safety because they've got quite a lot on their side and we aren't really prepared. And the King's like, you coward, get away from me. I'm now reducing my army by a third against this new threat. You can go and I don't want to see you again.
00:32:51
Speaker
And so Cousin's like, all right, cool. That was probably a stupid thing to do. You're otherwise a really cool guy, but that was arguably the worst thing you could have done. Call me when the finale hits. Yeah, exactly. Like, I'll rock up later, don't you worry. And so he pieces out and all of a sudden Lord Thorne, who's been the King Drowned Man, is all like, we don't need him. He's smelly. We've got my army. They're so good. They'll be there on the battlefield as well. And then apparently the other army continuously marches just nonstop. They expect them to like make camp and then they'll all fight the next day. Actually, they're not going to make camp. They're just going to keep going. And I was like, oh my God, they can do that? I was like, well, surely though, they're going to be exhausted. How are they going to have any energy left in them to fight? They're like, oh, they're used to fighting at night. I was like, but they start to march during the day. That's not how tactics work.
00:33:34
Speaker
And like, most of them aren't on horseback or anything like that, so they'll be exhausted. Well, they're just built differently. Apparently. And so despite being on the home field advantage, the Raiders absolutely destroyed King Helm's army because, oh no, Thorne actually had betrayed you. And he rocks out like a cartoon villain in the stable being like, you never would have expected it. It was I, Thorne, who betrayed you. And then he gets a skewer with a pitchfork after horse bro assists the kill. What a champion of a horse. absolute great lad. Oh, and also Hera has two brothers, one who's a bard and then one who has no personality whatsoever, but is just like... Yeah, he's just Disney Prince from the 50s, yeah. Well, he's got like that cool shaved side kind of look. He's very Viking looking. Can I just say something? See for his death scene where he was like, haha, I am victorious. And it's like, why are you showboating in the middle of this battlefield? But anyway, he gets shot. I remember because of the angle he gets shot through the neck. Oh, yeah. But I was laughing thinking, you idiots, you only had them in the arm." And then he turned his head, and he was stuck in his neck, and I was like, oh, oh, actually, that was bang on. Well done, Will. And then Helm proceeds to be shot, like, absolutely boromirred by these archers, and he's like, oh, I'm pretty fucked up by this, but let's go. And then they ride off, riding with those arrows, and you, that is not going to be good, somehow survives.
00:34:52
Speaker
Apparently, oh his physical wounds heal, but like his spirit is broken because his sons all both die. He watches his other son, who's the bard dude, gets his throat slit from the outside. So they all retreat to what will later it be referred to as Helms Deep, but right now is just the Hornburg. So they retreat to the Hornburg, which was the cousin's plan suggestion before that the king was like, you pussy. Now we' we're in the Hornburg. And he's like, thank God we're here. I wish someone had suggested this sooner. So they get in there. The smart thing for Wolf to do would be to just be like, all right, they're stuck in there. There's nothing they're going to be able to really be able to do. We can just wait this out. yeah Yeah, wait this out, leave or whatever. He's like, no, actually, what I want to do is try and besiege this fortress that no one has been able to breach before when winter is right around the corner. The old invading Russia in the winter. Yeah, clearly has not learned from that old chestnut. And so he is right. And man's like, I don't think that's a good idea, though. I see what you're saying. Yeah, a wolf is like, I love you, you're like a brother to me, you're pretty much my father actually now. However, I am really mad. This is full on revenge. I like what Martin had said about anything that is stupid decisions that happen in this movie can just be attributed to the fact that he's actually very dumb and just full of hate. So So you can kind of justify the fact that this is a really stupid thing that he's doing because the fact that he's just really dumb and just so focused on revenge when he's already won but feels like I'm not the true king until I actually kill Helm and then actually after that also Hera. So it ends up being this long siege. The king manages to heal himself and get out of his room, go down a secret passageway and apparently kick ass in the middle of the night. He's appearing. And this is kind of confusing because we also encounter some orcs and this like giant beast orc.
00:36:31
Speaker
guy and initially I was like oh so actually this creature that they think is King Helm that's been taking out their men is these orcs and this creature that are doing that that makes more sense then Helm's like yeah I was doing that the whole time what can I say I don't know what he was doing in between that though because it was like night after night he kept picking them off but like where is he going because he can't go back into the castle well we can go up the secret passage no he can't it's one way you can only leave out that are you denying Helm Hammerhand getting into that keep I mean, the guy's an absolute unit. But they would have gone through that secret entrance to get in before if that was an option. They instead have to run past, you know, when you play like a zombie in a zombie game, you have to run for us like the heart of zombies to like get to your mission. It was like that. They were like, we have to go past the army. We have to run as fast as we can. I'm going to try and pull open these gates.
00:37:21
Speaker
like an army capital open and like pretty much succeed. Prior to that though we encounter these orcs and this monster. Hera is trying to find her dad who is appearing very ghostly for some reason which isn't actually explained. Well I mean he's not got a shirt on and it's like minus a hundred.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, but he's very floaty. Again, wund, I suppose. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, we got orcs, which are voiced by Marion Pippen, which is a nice little cameo for them. So Scottish. Yeah. So I knew they were gonna be in the film. And I saw in the credits, they were voicing the two characters. I was like, defective work. I was like, those sound like orc names. I bet they're gonna be orcs. And I was right. So I was like, ha, nailed it. My wife was convinced that the Bard brother was voiced by the actor who played Pippin because his singing is very similar to Pippin singing in The Great Hall. There was no tomatoes in this film, by the way. No, severely lacking in the tomato front. Tomatoes wouldn't have been available in the middle of Earth, that's completely unrealistic. Well, not in Gondor!
00:38:16
Speaker
Well, I've gone dorstomitos! What the rotarum needed! it They encounter these orcs and this big beast orc. Is that like a different orc or is that a different monster? or what what I'm going to be honest, I think A it's probably more a troll and B it's to show off the power scaling of how much of a unit King Helm is. He looks like the, you know, in Star Wars Empire Strikes Back there's that monster in Hoth. What, the wampa? Yeah, it's like a wampa.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose with the toughs or the horns on the side of the head, yeah. i mean I feel as if this is as good a time as any to touch on the man, the myth, the legend himself. But what I is, see if you watch any video, and I cannot find any videos with clips of this film, which is really weird on YouTube. It has just come out too far, so they might not have had time. Well, what I'm saying is, all the pirateers are there. You're making very sloppy efforts to get this all out. But no, jokes aside, there is no scenes of that. But the videos you do see in the concept art is someone who looks more like Burner Towel's King Theoden. The blonde hair looks quite bulky, but not too bulky. Quite regal, quite majestic. I don't know what they were cooking up in this film, but again, because he's so over the top, he might be one of my favourite
00:39:30
Speaker
and he chose to come out this franchise because they just said, you know what, he's killed a guy with one punch, because he gets punched three times in the face by Freka. He does that anime thing where he just turns around furious and you think, why would you mess with this guy? First of all, and then he punches him, that sets off the whole quote-unquote border there with him, and then even though he gets shot in Boromir, as you said perfectly there, are he still survives that. He ends up surviving that. He ends up recovering in front of an open window during the middle of winter. He goes down, he keeps picking off those people, and I do agree with you. I genuinely thought, oh, it must be the troll that was picking them all, and then he lathes it by like jumping eight feet in the air and
00:40:14
Speaker
and Yeah, what what was up with that? My wife was like, oh, well, he's clearly not human anymore. He's transcended that he's become this like, wraith kind of character. He's punching the horn off, he's punching this troll orc thing dead. Clearly, he's not human. Well, that doesn't explain though, he's one punch man killing a freckle. I think he's just established to just be ridiculously strong, just just cause, but the jumps he would do up into the air was just ridiculous. His punching was ridiculous. Holding off all these soldiers with just his fists,
00:40:41
Speaker
It was crazy. Opening up the gates by himself. I loved Sarah on one side trying to open the gate and him on the other. I was like, you're not doing anything here. but That was so funny. See that whole sacrifice scene? Don't get me wrong, it's one of the most stupid yet badass amazing things ever. I said this when I was talking to Martin about this film but I was like, how do people hate this film when a scene like this exists where the king of Rohan fistfights an entire army in and the middle of a blizzard and it's not even them that kill him, it's mother nature.
00:41:14
Speaker
but Yeah, it's just men laid out wasted around him, like why he's just frozen in place. And he's got the big fess pump going on, yeah. At one point in the fight, he puts his arms down by his side and he yells. I genuinely, I'm not even joking, I genuinely expected a Dragon Ball ZS wave of energy to go around him as he was yelling. I was like, this motherfucker's about to go Super Saiyan. It just was so extra. It was so out of place in the Lord of the Rings universe as well. Legolas.
00:41:41
Speaker
has got that kind of criticism around him of yeah being very overpowered, doing very silly things like the shield slide down the side, riding down the trunk of the ollie phantom in the Hobbit film, seemingly running up falling bricks. There's that kind of side of things, which yes, is very silly. And that's also very criticized. But King Helm should be talked about in every other conversation. He should be like Pucci, everyone in the Middle Earth should be like trying to bring up King Helm whenever possible. Because this guy is insane. There's a point in the movie at the very start, I think, where it's like, you'll never hear about her name mentioned in the stories of Middle-earth. I was like, why? This woman, Hera herself, gonna get back to the helm in a second, but she does so much in this story that influences the history of Rohan. How is she not spoken about in the most grand terms? How is there no song sung of her? I guess misogyny, maybe? It's just absolutely wild that she has managed to go unspoken of in the entirety. And like Eowyn in Lord of the Rings is like, oh, it's a woman's place I should be defending here. I feel like she'd be referencing Herod as constantly to Aragon. See, on the one hand, I do agree. I think it's like that historical that they want to focus more on the men and things like that. On the other hand though, I think I would be okay. See if I passed on to the Great Beyond, looked at the history books and I'm like, they're talking about this guy that fought an entire army with his fists, punched a troll and killed him with his fists. You know what? This beefy unit, and as I said before, this unit of Rohan coming out. I don't know, I think I'd be okay with that.
00:43:15
Speaker
made of a shadow. I get why, obviously, in the narrative perspective, and I do think that, you see, if we're looking at this realistically, he does not fit into the lore at all. He's absolutely ridiculous with his feats and things. The only way you could spin it is maybe it's like an unreliable narrator, you know? We're seeing it through Heirr's eyes and how she interprets it. We didn't retouch in this, but Eowyn is actually the storyteller. yeah story so Yeah, she's doing a spoken word oral history of Rohan. So I mean, I guess I can kind of go back to what I was saying before. And the fact that she is familiar with this story, but I feel like she'd be more informed of this during the events of Lord of the Rings. When we're talking about her reasons for fighting alongside, you'd think the shield maidens thing would have come up as well in what she was talking about. They're like, Oh, I'm a shield maiden. Historically, I fight for Rohan. i suppose all the history books were burned. Something that I've just realised there and I think it's a dick move on her cousin's part because skipping ahead to the end here where he takes the throne and everything and he's like, oh it should have been you on the throne blah blah blah. He's a bit of a dick for not actually ensuring that her name lives on through the history books and like I know why but he is literally the new king of Rohan. So what was his deal? Yeah I miss that scene I ate through the toilet.
00:44:31
Speaker
Wait, did you? Yeah, I went to the toilet. I was like, I know the film's about to end, but I really need to go. And so I ran after the toilet and came back. I was like, what happened? And my wife was like, uh, Saruman is there now. And she's riding off to go explore her own thing. And I came back just as she was riding off out of Rohan. Oh, you mess some really crucial parts.
00:44:48
Speaker
Uh, I don't know. Well, it wasn't that crucial and we'll get to that. Shall we have to go find Gandalf? Which I thought was with a cheap name drop at the end. Oh no, there was two big cheap name drops because one of the things that I think Martin and I agreed on was just purely the fact that because this is a an anime film, whether you love a summer theater, it was its own kind of isolated thing. There was no real connection to the other films and things. But then at the very end, they bring out Saruman and he's standing there and it's really awkward. because it's, I want to see leftover audio from the Hobbit and all he literally says is there something along the lines of, I look forward to serving you, new king of Rohan. And then that's it. And there's a really awkward pause at the end of that where he just stands there and you're like, okay, can we not linger on the great late Christopher Lee in animated form, please? like
00:45:40
Speaker
It's like if we just move on from that. Since when has Saruman ever served? They introduced him as the new keeper of Isengard, so he would be helping Rohan and kind of being buddy-buddy with him before eventually has his Louvre Sauron to me moment in the Hobbit. True. Which is awkward again. It's everything I hated about The Hobbit when, you know, it's like, oh fine Shrider, oh here's Cameo, oh here's another Cameo, you know. And that was egregious enough and those problems but those two back to back
00:46:13
Speaker
They just personally, for me, they didn't work. I felt as if it was a bit turned into those. My ideal ending would have been very similar to Hera and her shield maiden. They just went off into the sunset and just, that was the end of the film. But the fact she was like, oh, well, it's really funny. I don't know if you caught this bit. It says there's a wizard who wants to see me about the orcs that I saw gathering rings, because it's obviously alluding to the events and Lord of the Rings. It is like his name's Gandalf, and I would love to be a fly on the wall for that situation, where Gandalf's like, so you're telling me that your father, shirtless, and after being recently shot by 20 arrows, punched a troll in the face eight feet in the air, and then he punched
00:46:59
Speaker
What? It sounds like hobbits that I know. What did you say your name was? Has he scored it out that step back? Oh, this woman is crazy. No, no, this can't do. But going back to the main climax of the film, which was a massive let down I'm gonna be honest because after the amazing death of King Helm, absolute unit of Rohan as I said, we get a scene where we find out what siege weapon they were building and I was saying this to Martin and I'm wondering if you thought the same thing. So basically you all know what a siege weapon is, it's something to breach the walls of a particular structure like castle and whatnot and I was expecting something really grand. Like you know Grand from Return of the King, the big wolf head or something? I know Grand because it's where you take out disc one and put in disc two. Grand! Grand! Grand! Put in disc two please. Grand! Yeah, then it turns out it's just a massive ramp and that was the biggest disappointment ever. I was like, is this what you've been building for eight months? My wife and I were laughing in the cinema because initially the guy was like drumming on top of this ramp looking all menacing. And I was like, this is actually cool. I turned to my wife and I was like, I'll be that guy. And then his part of the siege thinks I thought it's the towers that you get like the moving towers you get from the rings. I assume that's what was going on there. But then it just like collapses forward and he just falls off. And I turned to my wife and I was like, I don't want to be him anymore.
00:48:31
Speaker
Why did they even have him at the top? Too menacing. Yeah but did they not realise it was a massive ramp? Like I actually went over to Martyn when we were in the cinema and when that scene happened when the ramp, you know, hit the wall, I said to them, they are so lucky that that didn't just burst into a million pieces of wood because there is no way and I know it's a fantasy film blah blah blah but At least with the Lord of the Rings and even the Hobbit, at least the siege equipment and you know the instruments that you use, at least they were semi-realistic. Well I was wondering, did that kind of siege equipment, was that a thing? It seems interesting in many ways, but like building a ramp like that seems so impractical. do you know what the worst thing is, and this is something that really annoyed me as well, is the fact that Rohan, aka the Rohirrim, aka the people who are known for riding horses, being horse masters, etc. Why did they build a ramp when the Howl folks from Dunlin and Co., they didn't ride horses? So why did they have a ramp where they could easily have horses running downhill, which eventually is what happened? at one point with error? So why did they build a ramp? Why didn't they just have ladders or something like that? The thing with the building the siege ramp thing was they could be far enough away that the arrows couldn't hit them. So I guess if they tried to approach the fortress with ladders they'd be easily enough pushed back. just from medieval warfare kind of side of things, very few men can hold off a pretty substantial force if they're on the side of that has the fortress because it's hard to get in and you're going to waste a lot of men trying to get close because they can just easily be shot with arrows or have rocks dropped on them or they put a ladder on the side of the castle start climbing up, you just push the top of the ladder back down, they fall and they probably die. So I can understand why they need to build that. Sure, like a trebuchet or something would have been less complicated
00:50:21
Speaker
Which it seems to be a very similar mechanic to this thing, because they released this mechanism that just drops the ladder there. If only Edoras had medieval siege equipment like ballistas or things like that. You know, the same one that Hera used to take out the Oliphant, you know? I'm just suggesting.
00:50:39
Speaker
Well they did burn that to the ground. They burned that side but there was plenty of other ones I'm sure that were absolutely fine. My point is just they had the weapons available to them but they just did not go for it. And again this is something that both I love and maybe dislike about this film is that because it's an anime, I'm glad they took chances in the more wacky concepts, like as I said, King Helm, with the certain settings that they had, as I said, with Edoras, with the eagles swooping over middle-earth and things. Yeah, that's something we didn't address yet, actually. After King Helm dies, Hera is like, alright, I'm gonna go try and bargain with the eagle. They actually answered my question in the movie. I turned to my wife and was like, pretty sure the eagles talk. We remember hearing them talk and then it's explained that actually they can understand common, but the language they speak can only be communicated to wizards. And I was like, okay, that kind of justifies it. But essentially Hera goes up, asks the eagle who, very scary and very well, animmate the eagle is very well animated, asks the eagle, Hey, could you deliver this armor? And initially I thought so she was trying to climb up the side of the mountain with the armor. And I was like, how the hell is she going to do this? And then she turns out she didn't actually, she just had it there ready to be taken by
Film Conclusion and Legacy
00:51:52
Speaker
the eagle. Yeah, like a new bird delivered here. Yeah, exactly. So the courier Eagle service is like, all right, fine. You gave me that meat that one time and you're kind of cool, I guess. So he or she decides to take the package, which has got King Helm's armor in it to the cousin so that he can wear it and look like Helm and scare the hill folk off. and also apparently inspired the rest of the army and that kind of stuff. Can I just say I love the fact that the cousin was sitting there just in the middle of nowhere just like, what the hell is happening? Yeah, I love it. I know he was banished. Whatever. I feel still feel like I probably would have mustered my army and gone to do something. There must have been someone who was like, a is anybody chasing Edoras lately? or
00:52:35
Speaker
a scout or? It'd be in his interests to do that because what's Wolf going to do after defeating them? He's not going to rest on just that. He'll be like, well, probably that guy is going to try and kill me and take the throne now because I've killed his family. So I'll probably attack them. So it makes the most sense for the cousin Brea laugh for a leaf. Yeah, I went to school with that. Yeah.
00:52:55
Speaker
I can't remember his name. For him to get involved and try and do stuff. Yeah, so he rocks up and he does like very kind of similar to when the Rohirrim arrive in the two towers, I think it is, at the side of the hill and they kind of charge down to rescue. Probably is the same hill, in fact, that would make sense. However, I did think, how are these horses not just falling over in this snowy hill that they're running down? Seems very dangerous. Horse health and safety there. Yeah, pretty much. Didn't some of the horses fall over in the actual filming of the Two Towers in that scene? I'm actually not sure. I was thinking of, I think it's the charge of Pelennor Fields for the third one, where one of the riders actually fell off the horse. That's what it is, yeah. OK. And also, Adagorn Brokey's toe when he kicked the helmet, just wanted to point out. Oh, really? I hadn't heard that. I know. Chats and I may be exclusive. Peter Jackson told me himself. Mr. Jackson, we love you. Where's the next film? Yeah. The search for Gollum that everyone's looking forward to seeing. I'll be one of the fish.
00:53:53
Speaker
ah
00:53:55
Speaker
I'll take a small roll, dammit. So he rocks up all the hell folk alike. Oh, damn. Hellhammer's back and he's mad. He's going to kill us all. And he's not as officey as to be. He's gonna kill us all. We're all screwed. Let's get the hell out of here. He's been slocking on his gains, clearly. Yeah, so they peace out. Meanwhile, Hera is going toe to toe with Wolf. I'm pretty sure both of them died at several points because they keep getting stabbed. That keeps me like a, oh no moment where Hera gets stabbed, but actually not really. Yeah, I think he does stab her with a little dagger first. I thought she got skewered with the sword, but it's that all under the arm trick. Didn't actually get me. I got you. I have a shield.
00:54:35
Speaker
At one point the eagle flies down and i grabs someone I think and i thought that the eagle I thought the eagle grabbed Wolf and I was like oh that's him dead. Yeah that's exactly what I thought and then it was like oh no Wolf's still there, what the hell. oh Wolf also kills his right hand man because his right hand man's like no let's give up. This is it.
00:54:52
Speaker
terrible idea. yeah The round man's like, give up now. We're screwed. Let's go. And he's like, ah, screw you actually. I don't know when to quit. And so he gets defeated and then we have a big yay moment. And then I go to the toilet and everything's blank after that, which I assume means nothing happened. Yeah, no Saruman, no Gandalf. No, that's where the fumble means with like, yay, the films.
00:55:16
Speaker
Miranda Otto is like, the end. Well, at least I'm getting paid for this. The end.
00:55:42
Speaker
it's one bega along d and d campaign Oh, it's very much giving D and&D. There's there's a lot of D and&D about that. You've got the main character who is an ex-princess, who's becoming an adventurer and everything, and what's the leader people. I mean, you've got the bard, you've got the warriors, you've got the monks punching people, you've you've got all the class types and things in this film. It is a lot of fun at times, but the times that it drags, although there's not really many times. What I will say is, although I do have my problems with this film, I never felt as if I was bored to be honest. Did you feel that way at any point? No, I thought the film was able to grip me throughout the entire time. I didn't feel like it dragged or anything like that. It's pretty good. There's been a lot of movies lately I've enjoyed, but I still have found myself looking at my watch. How much has left? like How long have I been watching the film for? And I didn't do that at any point during this. I was pretty contented. The two times I went to the toilet, which again, I wouldn't normally do if it hadn't been for the colossal Coca-Cola that I drank. I kept being like, I don't want to leave. I want to like catch it. Whereas for recent films that I've been seeing, I've been like, it's okay if I miss delivers, but I happen. I need to go to the toilet kind of thing. Whereas I was pretty absorbed into what was going on here. Yeah because the amount of people that obviously other than the usual crowd there's a lot of detractors for this film that are saying oh we hated it, it's like the worst thing that they've ever produced and things. Tolkien would be spinning in his grave etc but it's At the same time, although I do agree, I don't think that it's probably the best thing that has come out of Lord of the Rings. Again, it's something you brought up, it's something Martin's brought up, and it's something I wholeheartedly agree with. The Lord of the Rings has almost become this sacrosanct trilogy over the years. It's become this infallible, untouchable, for very good reason that it's become so precious to people, both the people who grew up with a Good choice of words. Yeah, no, I just realised. I mean, yeah, totally intentional. Genuinely, it's become so precious to people who've grown up with it and just people who have been watching it in hindsight afterwards because it holds up so well. The characters are great, the storytelling is masterful, the effects are amazing. It is just such a good story and it's such a good trilogy. So, to compare everything that came after that with it. It's just that it's such a highly unattainable bar, I think, especially with the Hobbit trilogy. I, in hindsight, after rewatching it for World of the Rings month, I liked it better than when I first saw it, but then I totally agree that it's not as good as the original trilogy. Rings of Power. I'm going to be honest, no offence to the Rings of Power fans out there, but I will give offence, that show's boring. Oh, it is so dull. I genuinely, I got through the first couple of episodes and season one, I cannot get through it. I'm just so bored. Same with us, we watched two episodes of it and we couldn't watch any more. We're like, we should get back to this because it's seemingly kind of popular. I think if you're a die-hard token fan, maybe, but
00:58:38
Speaker
But like it also, ads keep coming up in Amazon Prime for it and somebody I'm really sick of these ads and I'm watching and I'm like, I'm trying to watch Parks and Recreation. I don't care about this guy. Yeah, it's just, it's a very, again, it's one of those ones you keep checking your watch and checking the time going, oh God, I've only watched five minutes of this and it feels like 50. But for water that I had them, while maybe it doesn't always look good with the animation and the story, let's face it, the story is a very, very basic revenge. Well you know it's like boy meets girl, kiddo's father kills, boy's dad, boy wages war because he's very angry, boy builds a ramp but no skateboard, boy eventually dies because he's just too angry at the world. You know it's very buy the books and everything. But at the same time, they do such a good job of building a roundup that you are kept entertained. Before anybody who's listening to this who's an absolute hater, this fellow is going to turn around and say, oh, Satsu, you must be paid by Warner Brothers. If you've got Warner Brothers contact details, for God's sake, tell them to. contact me. I would happily be paid. I will shell for not that much, to be honest. I have no qualms. Shilling for that, yeah yeah. To be honest, it's still going to be the best thing in the world, but at the same time, it's definitely not as bad as people are making out. Do you feel that way? Seeing hindsight looking at the reviews now of people absolutely slating this film, do you think people are being too harsh on this film or do you think that it's warranted? I don't know, because I've not seen that much of the hatred and the bad reviews. The reviews I have seen are pretty middling, which I think is fair. I personally enjoyed this movie. We've kind of brought up a lot of the negatives of the film, which like I think merits some criticism. And so I understand that. And you said the story is pretty basic. There's not really that much to it. Most of the characters are pretty shallow. They're not that well fleshed out, but like they're not bad. One thing we've not really touched, like we keep kind of mentioning, but not really kind of going too far into is the animation. As we said earlier, the background set design of this world is gorgeous. They clearly had a vision. I think Peter Jackson must have really expressed how important that was because it does give the beauty that we saw in Northern Rank films is like New Zealand's kind of gorgeous setting. They did that so well. Like I was very impressed with that. The design of the characters themselves were
01:01:05
Speaker
pretty basic. There was some decent character design here and there and I didn't mind that so much. It was more so just the animation just seemed like it was missing something like the actual character animation to be missing some frames. If they'd spent a bit more time animating between frames, then I think they could have pulled this off a fair bit better. Like it looked quite clunky. It looked like video game cut scenes at times, which just did not do this film any service because it brought me out at times when they were using very computer generated in-betweens to like show a guy just kind of shifting his weight from side to side while he was talking. And I was like, you didn't need to do that. Why have you done that? Like might not stick out to everyone. Like I find often I'll kind of criticize that when I'm watching another anime that my wife will be like, Oh, I didn't notice it there. So it might not be as noticeable as I seem to think it is, but it does seem to bother me.
01:01:52
Speaker
And I really do wish that more time was spent on this film to flesh it out a bit more. I understand that, and we kind of mentioned earlier that there was a bit of a time crunch to have this film come out so that New Line could keep the rights to make more Lord of the Rings movies. And so they went for a much cheaper medium than live action by doing in an animation, but they brought this out in a couple of years from my understanding of announcing this. And I think they need to spend more time on it. With what they were creating, they needed to do it justice and they need to spend more time on the animation side of things. It really could have been better. Again, I enjoyed this, but I think with more time put into it, this could have been amazing.
01:02:31
Speaker
it really could have been. I don't think that they had put enough thought into making it like that. It is just such a shame because as we were saying before, the fact that the backgrounds genuinely do look like something you could hang up on your wall or you could see in an art gallery to be honest, it honestly sucks you into that world of token and middle-air than just it just it brings you back to that kind of nostalgic feeling and then it is just such a shame that that is let down by the weird hybrid. And again I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in animation but it seems as if it's a very common thing in a lot of animes nowadays and anime films by extension but you have this combination between 3D animation and the 2D stuff and it really is so jarring when you've got them side by side. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure they had some motion capture for some of the characters which would make a lot more sense because they moved a lot like, you know, the, I think it's the 1970s film for Lord of the Rings, you know, where they rotoscoped.
01:03:36
Speaker
The people, you know, where it's like they drew over, they basically had live action, but then they drew over the characters. Still animated, but it's clearly real people that they've based it off of, so you get realistic movements and it just looks very uncanny at times. Mm-hmm. What's quite interesting, though, is like I quite like that they've animated this.
01:03:56
Speaker
I think that that is an interesting thing to do. When you look back at The Hobbit movies, the aesthetic of that is so different, in my opinion, to what we saw in The Lord of the Rings. It looks very odd seeing the cinematography and the videography of that film comparison to The Lord of the Rings films. This film, despite being animated, feels more akin to The Lord of the Rings than The Hobbit films did for me. it scratches that particular itch as well a lot better than the Hobbit films did. You know that's actually fair because it's something that Martin brought up as well when I completely agree when I would say that I would actually be happy to see more films of this style for the Lord of the Rings universe. Obviously they have to get the right stories there because I've heard that Warner Bros and I could be totally wrong again token fans please correct me if I'm wrong but I think that Warner Bros don't have the rights to things like the Selma Rillion so there's a lot of content there that they're not allowed to adapt
01:04:57
Speaker
What they took for this story was essentially the appendices of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings book. And the appendices of Lord of the Rings is like a brief mention of King Helm and his sons, and there might have been a mention of the war as well. And so they were like, all right, well, we'll pick that and we'll flesh that out and we'll build that out. My understanding is they are intending to do that for other similar things. So they're going to try and take more from this kind of limited mentions of this happened at this point and in the timeline of Middle Earth, and they'll try and do more there. So I think they are going to do more. I don't know if that's dependent on how well this film does. Hopefully it does happen. Yeah, to be honest, I don't have high hopes that will all happen because I would love to see other stories based on Gondor or I don't know about The Shire. Maybe they could get a good story out of that. Mordor, I don't want them to touch with a barge pole because we've already had sufficient Mordor stories. Here's a question for you actually, because I know you're a huge enthusiast about anthology series. Like Halo Legends. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Like Halo Legends, Star Wars Visions, that kind of thing. Would you like to see a Lord of the Rings style of this, where they've got different animators to just do their own stories within the Lord of the Rings universe? Or do you think that would be a step
Animation vs Live-Action Adaptations
01:06:09
Speaker
too far? I don't think it'd be a step too far. I would be interested in that, actually. It's funny you say that. I don't know if you were joking or not with regards to my interest in anthology, because I'm semi interested in that. But I didn't watch the second series of Star Wars Visions. And I've not seen most of What If past season one for Marvel. It depends how well it's done. I would give it a chance. I would check it out for sure. Because I think that there is a lot of potential there. I would check it out. I think that there's a lot of potential there. And I want to see it's been a trend for decades now, more so in recent years of adapting an animated film into live action. I want to see the opposite. I want to see more animated adaptations or continuations of stories through animation, just like we've had here. I think that that medium is so much easier to use, it allows you to have these very interesting magical looking kind of creations, like worlds and whatnot, without looking dorky in a live action sense. I think that it lends itself to animation so well. And that when you try and do it in live action, it just looks either poorly done, like a lot of time at war doesn't age very well, or it's just bad. There's a few far between that actually are good. It does happen, but it's not a consistently good thing. And I'm kind of sick of the live action kind of attempts, a lot of these fantasy worlds and sci-fi worlds and adaptations of animation. I think that animation has such a special place because it allows you to escape into worlds that can't be shown through the medium of live action. So what you're saying is next week, we're going to be reviewing how to train your dragon. The animation or the live action? Yes, the planet.
01:07:37
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, that's not out until I think some point next year. Joking aside, I am totally with you there. I feel as if nowadays, and this is going to be like a very weird point to end on, but I feel as if what a lot of companies and a lot of production companies aren't really understanding about the medium of animation is, there is so much that you can do with animation that you otherwise probably couldn't do in live action or it's a lot harder to kind of replicate. I mean, look at when we did Dragon Ball 1 in November there, where basically we watch Dragon Ball Evolution, and other than being a terrible film for a myriad of reasons, the translation of people flying in the air and punching one another just did not translate well at all, especially back then. But when you watch it when you're younger as an anime, you think, wow, this is the coolest thing ever. I think because the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, that was very, well, relatively grounded when it came to the action. You know, you were still getting people in sword fights and fist fights and the like, whereas in this there's a lot more grander scenes that they try, you know, with the absolutely ridiculous ramp, with the you know, the stylistic choices of certain characters, like with Helm Hammerhand, with Wolf just looking like your stereotypical Germanic villain. I wonder if they did name him Wolf after, you know, like Beowulf. Probably, I wouldn't be surprised because Tolkien did base a bit of Lord of the Rings off of those works, so probably that's the cheeky nod, but I haven't heard anybody bring that up yet, so if this is the first time you're hearing that, Chatsanami exclusive.
01:09:17
Speaker
ah Yeah, it just it's a film that I wish as well, when I think you've said it and Martin said it as well, that I wish it did take some more chances with the way it was animated, but at the same time, I think it's very middle of the road. The only two characters I would say that stood out like immensely were Helm himself, of course, being like an eight-foot giant, and the Ghibli woman that lives in the Hornberg. Did she live there? I assumed she'd commuted there with the rest of the Etter S crew. Well, remember she turned round and said something like, I've been looking after these these holes for years. And it's like, do you live here? Is this your house? Literally, do you live like this? After a minute, that was one of the funny scenes where Martin had said the same thing, where it was like she turned round and looks at the big wall of logs and goes, this would last us through the winter. And I'm like, really? She did that many logs? What are you doing with them?
01:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, and then she looks at the lyre, like the instrument, and it's like, you know, the orc that's like, what about their legs? They don't need them. Yeah! Yeah, why can't we have some wood? Yeah, the only reason I call her Ghibli woman is just because she has like this massive, you know, the nose like from Spirited Away with Yababa, the witch. Yeah. Yeah. She was the only one that stood out, I have to say, but going back to the stylistic
Despite Criticisms, Enjoyable Moments
01:10:40
Speaker
choices, yeah. I have to say, although this is in terms of plot and maybe action that is middle of the road, there is still a lot of iconic imagery in this film. You know, as I said, you've got Helen beating the shit out of everybody. You've got the scenes with Hera, especially when she's writing down on the wedding dress. I'm going to be honest, it's like on the one hand, I don't quite get why she put on the wedding dress, but on the other hand, she looks cool doing that. And again, it goes back to this idea of it feels very much like a D and&D game. Yeah, her player character is just like, I put on the wedding dress just to look badass kind of thing. It does feel very rule of cool, which is what I said to my wife when we were talking about it coming out of the film. We were like, what was the other wedding dress thing? And I was like, I guess it just looked cool. Because like that whole storyline where the old lady's kind of explaining the significance of the wedding dress didn't really feel like it really came, A, didn't really feel like it was needed. And then also didn't really feel like it kind of came back in any kind of meaningful way. Yeah, she just needed it for the trailer. Pretty much. I mean, she does have the line where it's like, who are you supposed to be a bride for? I'm not going to marry you. And she's like, I'm a bride for death. You feel like this right-hand man's nudging in there like, yeah, you set her up for that one, didn't you? I do. Yes, sir. I said this to Martin, but genuinely, I feel as if the wolf is like, you're the henchman that doesn't get slapped enough by the actual evil villain. You know, it's like, oh, Bob, we just built a giant ramp. That would be cool. I do. Just slap him in the back of the head. that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life. But of course he's in control and there's that really weird moment where he's got his, how would you call those videos like the outfit of the day, where it's like, what's up guys, I'm in the burned out in a rass and I'm putting on the crowd. but that They watch me get dressed. Honestly, I'm actually surprised that see that crown didn't just fall onto him like a necklace because I mean that look at King Helm for God's sake. That guy was a beast.
01:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I guess his head was kind of normal sized though. Yeah, that that I think that's even scarier. It's like, you're the Hulkbuster, just to tight the tiny head with the big bulky body. The true fear. You know the scene in The Avengers where the Hulkbuster is just come seen as like punching Hulk and he's going, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. That's pretty much what Helmut is doing to the troll, just like, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. Look, all I'm saying is, if Helm Hammerhand was in the original trilogy, I genuinely think the Lord of the Rings would be over in one film.
01:13:02
Speaker
but but He rocks up to the gates of Mordor, to the Black Gates, and he's just like, bring it. He punches Sauron's head just clean off. I mean, can you imagine the mouth of Sauron being like, my master greets that and then just punched him in the face. You know, Aragorn cuts the head off of the mouth of Sauron. He just punches the head off of it. He's such a chad, but he does that thing with your two fingers and then just like pokes the eye of Sauron in the eye. I mean, I've said this before, but he is very all might coded where it's just like this bulky guy just always, if I drew what it reminded me of, it was he that seemed to be finding his dead body and his fist bump in the air with a massive smile. Again, it's like that scene from you're the last Dragon Ball film. I mean, it's a meme now, but it's Goku as a Super Sentry and he's got the big fist in the air and he's smiling. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, my God, what to keep going. In summary though, I genuinely do think that although this will never live up to the legend of the original trilogy, I think that is an impossible bar to set, because let's face it, nothing that has come after Lord of the Rings will ever reach that same standard, and there's a lot of mixed facts
01:14:13
Speaker
for that, you know, there's the nostalgia factor, there's the fact the effects failed up, the fact it was cutting-edge technology of the time. There's so many factors that there's no way that this film will be dethroned as opposed to King Helm, but that's another story. But if you're looking for a kind of action, relatively isolated story, if you ignore the last five minutes where Andrew went to go pee, do what Andrew did! over a B at the end and then come back when Hera and the shieldmaiden are riding into the sunset. Because yeah, other than that, I genuinely feel as if this was an isolated story that, to be honest, I don't know why it was made. I don't know who this was for. I don't think it was necessary, other than obviously to hold the rights. But you know what? I enjoyed it. I genuinely enjoyed it. I thought it was a relatively fun struggle. I wouldn't say I'd be going back again and again like I would the original trilogy but it's a solid film all in all and I don't think it deserves the overabundance of hate it gets. What I do understand is I get the criticisms that it gets, like 110% I get people criticising the animation, the kind of thin plot, the characters that aren't as fleshed out but if you take it at face value for what it is it's a relatively enjoyable
Reflective Conclusion and Future Plans
01:15:28
Speaker
romp. But before we wrap up, what are your final thoughts? Yeah, very similar to what you were saying. Right now, it ranks between, it's better for me than the Hobbit films. I enjoyed it more than the Hobbit films. And not as much as Slytherins. It's kind of nestled in there. It has a lot of things I'm critical of, but I enjoyed it. I think that I enjoyed it more than I did the Hobbit films. So I think that I prefer that personally. And I'm hoping to see more films like this. Hopefully again, the bit more time kind of put into them to make them a bit more polished. But I think that this film serves as a good side story into the world of Middle Earth. It does not devalue the property at all, in my opinion. I think that it's very serviceable. I think that there's a lot less to hate about this than there was the Hobbit trilogy. And with that, I cannot believe I'm saying this. And that was indeed the last episode of 2024. How does it feel to be old, Andrew? Speak for yourself. Well, true, true.
01:16:24
Speaker
Yeah, we have a lot to look forward to in 2025 with a podcast sense and a personal sense, so I'm hoping for another wonderful year. Yeah, me neither. I genuinely cannot wait to share what we have in store for Chatsunami next year because other than the usuals, we've got a lot more Chatsunanis coming out, Chatsunamis, we have lots of... Not to copy the trailer, you know, we've got gaming topics, we've got films, we've got general interest. We'll have a new trailer probably. Well, definitely. We're working that after this episode.
01:16:54
Speaker
ah oh Yeah. We are hopefully heading into the world of live streaming as well with Chats of Cafe. Cannot wait for that. And we've also got a heck of a load of theme months coming up. We are UNI, Andrew. We are going to be doing Avatar Month. Cannot wait for that. Avatar, the last Airbender, by the way, in case anyone's wondering, though the blue people won. That one might be the year after. Yeah, probably. Yeah, given his track record. I mean, James Cameron's track record. Then, of course, in March right after, we've got Mario Month coming up. Then in May, we have Animation Month, which is going to be a great one. For the Podpack collective and I, we've got so much coming out, including a whole month of BioShock content, which I cannot wait for that one. And and yeah, we're just going to see how 2025 treats us. It's going to be another amazing year of the Red Panda. I cannot wait to share it with you lovely Pandalorians and Yeah, it's going to be fantastic. But before we wrap up for good for this year, Andrew, where can these lovely, lovely Pandoraians find your content? They can find me on Chat Tsunami. I've been on a lot of episodes, so you can check us out there where all the good podcasts can be found. I'm sure you're going to plug in a bit more depth after this. You can also find both myself, Satsunami, Mark McAllister, who you will have heard in many other episodes, and Robotic Battle Toaster for our D and&D podcast, Stop, Drop, and Roll Initiative, and Dungeons & Dragons podcast found where all good podcasts are. You can also find that at SDRI Pod on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, and you can find me at Green Shield 95 on Twitter. So yeah, please do and please follow this podcast and the social media, which I'm sure Satsu's about to plug. Oh, you know it.
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, if you would like to check out more of our content and more of our episodes from this year, as well as Season 5 as a whole, cannot believe we're on Season 5 already, then you can indeed check us out on our website, Chatsanami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. And if you do want to follow us on social media, you can check us out on Twitter slash X at ChatsanamiPod for everywhere else, such as Blue Sky, Instagram, threads, Facebook, YouTube, it's just at Chatsanami.
01:19:01
Speaker
please feel free to check us out because we would love to see you there. As always, I want to thank our amazing Pandalurian patrons who have supported us throughout the years. Robotic Battle Toaster, Sonya and Ghosty, you guys are absolutely amazing and you have really, really been amazing in 2024, so thank you so, so much. Here's to another amazing year, but if you would like exclusive content from ourselves, early access, as well as a whole host of lovely boldness content then you can check us out patreon page patreon dot com over slashsh chat tsabe
01:19:32
Speaker
but until next time thank you all so so much for supporting the show in twenty twenty four honestly panda audience we cannot do the show without you you have been fantastic you have been
01:19:56
Speaker
happy year
01:20:21
Speaker
Happy New Year.