Transcript
Speaker: Hey everyone, welcome to Queer Lodgings, the queer-led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Leah, and I'm here with my usual co-hosts, Alicia. Hello. And Grace.
Speaker: Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. After a ah long time away, we're back. Yay. After sweating out there, riding our horses in the sun all day, let's let's grab an icy cold beverage and head into the anachronistic movie theater to chat about a relatively recent Tolkien adaptation, eight months after the fact.
Speaker: Like I said, it's been a very long time away and it's been a weird year. I'm sorry, you guys.
Speaker: It has been a weird year. And I feel like the last three of our episodes have been started with, hey, guys, we're back. We're back. We keep doing it somehow. Listen, if the BBC can do it, so can we.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go. ah Well, anyway, we're really keeping up with things over here. And today we have a very special guest with us. Janet Brennan-Croft is a recently retired associate university librarian at the University of Northern Iowa.
Speaker: She is the author of the Mythopoeic Award-winning War in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the co-editor of one of the podcast's favorite sources, Parallous and Fair, Women in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary, yay, and has written on many, many, many authors, TV shows, and movies.
Speaker: She has edited the scholarly journal MythLore, another one of our favorite sources, since 2006, and has the extremely cool distinction of being the only Tolkien scholar to canonically exist in the South Park universe.
Speaker: Welcome, Janet. Thank you. Yay! So we could talk to you about a bunch of different things because you have done many, many things, including being the guest of honor at the Mythopaeic Society's most recent seminar, which Queer Lodgings presented at.
Speaker: Just hint, hint, that's what we've kind of been up to. But we brought you on today to talk with you in your capacity as a script consultant for The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim, the recent anime adaptation directed by Kenji Kamiyama.
Speaker: And of course, we'd love to talk to you about the film as fan and as a scholar. But I think it's very cool to be able to talk to you as somebody who was involved in the process of making it.
Speaker: Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. To kind of get things started, can you tell us what your official credit is? What was the scope of your work? Okay, I believe I was credited as token expert.
Speaker: That's what they told me where you could put on. Yeah, I didn't stay long enough to see it the last time I watched it. I did. Every time. And I'm like, oh, Janet, I know her. Hey, Janet.
Speaker: I get very excited every time I see it. Very cool. Well, thank you. I just went on IMDB today to um make sure that gets added to my list of stuff.
Speaker: It's so cool that you have an IMDB. I know, it's fun. But anyway, so my job was to go through each of the scenes in the screenplays and each element on the maps and determine the source of each of those elements.
Speaker: know Names, characters, items, places, bits of dialogue, action, any of that. Was it in The Lord of the Rings, including the appendices to which they had rights?
Speaker: Or did it come from elsewhere in the legendarium? Or did it exist only in the Peter Jackson film verse? Or was it original to the screenplay? You know, i even went down to the level of things like were rabbits known to exist in Middle Arch? Well, yes, we all know they did.
Speaker: But just to confirm, here's where they're cited in the text.
Speaker: So the main purpose of this was determine if they were working with material that they had legal copyright to. So that's the basic function of my job. But then I also looked at the added material pretty closely to see if it aligned with Tolkien's themes and chronology.
Speaker: or if it had precedence in the legendarium somewhere. so So if my name's going to be on it as Tolkien expert, I'm going to bring all my expertise to it that I can. Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a little bit like fact-checking in a way. Very much. I think that's probably why it appeals to me as a librarian that but kind of yeah and and an editor, is that fact-checking. Oh, right on.
Speaker: Well, I know we can't get into too much of the specifics because of contracts and in NDAs and things, but can you tell us a little bit about what your approach was like?
Speaker: Like, what were you asked to do and what were your methods in researching and getting feedback in that fact checking, I guess? Yeah, well, my own first step for any project like this is to read the script and highlight any of the items I want to follow up on.
Speaker: especially flagging things that seem particularly anachronistic. that's just like a first pass through the script. This stands out, this stands out, this stands out. And then I generally start my research on the sources in Tolkien.
Speaker: So for this script, I very carefully read the Helm Hammerhand story in the appendix, along with the surrounding material on the Rohirrim. And then I went back through the Rohan chapters,
Speaker: And then I turned to the history of Middle-earth for the composition history. ah They made a really good choice with this story because it's very self-contained in the appendices. There are very few references in the Lord of the Rings text to Helm.
Speaker: you know Maybe a few references to Helm and the layout of the Hornburg there. And that's about it. Now, the only real red flag that I ran across that I need to look out for was some details about Rohan and the Erlingas that appear only in the Battle of the Fords of Iceland in Unfinished Tales.
Speaker: And they didn't have rights to that. So I had to look out for that. And according to Christopher Tolkien's commentary in The Peoples of Middle-earth, this story was originally set down in pretty much its final form with only a few minor changes before publication.
Speaker: And then it was never returned to later. So this is not something that Tolkien niggled with forever after he wrote it out, like, you know, the Galadriel or the Orcs or something. feel like it must be the only thing he didn't niggle with. Some of the rare examples. Yeah, yeah. You know, he didn't come back and mess around with Aragorn after he wrote Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: Aragorn's done. mean, there may have been stuff that changed during the writing of it, but he didn't come back to Aragorn. But yeah, this this was a nicely self-contained little story. So that part was simple.
Speaker: And then with the maps, I needed to see if the material was on the maps in the Lord of the Rings. if the place name was listed in the index, or it had come in somewhere else, like maybe come in from maps in the history of Middle-earth, or the Colleen Baines map, or maps for games and movies.
Speaker: And I had to like look at, was it in the original maps that were in the early version of Lord of the Rings, or the the more recent maps that you see in more recent editions?
Speaker: So there was a lot of you know i'm going back through the library here and seeing where did this thing come from where does it first appear so like different versions of it too it's like ah yeah yeah for the maps i find that necessary because there have been some changes i wasn't even thinking about the different versions of the maps and the different version of the text yeah you know and and i forget what it is but there is something that appears like in the pauline baynes map for the first time so you know oh ah yeah how does that count yeah
Speaker: But then after that kind of step, then my research is going to take me into primary world reference sources like books, web resources on things like trees or falconry or feudalism or the history of swords and armor.
Speaker: Because Tolkien's world was one of realism overlaid with fantasy. The practical deals came straight out of our primary world. And there's you cannot break the laws of physics and in Tolkien's world.
Speaker: So, you know, I looked these things up because he based it very much in reality. So, you know a prime example of the sort of material research I did. So you'll notice that Hera, and I probably don't pronounce the name quite as perfectly as they do in the in the show, but she has a small portable telescope for eyeglass, which is important to the plot in several places in several different ways.
Speaker: When I saw that in the script, I flagged it to investigate because spyglasses and other technology involving lenses, I couldn't recall that they'd ever been specifically mentioned in Tolkien's works.
Speaker: So first I have to, know, being a librarian, can I trust my own memory? No, I've got to look, I've got to check. So I do that. Now, as far as I can determine, technology involving lenses was not mentioned by Tolkien, but there's glass. Glass existed in the Shire, at least.
Speaker: Bag End is well provided with windows and, you know, elsewhere, other places. So this called for kind of a deep dive into the scientific technology of Middle Earth. I first speculated that elves would probably have an understanding of the science of optics, and they do have many words that include an element that translates as glass, but given elvish eyesight, they would be unlikely to need to develop it you know a portable spyglass.
Speaker: Or eyeglasses. Or glasses. Yes, because exactly. Like all of us wear. Yeah, yeah. What do low alpha eyes see, Janet? Well, yeah ah about three inches in front of my face.
Speaker: Without contacts, literally right about here. Exactly. Yeah. Now dwarves, on the other hand, would be more likely to develop magnifying lenses for fine metal and gem work.
Speaker: And from that, it's a very short step to spy glasses. Oh, yeah. they'd also be more likely to make and sell these sorts of things, either as a tool or as a toy. In our primary world, what I found out was the small portable refracting telescope was developed sometime in the early 1600s.
Speaker: hundreds But lenses are well established in the later Third Age in the Jacksonverse. Elrond has a telescope. Ballin has a jeweler's loop. Radagast has a microscope.
Speaker: So within the existing movie verse, a small fly glass was totally acceptable. But I thought it was very unlikely that it would have been manufactured in Rohan. That's not the sort of thing that they would do in Rohan, especially in this time period. So what I suggested was it's acceptable, but maybe it ought to look like a dwarvish artifact. Maybe, you know, if there's any recognizable sort of decoration on it,
Speaker: it gives the backstory to this thing that would otherwise stand out as this isn't right. ah mr So that's kind of the, the added value i was bringing. That wasn't a copyright issue or anything like that, but it was something that like, I want to keep people in the world of this movie. I don't want people to be bounced out by some sort of suspension of disbelief, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, totally. yeah Mm-hmm. Yeah, so other things like researching the great eagles and their primary world inspirations, that was another fun rabbit hole. You know how long did Tolkien's great eagles live? Well, you look at something like the nature of Middle Earth.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, those length of their life would vary all over the place. and Well, what's the maturation age for our primary world golden eagles? So I looked that up. I looked up some books on falconry to research the whole thing with the lure, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: So it's a lot of fun, actually. That's very cool. Yeah. I don't know if you can get another too specific, but like that spyglass is a really great example, I think, of hinting at kind of unconsciously, like how much like bigger the world Yeah.
Speaker: how did she get a spyglass? That means they must have some interaction with dwarves or perhaps with other men who have interactions with dwarves. And so it sort of, it kind of opens things up a lot more. It's one of those like little, what is it, the textual ruins that Tolkien kind of seeds things with, you know? Right, right. You see that, you start thinking about trade routes, trading posts, that kind of thing.
Speaker: You know, the sort of thing that in Pratchett, he would have this and then you'd get a whole backstory and a whole nother novel out of it at some point. Yep. Yep. You get a lot of footnotes about it too. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, that's very cool. Well, did that kind of like translate? Like, is there like another example of something like that, that you kind of did like a ah rabbit hole in like beyond like the equals, like the horses or anything like that?
Speaker: Oh, there was something about horses. So I, I'm not an expert. on horses. I'm not a horse woman. um yeah I haven't ridden a horse since Girl Scouts, you know, and that was a very long time ago.
Speaker: So when I don't have the expertise in a particular subject, and i don't think I can develop quite enough just by doing some research. I say you ought to call in an expert on this. And I and said that about horses because I'm reading this and saying, could a horse carry two full grown persons?
Speaker: You know a mare carry two full grown people and go at a gallop that long. Could a horse jump that far. but Could a horse walk down those stairs? Yes, could a horse charge? Could a cavalry charge down that steep of a slope?
Speaker: Well, yeah whether they called in an expert or not, if I said this is this is kind of beyond me being able to say whether this this is possible or not. Well, in the world of the movies, at least for the slope, it, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, just burning horses can charge down to slope sets. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, and down is very different than up because up is no problem unless up curves, which is why old school firehouses have the fireman's pole because the grain for the horses was stored on the top floor.
Speaker: And so if there was a straight staircase, the horses that pulled the wagons, fire wagons, would just go straight up the stairs. And so they needed a spiral staircase to slow the horses down. And then they needed the fireman's pole in order to be able to get down the stairs as humans fast enough to go do the things.
Speaker: ah That's funny. Well, in terms of like another cool thing that you have done, i don't know if we can talk about this, but you are also credited in the Hobbit films.
Speaker: Was it a similar sort of role or what was the difference between working on something like this and your work or for the Hobbit films? So it wasn't too much different in my working approach, you know whether it was anime or live action. I i worked from the script, maybe a map,
Speaker: So it didn't really matter if it was live action or animated. you know I guess I could comment on whether, would a live action person be able to do this? Would an animated person be able to do this? But there wasn't really and so much detail in the script for the action scenes that I could really say that.
Speaker: I would see a new version of the script after each round of revisions, and I could say, you know, this seemed to work, or if this didn't seem to work, or here's a new problem that's arisen. I also worked on some games.
Speaker: I worked Middle Earth, Shadow of Mordor, and Shadow of War, and some other associated titles. These were a little bit different. Some of the materials I saw were different. For these things, I might see things like character sheets and overall plot summaries and like snippets of dialogue, you know,
Speaker: and and I'm not familiar enough with games to tell you what that kind of scripted bit is. that's the kind of thing I would see. So the materials I saw were a little bit different, but I was doing the same sort of thing. You know, is this material that you have rights to? And then does this really, to me, seem to work within Tolton's world or not?
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't fit. Yeah. I had completely forgotten that you had worked on those games because my God, are those games polarizing?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of people who like, they love the games. They love the gameplay. They love like the additional visibility you get on like orcs and stuff like that. And people think that's really cool.
Speaker: And then there are you know, like pedantic asshole, like Tolkien assholes who get in there and are like, I don't think Kelebrimbor should be able to haunt somebody like this.
Speaker: It's me. I'm the pedantic Tolkien asshole. Yeah. There was a lot of back and forth. And and well, you know, i kind of ran across this with Jackson stuff, too.
Speaker: the authors want to do something. And it's, well, I suppose if you stretch things in a certain way, this could work. But an author doesn't want to kill their darlings.
Speaker: So, yeah. That's that's valid. That's actually kind of a nice segue into question I had. Like you had access to different kind of materials working on the games, which is a very different process, it sounds like, from the films, which is kind of like for all of its being a really collaborative form of art, it can be very isolating. It's like everybody is like working in their own little departments.
Speaker: And if you can't see what everybody else is working on, I kind of have like a speculative wish sort of question for you. Like what kind of materials or what kind of access would you have loved to have been able to have working on War of the Rohirrim?
Speaker: Like certain departments or like people that you could talk to or have access to like what kinds of different materials do you think would have been interesting or valuable to you as you were working?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for this one in particular, it would have helped to see some sketches of locations and settings. Because from the script alone, i had a hard time picturing some of the elements of the layout of the Hornburg and the surrounding landscape pictures. Like, like where does the tunnel come out?
Speaker: I can't quite picture where this is happening. And I found myself going back to the Jackson movie several times to try to help me with the visualization because this is, I mean, it's in the Jackson verse, basically, in many ways.
Speaker: So having that kind of sketch might have helped me. Sometimes I felt it would be helpful to be in the room with a script writer. To say, you why did you write this scene or character the way you did? Where are you trying to go with this?
Speaker: And maybe you know help brainstorm a new solution to something that bothered me rather than writing and crickets because we're not interacting directly. I'm interacting through the lawyer.
Speaker: Right. So, yeah, there there are times when I thought, well, isn it this would be a lot quicker if I could just talk to the people writing it and saying, what are you trying to accomplish? Am I not understanding what you're trying to do?
Speaker: What are the constraints I don't know about? is there something else that's going on that I don't know about? Yeah, like, is it like a production, like, budget thing? Is it a, like, what's kind of going on? Like, I sort of feel like in a difference between, like, animation and live action, obviously, in animation, you're somewhat constrained by the laws of physics because of believability, right? But you can get a lot done in animation. You can stretch more.
Speaker: You can stretch a whole lot more in animation that you just cannot do in live action because... Even with the advent of CGI and stuff, there's just some stuff that you just you just can't believe that happened. Oh, yeah, like Legolas running up blocks as they're falling down? Yeah, so yeah, yeah, exactly. Or, you know, Legolas flipping up over onto a horse.
Speaker: I feel like in a lot of like things that change in like scripts, it's sort of like, oh, well, it's we can't afford to do that. It's like, well, in animation, can you afford to do that?
Speaker: So I'm always kind of curious about like where are these sorts of choices are made along the line. Like who's the guy making the particular choice and isn't the writer having to respond to that or something like that.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I think it's interesting that you just mentioned that you were communicating through the lawyer. in my head, when I picture someone, you know, like kind of consulting and during an editing process, my picture of that is working directly with the team in some capacity. Like I can only imagine how frustrating a game of telephone that might turn into at certain points.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. it's but It's been that way for all the projects I've done. and you know, I don't know enough about how Hollywood works.
Speaker: If I was in the room with writers, would I have to be in the union? Would it have to be an entirely different set of roles or something? ah If I am hired on as a consultant, I'm kept separate from all of that kind of thing.
Speaker: So, yeah. yeah different contract, different pay rate, all that stuff. yeah Yeah, Leah can actually speak a little bit intelligently about that.
Speaker: It's not something that often comes up, but it is sort of what Leah went to school for. Yeah, once upon a time. Long ago. 3,000 years ago.
Speaker: We were in art school hell for two very different things. It's true. It's true. Mm-hmm. Well, to be honest, some some of the way that Hollywood works is but the reason why I'm not working in film. um
Speaker: So it's sort of like, feel free to air your grievances here, Janet. This is a safe space. But yeah, i I always kind of wonder, like, you'd think that having access to more people and more departments would help you do your job better, you know, but capitalism...
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. I am hired as a consultant. I'm not hired as a creative part of the creative team or anything like that. So, yeah. Yeah, but if you're being hired specifically to like check over like copyright and like historical slash physical feasibility, like seeing character designs and costuming and all of that is relevant to what it is that you're doing, says the person who keeps screaming about rings of power and that particular shade of blue that the Numenoreans wear.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah, you'd think that would be a useful thing, but but again, it's yeah baffling to me. Well, yeah.
Speaker: So what point in the process of the script, I guess, are you pulled in to be the accredited Tolkien expert? How, I guess, is it like in pre-production Well, as far as I can tell, I get called in when the script is pretty far along.
Speaker: I think one one of the projects, it was like, this is the third draft or something like that. So they've got things pretty well shaped where they think they're going to go with it.
Speaker: They may have already done things like character design, location scouting, casting, background painting. I don't know, but all I see is a script that is in, you know, not necessarily final, but relatively polished form.
Speaker: And then I'll see, you know, another two or three iterations of that script working back and forth with what I've said. And I guess what other people have been saying elsewhere in the process as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I really enjoy it. And i look forward to it whenever I get a chance to do it, although it takes up a lot of time whenever I agree to do one. Yeah. I'm sure it does. Yeah, it's really interesting and painstaking work and I really feel invested in the final product especially when I can see my suggestions making it better. That must be a very cool feeling.
Speaker: oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I going to say a natural like extension of this is how do you feel about how the war of the rohirim turned out hmm well whenever whenever i have watched a film i've been involved with i start in this state of extreme high nervousness like i'm and yeah i'm gonna paint or something because i don't necessarily see the final script before it goes and then again it's As things are being filmed, as things are being created, script can still make further changes.
Speaker: What I see, they may say it's the last one when I see it, but may not be what gets filmed. So there's always an element of surprise. What am I going to see? And you when I see my name at the end, am I going to be proud or am I going to want to slink out of the theater and pretend this never happened?
Speaker: But I thought the script did a really good job of filling out a middle-earth story in a believable fashion, adding a great deal of emotional depth. um It seemed to be well-based in real-world cultures, but it foregrounded potential women's role that is often hidden or forgotten.
Speaker: If it lacked anything, it was the courage to deal with the race question, which I think we may be looking at. It has to come up when you're pitting blonde, blue-eyed rocarim against dark gun lending.
Speaker: But otherwise, it felt very complete in and of itself. It felt like the story wrapped up tidily, pointed directly to later developments with Saruman and so on, but left room for your basic adventures of Hera and Olwen fan fiction.
Speaker: So, yeah, i was i was proud to see my name at the end of this one. You know, I thought, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's me. You're allowed to stand up and share. Oh, yeah. yeah I was just curious about if there were any times where, as you got a further draft of a script, there was something in it that had changed since earlier draft that necessitated another, you know, rabbit hole, deep dive.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that that happened pretty frequently. Like, you know, a new location would be added or something, and I'd have to go and research all the names and things connected with that. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: you know It wasn't just, yeah, you checked off the box I gave you. No, there's new stuff I have to look at. I've referenced this before on another episode, but just so it is also captured here, they did have permission from Christopher Lee's wife to use his likeness and voice in this movie, and they pulled the voice from the previous movies he did. It was not AI-generated or anything like that, and I think that is...
Speaker: so fucking cool and like one that his wife agreed to do that and two that his widow agreed to do that knowing how happy it would make him to be in another lord of the rings film yeah i remember when they dropped that bomb that christopher lee was gonna be in this movie at dragon con last year and everyone was like what the fuck did you dig up his body what what what This doesn't seem ethical.
Speaker: This doesn't seem right. As to the overall metalness of Christopher Lee.
Speaker: I think that matters a great deal too in this era of generative AI slop and everything. yeah that There are examples of how to do it properly and with the correct buy-in and to use the technology in ways that is effective instead of growth yeah agreed very much yeah well let's kind of get into developing the your kind of review as like as like a fan and as like a as tolkien scholar and i guess like and what what all three of us kind of thought about about seeing it yeah
Speaker: It's great to hear that you are proud to have your name attached to it because I really enjoyed this. I feel like it was, like you said, really strong and well-developed and had a like really surprising emotional depths to it and a really tidy story that kind of didn't really leave a lot like hanging. And I feel like, like you pointed out, that's the story of Helm.
Speaker: in the appendices. There's not really a lot to draw out there. And it's kind of like a cool and interesting story to kind of hone in on because there is the unnamed daughter and there's so much potential to kind of draw out there and really get into and explore. So, so yeah, I've heard some folks kind of be like, Oh, why didn't they make Helm like the main character? And I was like, cause no, why would you do that? Like for one thing he dies and another, what's his arc, you know, where' yeah but he has no arc really. And like, there's, I feel like there's so much more potential to explore what they did with Hannah and,
Speaker: yeah Oh, speaking of pronunciations of Hedda. It was all over the place. um It was a little all over the place. But like, um I know a lot of people got really weirdly hyper focused or hung up on the little diacritical mark over the E of Hedda. And I was and I'm kind of like, calm down, everybody. It's OK.
Speaker: But what do you what? I don't know if you had any thoughts about that, Janet. Oh my God. Do you really want to open this fucking box again?
Speaker: but Yeah. Yeah. I know there was a lot of discussion of the name after Chris Vicarra's paper at at the OMS. And the name, of course, was one of the things I looked at. It's you look at the name and you say, okay, this is one of Tolkien's names. This is a name he never used. This is an new invented name.
Speaker: If it's an invented name, does it pull phonemes from his languages, does it fit? And that was, you know, I said, well, of course, of course people are going to look at and say, oh, Hera, Greek goddess, that kind of thing. And well, you want it to start with h It's a cool name.
Speaker: It fits with the other names in Rohan. So how do you make it fit? Now, there were a couple different spellings that went by in different scripts. um I don't focus on that. I was more interested in the sound of it.
Speaker: I am not Tolkien language expert. I always say, you know, go talk to a Tolkien language expert if you want to have a passage in another language or something. But, you know, I did find, for example, some Old English elements and that combination of syllables meaning pleasant and noble.
Speaker: So it did kind of fit. But yeah, I... I am not so much spoken language nerd that I care where the accent went.
Speaker: or Or what way the accent was facing. ah yeah Now that it exists, I care as an editor that people using it get it right. But... ah get Right, man.
Speaker: but That's fair. That's fair. For me, and I'm also, like, a lot of the linguistic stuff kind of hits me in the weeds, but it sounds Polkinian, and it sounds Rohirric, and I'm kind of like, it's close enough that I feel like, I think it it works fine.
Speaker: It's just, it's fine. Don't worry about it you guys. so I think it also helps for people just to know that it was thought about a great deal through the production process. There were different spellings considered.
Speaker: It was looked into as to whether it fit, like you said, in so a sort of a phoneme way in the culture of Rohan. Like all of that was there because I think it's very easy for us as we're consuming things to go, well, obviously they didn't think of that and sort of be dismissive of it, especially after the fact when we weren't the ones involved in making the soup.
Speaker: And i think it's always ah helpful to temper that instinct a little bit because in reality, all of these things are so carefully thought of and it's okay if there were different approaches and...
Speaker: we can debate it later, but really, we just need to make sure we spell it. right I agree. um but and I do remember when Hera's name was first announced and I'm Facebook friends with both Nelson Gehring and also Jason Fisher, who are two big old English guys who got into a like relatively heated conversation on Facebook about whether this was a ah logical and like name to choose for this character and I i find that sort of shit so interesting because really interested in like etymology and stuff like that so watching two linguists who both
Speaker: are pretty firmly grounded in what old english actually is like getting into like a dick slinging contest about this name was delightful for me yeah well yeah i i can't know who else they might have consulted about this so yeah
Speaker: It's so funny. Well, yeah. What did you guys, Alicia and Grace, like what was your kind of like your overall sort of sort of feeling about it? Just the part where this is being presented Eowyn's voice and everything too.
Speaker: As this character who you're not going to find in the records of history. Hmm. but whose life clearly touches all of the things that we have in those appendices in the history of Middle Earth, I thought was a brilliant construction from the start because it cuts off all of the, well, that's not the way it was in whatever. And that's not in the appendices. And like, she should.
Speaker: No, we just stated up front. You're not going to see it. Yeah, because that's not the story we're telling. Yeah. Yeah. were telling a story that didn't get recorded, but that you have the breadcrumbs to follow. and having been a human being on the internet on the last five years in Tolkien's space, let's say, I found that actually to be a pretty refreshing take. And I wonder if there was some thought of being able to ah head off some of that sort of controversial take.
Speaker: Hmm. early on just being able to look at the reception of other adaptation things in Tolkien and outside of Tolkien where women get to be centered and fandom has schisms about it.
Speaker: Yeah and it gets to either choose to melt down about it or to be cool about it.
Speaker: Yeah what did you think Alicia? I can't answer anything shortly. You all know this about me now. I went into this like so apprehensive because as I'm sure I've also mentioned, I went to art school and therefore I do not like anime because I had anime foisted upon me when I was in art school. And everyone was like, oh my God, you've got to watch Cowboy Bebop is the best fucking thing that's ever happened.
Speaker: And I was just, it was not for me. And so I, with the exception of like Sailor Moon after school, when I was in high school, I was 100% like just off the anime train.
Speaker: And I was like, this is an interesting, an interesting choice. But I love animation. Like, I really wanted to go into animation when I was little. It was like the third or fourth job I ever wanted to take because, you know I like drawing and like I love Disney movies. And who wouldn't want to go into animation when you're six years old and don't understand how they work you like indentured servants?
Speaker: So I was i was happy about like getting a modern animated take of this because i have not seen any of the older animated movies all the way through. And other than where there's a whip, there's a way being an absolute banger.
Speaker: I have not been super impressed with what I have seen. So I was like, oh, well, maybe this will be an animated movie that I like. I will give this a chance. And the more I heard about it, the more excited I got. And I was like, oh, my God.
Speaker: i have been so disappointed with Rings of Power. Is this going to be... an adaptation that I actually like, I need to temper myself. I don't want to go into this with like too high of hopes because i don't think that my heart can handle being let down again.
Speaker: And I wanted to see it so much. We went to the theater, which is a huge thing for me. I have a corn allergy. So going into the theater often makes my throat close up because I can't be around popcorn.
Speaker: So I'm like, I'm risking my life to go see this fucking movie in the theater. And the Rohan theme started at the very beginning and I immediately started crying.
Speaker: Yes, me too. I was so surprised. Sorry, not to interrupt you, but like i was like I heard the theme and was just like, immediately went back into like you know teenager Leah watching the Lord the Rings movies and I was just like,
Speaker: Oh my God. Okay. Sorry. Go on. I'm going to interrupt now too. I did not get to see it in the theater, but I did see the trailer for it in the theater.
Speaker: And am also, I'm not an anime girly. i barely like animated things. guess I have to wait the flag over here.
Speaker: I'm so excited seeing the trailer and like hearing the music, seeing the imagery and everything. I started literally like flailing in my movie theater seat. And it's one of those ones. It's a recliner.
Speaker: Right. And so I'm there with my favorite kind of, I'm just like kicking my feet in excitement. Like I am four years old And my flip-flops came off. I was so excited. And I was really surprised by how excited just for the trailer i was.
Speaker: But as it turns out, this just continues my trend of enjoying animated things as long as I know at least one person who worked on it. we I say, having grown up in a town where Romeo Muller, the script writer for the Rankin-Bass special, was Santa Claus.
Speaker: And i am currently wearing my Ursula shirt because Pat Carroll lived in town too. So like the animated things that I... tend to like i don't know whether it happens to be because there's some sort of like i don't know parasocial thing there or it's just like no i know ah recognize the artistry that went into it and i've thought about that a little bit more and so i receive it a little bit differently but i did i like cool cool To wrap up my long ass story time, I loved it.
Speaker: I absolutely loved it in a way I did not expect to. That was unforeseen, but so welcome. So welcome to me. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. It was like, God, when Breath of the Wild got released, Zelda nerd time, and I played Breath the Wild and I was like, it's fine.
Speaker: It's a pretty game, but whatever. and then Tears of the Kingdom got released. And I play Zelda for story. And Breath of the Wild has very little story. Tears of the Kingdom has lot of story.
Speaker: And like the first 15 minutes of Tears of the Kingdom, I was snot-faced ugly crying because I was like, oh this is what I want Breath of the Wild to be. And I got like little like shades of that. Like, oh my God.
Speaker: I don't have to hate all adaptations anymore. i don't have to turn into, ah love you so much, David Brotman, but David Brotman, the about all the Peter Jackson movies, like, oh, I don't have to be an adaptation hater.
Speaker: It's just this one adaptation I don't like. I can like other things, and it's fine.
Speaker: But, Malia, you said you like you like anime. I'd be interested to hear what... do. How does this... back up to, well, I mean, Miyazaki, but, you know, anybody else. Yeah, I mean, i feel like there were some really arresting and beautiful visuals that, like, surprised me, I feel like, in and I don't know why they surprised me, but they were very, very welcome.
Speaker: really arresting and emotional visuals like on the line of like Miyazaki and these other directors. And like, I feel like there were some really beautiful moments that like really stuck with me and really like, again, sort of hit like the really emotional depths that was, I don't know why i was not expecting them, but I i was surprised by them nonetheless.
Speaker: And I feel like the mixture of like the three d landscape and so The 2D animation was sometimes didn't quite work for me.
Speaker: it was a little felt a little bit out of place. But feel like like the landscape paintings themselves and like the backgrounds were gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker: And there were some really cool, strong character designs that, I mean, we might we might have to talk about how some ah some of them kind of veer into into racist territory and and into stereotypical territory, which comes with the world of Peter Jackson's Lord the Rings, right?
Speaker: Like, it's sort of like... it also comes from, like, it also comes from anime, though, because, like, some of those character archetypes are definitely present in Miyazaki. Yeah. Yeah. Tim's been doing a watch through of of all the Miyazaki films and I've caught bits and pieces of them here and there. And yeah, you've got these these characters that I started calling grotesques that are. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that can be a little hit or miss, I think, for me, and a little a little bit disappointing. I can see the legacy of, like yeah I feel like it's a really strong like contender in like the tradition of anime, and in going into Middle-earth, I feel like That's a really big swing for a movie to make. And I really appreciate it when movies take big swings, especially adaptations.
Speaker: And I feel like the design of Hera, it's very much in line with the kind of like Kishouju, pretty girl sort of sort of style, like Sailor Moon.
Speaker: But I don't know. Like she, I felt like her character design was, it felt like very, very real and very, very grounded and not like, nothing felt very like fanciful, you know?
Speaker: And I feel like it can be really easy to do that in animation. And I feel like everything felt very grounded and very weirdly like lived in, in terms of like, in terms of the visuals.
Speaker: She didn't feel like a total Mary Sue, you know? Yeah. Realistic. Yeah. Yeah. She was a good audience surrogate. Yes.
Speaker: But, but not a total blank slate. Like you talked about arc, but like she, she, is our entry point and then is one of the only characters who survives this period of history, this event and in, in middle earth history.
Speaker: So yeah she is a good audience surrogate for the through line and it feels solid to me in a very refreshing way. Yeah. Yeah, I was really refreshed by her character and again, like like the depths of her emotions. Like I sort of feel like there could have been a temptation to make her younger and also to make her more like fiery redhead or like stereotypical, like strong female character, you know, which is like ah dude with boobs or like something like that, where it's like no like kind of emotional sort of
Speaker: arc but she felt very much like when Eowyn says but like you know she does what she wants and she is wild and free it's like i believe her and I also believe like these relationships that she has with her family and that are very grounded and she has this emotional relationship with her people and her society like I kind of felt like she has this sense of deep communal connection to everybody in a way that didn't feel like her like choosing to be independent and choosing you know going off and kind of having adventures it didn't feel like like a petulant child being like I just want to be free I just want to be free of all my constraints and stuff like that it was kind of more like this is how I exist in here but I can kind of get away with doing some of this because I'm not in line for the throne and but i care about my community you know
Speaker: I can be free to use my strengths for my community in the way i see fit. Absolutely. And then at the end to have this sort of like self-authorship journey of, and now I am going to go do other things having done these important things here yeah and it felt narratively connected i will say she did work on the level as a fiery redhead for me i was great and and i do have a t-shirt of her so yeah
Speaker: I mean, like it's it's like I said, she's appealing and like feel like there's kind of like there's a stereotype that exists of like the fiery redhead. But she felt like ah a real person. She felt like a real living person and not just like somebody kind of making a weird fantasy or kind of doing some kind of weird wish fulfillment or something like that.
Speaker: Like she felt very grounded and very, very real to me. Yeah. To kind of get back to what Grace just said, that's very much Eowyn's story. I did this, and now I'm going to do that.
Speaker: And, you know this could bring us to that Gary Canavan article. Yes. experience with the students in his classroom, which I find hard to believe that every one of them is like, oh, my God, she sold out. And, you know, no she did this, and now she's going to do this.
Speaker: It's not my choice. Well, to give a little bit of context for for listeners, we were kind of looking at some different reviews. And I i feel like from like the Tolkien nerd sort of perspective, this was generally pretty well liked and enjoyed by a lot of people in the Tolkien community. Like they were kind of like, yeah, it's a strong, strong movie. You know, like maybe I don't rewatch it every December like the Peter Jackson films or something like that, but well worth watching and a good time.
Speaker: And so we were looking at some different reviews and we came upon one by Jerry Canavan, who was talking about his experience in teaching the Lord of the Rings and in particularly teaching the character of Eowyn and sort of relating back to this movie, which features Eowyn as the narrator, as the voiceover.
Speaker: For a little bit of context to that, too, Jerry Canavan is the head of the English department at Marquette University, which is, of course, where Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and and Hobbit manuscripts are archived.
Speaker: He starts the article like referencing that, which seemed like a strange appeal to authority to me personally. so I have interacted with Jerry at Robin Reed's researching Tolkien sessions.
Speaker: But I guess for for broader context, can one of you kind of sum up like what he was sort of saying with regards to how his students felt about Eowyn and how they felt about Hera in relation to their experience reading Aon.
Speaker: I want to kind of work that backwards a little bit because yeah i ah thought he was saying that that students really appreciated Hera because of sort of this character arc that she gets to complete and in the way that she appeals to a modern audience and everything. and like, okay, I agree with that.
Speaker: And he was contrasting that to students' perceptions of AON. And that's where I ended up challenging things a little bit more. i think we'll get into what he says there and what he says he experienced as student reactions.
Speaker: I would challenge that part of the reason that students appreciate Hera's arc is that that piece of and now I'm going to go do this, is explicitly stated on screen with her getting to be the central point of view character.
Speaker: And that doesn't happen as much for Eowyn in adaptation or necessarily in the books in ways that people pick up on, especially if they fail to read the appendices.
Speaker: Yeah, I felt like he was making um kind of a leap. He was saying that students... are disappointed in Eowyn. And I do not know if that is a universal thing, but you know it is a ah kind of a typical reaction. Oh, she went and became a wife.
Speaker: Instead of del delving into it, deeper or delving into what you guys have done here and talking about the clearness of the relation with Faramir and how beautiful that is, that they fit together so well.
Speaker: But I think it kind of makes a leap into seeing the Eowyn of the War of the Rohirrim as saying, well, this could have been me. I could have gone off and done this. and I don't get that from that alien. Which is crazy because did. Yes.
Speaker: She did these great things. Yeah. That's not the vibe I got from her in her na narration at all. No. Right. Like I come from a long line of badass bitches.
Speaker: Yeah, this is my ancestors. That's what I i was like. This is a story that did not get written down in written history. But it's been like the sense that I got was like this was passed down by the women orally. Like, you're like you know, from mother to daughter to sister all the way down.
Speaker: And that's the story that I'm in. Like that's I'm continuing this story that that Hedda was part of. And I feel like in her telling this story to us, the vibes that I got was like her like recognizing like she's sister in arms. Like this is where I'm from.
Speaker: She's doing the thing that that I am doing too. And that it's important for me who is hearing this story to recognize those echoes and threads between the generations ah shield maidens and not the men in the society.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. yeah And like the the story beats are very similar between them. Like I kept seeing parallels between her and Eowyn and I know like part of that is just I've had Eowyn on my fucking mind for months now doing like a ridiculously deep dive, but you have the whole she's left behind as a steward where everyone goes to battle except she does it way more willingly than Eowyn ends up doing because she actually uses her power as a steward to get everyone out and save everyone as opposed to just like peacing the fuck out and going and doing what she wants to do, right?
Speaker: Like she she has that big showdown with the big bad. She... goes and does her own thing afterwards like she there's this disconnect between her and her father figure where her father figure wants her to essentially be a peace weaver and not go out and fight and like there's just they managed to pull all these parallels without making it exactly the same story and i really appreciated that same same yes another interesting thing and there are notes that neither of them have a mother But Hera has a mother figure in her life.
Speaker: That's a big difference for her when she is pretty isolated the way she is in Rohirrim society. I have a relatively problematic sapphic read of Olwen and Hera, to be perfectly honest. i mean I mean, it's a little bit like, how old was she? yeah Like, how ah long has she been taking care of Hera?
Speaker: It's a little Frodo and Sam to me. little it's a little. Yeah. you know I'm into it, but...
Speaker: i like It's one of those things where I simultaneously hold a sapphic read and also simultaneously an ace arrow read of it. Much like with Frodo, right? 100%. And then i also, when there's a ah missing generation, I I also then go, oh, well, what are the parts of that relationship we didn't get to see? Like, what relationship did Olwen and Hera's mother have?
Speaker: There are a lot of paths toward that kind of connection and friendship. family constructed family found family sort of thing and i will think about all of them
Speaker: totally i do feel like this movie this story is a lot about how men are once again making really terrible choices and the women have to bear the consequences for them And how the women meet that moment.
Speaker: And yeah it's just once again, ah since I've had the patriarchy on my mind for my entire life, ah but particularly in the past few months, but in strong contrast to, to Olwen and Hedda,
Speaker: I fucking hated Wolf. Oh, he's such an incel douchebag. ah I just wanted him to fall into a volcano. i wanted him to be stomped on by a Moomakil. yeah, he's terrible.
Speaker: And i feel like that comes across very strongly. Like he's very much modeled as a terrible person. Yeah. but oh He was one m'lady away from being a full on incel.
Speaker: and Fedora away. yeah yeah Fuck my life. I saw some ex-boyfriends in him and I did not like it. Oh, no. Here's the thing. was so terrible.
Speaker: was so terrible that he was such a great villain in that. Oh yeah. Because he wasn't a cool, sexy villain that, you know, like this was a villain that really was not queer coded. This was a villain that really was not like, Oh, but he's misunderstood. Like he really just was his full, terrible self.
Speaker: And I wanted him to lose. Yeah. He made George Clooney so upset over and over. Yeah. I don't actually know what his second in command's name is, but I just kept calling him George Clooney.
Speaker: Oh, okay. see where that's coming from. Yeah. yeah I can only imagine that he was actually relieved when he was killed because he didn't have to deal with his whiny asshole's stupid bullshit anymore.
Speaker: but it's yeah It's that thing with Wolf that my emotions are sufficient justification for anything I should happen to want to do so but and and i own all of you and can do what i like with you and it's like jeez man yeah i don't even know if he would characterize it as his emotions because you know to those kind of men anger is not an emotion anger is just logic it's just just but yes yeah it's but yeah oh fuck i hated him so much
Speaker: Yeah, there's definitely no like chance Reylo situation happening here, which I very much appreciate. yeah mean, this film knew that he was the villain.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. ah hundred percent 100%. And like one of the things that really struck me kind of emotionally was like, seeing Hera like come to terms with my old friend is really terrible. And kind I kind of felt like i I could see like her grief and like her, not like despair, but like just kind of like this sort of like,
Speaker: she had this like, I can't reach this person again, right? Like she's like, he's gone. Like the person that I knew is is gone. And she has quite a few different emotional arcs with the men in her life. But I felt like this one was like coming to terms with like that pain of sort of seeing how much her friend has changed.
Speaker: And also kind of like reflecting in that flashback a bit of like, oh, but maybe the seed of who he is now was always there. And I just kind of didn't see it, you know?
Speaker: And that felt very like, i don't know, that felt very powerful and like relatable to me as, as somebody who has known couple of men who have gone down the rabbit hole of terrible masculinity and has had to kind of come to terms with like, oh, that that person that I knew is gone or he was a lie to begin with. Like he was, there was always like something that that just grew out of proportion. And so that was something that I really, i don't know, I felt was very strong and and really interesting because there was no like real like redemption that Hera was trying to like kind of bring him back really. It's like kind of like at a certain point, she was kind of like,
Speaker: okay, yep, this is who you are. And you have made choices. You've made choices. Yeah. Like, this is both a really bad and a really good summary of this kind of relationship dynamic is when a guy feels like he has been friend zoned and then he's just like, you fucking bitch, I always hated you anyway. And then you block him.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, that's exactly what happens here. And, like, I have a pet theory that the the real villain in this movie is romantic love.
Speaker: ah Turns out the real villain was love the entire time. What? That's not how it's supposed to work. Not all love. Just this, like, patriarchal vision of romantic love.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. I actually want to come back to a thing that I just said. and because i I started thinking about it more and I was like, this movie knows that Wolf is the villain. And then i thought about my lovely Hedda t-shirt that I have from, think it was Hot Topic or whatever. And I'm thinking and I'm sitting here and I'm going, wow.
Speaker: I would be so interested to see like the retail numbers and things like that for merchandising on this. And what sold and what didn't. Kind of apart from the fact that like the film didn't make enough money right away to be considered a giant hit or whatever. So it's like, well, obviously, but whatever.
Speaker: Because swear there was more Hot Topic merchandise of Wolf than there was of Hedda. Oh, yeah, because they they thought that everyone was going to want to fuck him, right?
Speaker: Yeah. because quote women want a bad boy that they can fix
Speaker: i suppose this fixabilityness oh boy oh boy i would guess that the film did such a good job at least among you know my generation of folks and older who've sort of had a chance to see problematic men and go no this is not worth it where i didn't see that phenomenon happen i didn't see any oh we're gonna try to redeem him oh he has a redemption arc i think we might have seen that more if there were definitely sequels planned or what have you or if there were like if his story were to continue alongside heres but the way this film was written it was good whether it was
Speaker: commercially viable for the male lead to be the terrible villain or not. I can't speak to, but I found it refreshing that he wasn't. Yeah, and that's a really good point.
Speaker: And I didn't like even see like in fandom, like a lot of people going like a wolf is just, you know, my little sad boy, my little cinnamon roll, little cinnamon, sad, you know, little cat boy who just who just needs a hug. Basically, it's like, no, no, no.
Speaker: And for our listeners, I am not shading the my adorable little cinnamon roll. whatever i i have done that i do that guilty this is this is a safe place its this is a safe place we all do this but this man didn't deserve that and i love that fandom really didn't give it to him no he didn't need it he didn't need it at all no i was gonna say it kind of subverts this idea that it is extremely romantic for a man to I will destroy everything in order to have you. i mean, there's a line in a Grateful Dead song about, based an old folk song, sort of like Venario, but this man says, if you're not going to be my wife, I'm going to destroy all the ladies in the land and and burn all your cities to the ground. And she's, nope.
Speaker: That does not attract me to you. No, that's not, yeah, that's it's genocide, my dude. That's not but's not cute. No, it's not romantic for you to do that.
Speaker: Back off. Because I am one of the things that you're going to destroy in doing that. One of the ah shots that i really loved was seeing Wolf put on the crown of Rohan in the the ruins of Edoras, in the ruins of Meduseld.
Speaker: And it's it's just a really beautifully like framed shot. like you He can see himself in the mirror. And so you're actually just looking at the reflection of him wearing the crown the first time. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And that's sort of like, it's this illusory sort of thing where it's like, you're not actually looking at him really. He's kind of looking at him, you know, like the image ah that he has of himself.
Speaker: And in the reality that he's actually sitting in, it's ashes, it's smoke and smoldering ashes. And it's sort of like, you know, it's that, that mentality of like makes a really good villain is,
Speaker: one of the characteristics that I find like really scary and like apocalyptic in a way is like this attitude of, well, as long as I'm the king, I'll be the king of this, this heap of ashes, you know, as long as I get to rule, that's what's important.
Speaker: And for like, for Wolf, it's sort of like, it doesn't really matter even if Hera is alive or not, as long as he has this crown, but he's ruling over a heap of ashes. that's fine with him like he's kind of gone into this point of no return which i yeah i find kind of terrifying and a little too real in a lot of ways yeah i was about to say given the focus of your research lately i can definitely see why you would feel that way
Speaker: it is giving some uh some Peter Thiel. so Peter Thiel vibes. One of the things that I really love then is because Wolf weaponizes this idea of wanting to possess and marry Hedda.
Speaker: The weaponization of a wedding gown o and her meeting him with that and taking control of that imagery, using the imagery and his thoughts about it to really stick it to him.
Speaker: I liked that. It was so good. So good. Like that moment when he asked like, to whom are you pledged? And she says, death. I went, fuck.
Speaker: I was like, yes. That's so metal. It's so cool. Yeah. I love that because and you see that wedding dress and all the promos and it kind of leads you to think of like, what's what's going on here?
Speaker: And in the movie itself, it's actually super effective and just a really, really great visual choice. I get the symbolism. I think the symbolism is is lovely and I love how they foreshadowed it and all of that.
Speaker: I kept seeing Thorin taking off all of his fucking armor and then running out of the goddamn mountain in Battle of the Five Armies and how pissed off I was.
Speaker: Like thematically, no, it's great. He's thrown off the shackles of being the king and the dragon sickness and whatever, and he's back true to form and has found himself or whatever. But you're going into a fucking battle.
Speaker: Why would you take off all of your armor? Well, at least for Hera, you could see that she was wearing stuff underneath it. Like, that's something that I was like, okay, she's wearing. yeah Yes, but not on top because you can see her back.
Speaker: m her entire back is exposed. Like she's titties out in this dress. Yeah. Fuck yeah. He's going to put her in high heels. Yeah.
Speaker: With her comically small shield. but Yeah. say they was so That was a weirdly small, small shield. It looked like a kid's training shield that Olin had. that And almost wondered if that's kind of what it was, because like she talks about the history of it and all of that.
Speaker: Yeah. It was a weird choice for someone who's done any amount of sword fighting. Yeah, that's... It was for the vibes, man. It was for the mental moment of going out and doing a one-on-one battle in a wedding dress.
Speaker: Oh, I fucking loved it. yeah. I can put aside some of that, like, pedantic what the fuck, this doesn't make sense shit if it hits right.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I'll still complain about but...
Speaker: Yeah, it hit me just right. I i was like, fuck yeah. And I like. and then it's on fire and shit. Yeah, it's great. man ah So cool.
Speaker: I did have one question about it, which was that was the being a white wedding dress, a contextually accurate thing? Or was that for the current modern audiences to be able to contextualize it as a wedding dress?
Speaker: Given that white wedding dresses weren't a thing until Queen Victoria. yeah a yeah But that's the same sort of thing where I'm like, you know what? It worked because it worked for a modern audience visually to get this particular idea across.
Speaker: I love that it was all tattered and shit too. Like it was rain. She really did look like a wraith of death in like the best way. but Yeah.
Speaker: I did kind of want to go back slightly to talking about like love being the true villain of this story.
Speaker: But a different kind of love. i wanted to kind of get into the relationship between Helm and Hera, which has its own issues, I think.
Speaker: What did you guys make of of Helm, I guess, like as a character and the dynamic between him and Hera? Big King Triton vibes. Probably because Hera is redheaded like Ariel, but I was getting huge King Triton vibes.
Speaker: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I do love what they did with Helm, though. I've always found the ambiguity about whether Helm was actually a wraith and dead or not to be ah really compelling part of his story.
Speaker: yeah And just the he died standing. And I love they hit that so well. Yeah. I thought that that was handled so beautifully. Like, it's one of those, like, things where it's, like, in an oral folktale, like, this legend. You know, he died standing and he, like, or, like, he was a wraith, like, haunting and, like, tearing people apart with his bare hands and stuff like that. You're like,
Speaker: How can that translate really onto screen? I thought that they did a great job with it. Like I was really into, I was writing in my notes. I was like, ghost helm. This is awesome. I wrote down helmsicle at the end.
Speaker: yeah I think that they hit the right emotional beat with the ah the one punch as well. Yeah. Because like that that line he has when he was just like, I only hit him once.
Speaker: yeah That's exactly what someone would say. And in that intonation, like just completely disbelieving that that actually happened. Yeah. I think they did a really good job of, like, making him kind of overbearing and patriarchal, but, like, I didn't hate him.
Speaker: Yeah. It's a very similar line to what they walked with Theoden, right? And, like, they get us a similar kind of redemption moment where they're like, you know, i was wrong. You're strong enough to do this.
Speaker: That sort of thing. And I thought it was a good parallel and also just really well done. Yeah. Yeah, I always love an apology from ah dad to a daughter being like, you know what? I was wrong.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, I always appreciate that. but I should have listened to you. Yeah. yeah I also, like, there was a really beautiful visual. I i really loved, I really felt the emotionality of Hera at Helm's side when he was in a coma.
Speaker: And she sort of lets, like, her grief over her, everybody that she's lost already. And, like, I felt like what she kind of says to Helm kind of felt like a, like, calling him back, being like, you know, I'm still here, basically. Like, I know my brothers are dead. I know you're Your sons are dead. I know that you're kind of in this coma of despair, basically. But come like see me. I'm like i'm here.
Speaker: like I'm here at your side still. And yeah, I just felt like that was like such a poignant moment for me. I felt like that was a really strong moment. There was this element for me as I was watching where it's like, okay, so...
Speaker: Helm is dying. Hera's brothers are dead. She's the only one that survives. She carries on the line. But it did not resolve with her having to carry on a line through bearing children.
Speaker: Hmm. And for her to be able to be a leader in her own right and then set the terms of her own story and not sort of be pressed into service for procreation and instead to let a crown pass to a a near relative and so sort of begin a new dynasty.
Speaker: yeah Dynasty. Yeah. Legacy. Yeah. yeah I felt like that did sort of turn the the expected script on its head because I'm so used to it's like, oh, well, all the men are gone.
Speaker: we have the girl and then she'll do a thing and then she'll repopulate the world from that because she gets to be an incubator for the next generation and continuing it like. Mm hmm.
Speaker: Great. This did not do that. And I loved that. No. Yeah. I did just touch on the racism issue. I did enjoy that the person who started the next line, not blonde and blue eyed.
Speaker: Yeah, that's very, very true. Yeah, Freiloth, who's... Is he, like, the... I guess the ancestor of Feoden and all them? would have to be. He was the first of the second line of kings.
Speaker: Okay. they Okay. Yeah. Sister-son? Yeah. Yeah. Because there's that whole like relationship with sister-sons in early medieval England.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. The big thing. yeah And he's originally from Gondor, right? Or like raised in Gondor or something? A lot of the Rohirric kings were fostered and in Gondor for at least a little bit. yeah yeah yeah um That's a big medieval thing too. Exchanging children to be raised in each other's courts partly to increase their understanding of the world but also partly as hostages in a way yeah yeah hostage slash fosterage is a friendly hostages yeah well that's what fosterage means right friendly hostages that's what that's short for
Speaker: I think we should touch a little bit more on the race and racism issues just because too frequently we as a society don't do a good job of calling those out in Tolkienian spaces.
Speaker: Yeah, and like that is one of the reasons why I find the praise for Wolf being a completely irredeemable character. Like, yes, it's true, and I'm glad that he's not queer-coated and people aren't cinnamon-rolling him, but also, like, he's a person of color.
Speaker: He's a mixed-race person. That's not great. It doesn't feel great. Mm-hmm. I did notice like there was kind of like a range of skin tones, I guess, in the Dunlandings.
Speaker: Yeah. And I do think they also kind of got around some of that by making a lot of them wear skull masks and other headgear and so to make it a little bit more difficult to kind of discern. But To dehumanize them.
Speaker: Yeah. like it's Like it's, it's very cool looking for sure, but it does kind of mask a little bit where the reality where it's like, oh yeah, like Wolf is pretty clearly probably biracial or something like that.
Speaker: And it's like, I feel like there could be a a lot of more diversity in the, in the Dungland things themselves in contrast to what we have seen in them in the Peter Jackson films. Right.
Speaker: but I feel like I don't think you guys did quite the thing here in choosing to do that. ah Janet, you would have the answer to this. Freca, purely Dunlending, or it is that house mixed?
Speaker: Yeah, I think the... No, let me... I mean, like, either way, he's definitely depicted in this as being very other. Yeah, Tom calls Freca Dunlending. yeah Although that may be you know the name calling somebody by the name of their kingdom.
Speaker: no But there is something in here about Freca who claimed descent from King Freyawine, though he had, men said, much Dunlendish blood and was dark-haired.
Speaker: So, yes, but um casting Freca as mixed race to begin with. And then his son Wolf, of course, carrying that on. I was pulling that knowledge from playing Lord of the Rings online.
Speaker: Because when you get into that part of Rohan, there are like mixed race houses of Rohirric and Dunlending houses. And it's interesting how they treat that in the game.
Speaker: But yeah. Yeah, it's it could have been worse, I think. but Yeah. But it is kind of swept under the rug. It's not really paid attention to.
Speaker: Yeah. It's sort of like similarly with the the South Bronx that we see, the mercenaries that we see are similar, ah obviously, in design to what we see in the Peter Jackson films.
Speaker: and And yeah, its that's not great either. Yeah, to a certain extent, they're it's set in the same universe, right? So I understand that kind of carrying over, but also it was already not super great in the early 2000s. And, you know, it's as much as it pains me to fucking say this, it's 20 years later, guys. so and like It's extra not great.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah Yeah. If there was something about this story that would put me on the side of not doing this lovely little self-contained story, it is that inherent racial difficulty in it.
Speaker: but that's something that's it's it's inherent to Tolkien's writing right like yeah unless you're actively working against it it's really easy to fall into that because the writing itself kind of lends itself to that it yeah I mean it might it might have been different if all of the Rohirrim were cast as these wonderful fantastic morally upstanding marvelous people and all of the Dunlundings were cast as practically works, you can't distinguish them.
Speaker: And it's not quite that way. So... Yeah, that's for sure. But I do feel like it does kind of get into like these sort of broad, homogenous sort of, I don't know, depictions, which is also inherent to Tolkien, because that's how he describes the Rohirrim, you know? That's how he describes the Dunlendings. And so it's sort of like... It might be that that because i have steeped in Tolkien, I'm bringing to my viewing of the film the knowledge that you know when the Dunlundings are conquered, they're like, oh my God, the straw heads are going to eat us.
Speaker: oh actually, they're not that horrible. So you're seeing that from the other side of the of the equation there. I don't know exactly where I'm trying to go with that, except that Tolkien saw these things, but he couldn't solve them.
Speaker: He couldn't always get out of his own way with it too, but there is observation. Yeah. I think for me, yeah i really did not perceive Wolf as a person of color.
Speaker: Because when i look at this character, this pretty pasty dude with long hair reads to me. as every problematic white man I've ever known. As a basement-dwelling incel?
Speaker: No, just like the ones that are just out there on the street. I mean, maybe he just hasn't washed his hair in while. Yeah. They just feel emboldened to say things that, wow, those were inside thoughts, right?
Speaker: So and that's something that I have to go back and think about, too, is that like he he is, at least in the context of Middle Earth, a biracial woman. character and all of that even though i perceived him as being someone who would be afforded the privileges of whiteness in my society i was gonna say that that's not necessarily the case in middle earth at this i mean is his coloring any different from aragorn's was gonna say he could be passing very easily here for sure
Speaker: Or you could be he could be like, oh, he's Italian or something like that. In the primary world, the construction of whiteness today, there are people who we now are like, oh, yes, this person is white. That two generations back, their very same complected ancestors were not considered to be worthy of this whiteness.
Speaker: And he's Italian. Yeah. Yeah. yeah And the white supremacy that our society is based in encourages people to work toward that conceptualization of whiteness that one can be part of, which being really, really set on marrying a a girl that you knew in childhood who is super light skinned and part of that blue eyed, blonde haired sort of
Speaker: family and society complicated yeah whose father throws your nationality out as an insult yeah yeah yeah i hadn't looked at it from that angle but yeah in like i think it's appropriately complex because there are complexities and i just need to do more thinking about the parallels and then differences between this in the primary world and the choices that we make in the primary world and telling the story Yeah, I do think Freca dying so early helps with reading him as just a generic sad boy.
Speaker: like Just like a generic white sad insult dude. Because like Freca is noticeably different than the rest of the Rohirrim that we see at that point. He's in a completely different cultural costume. Like he's...
Speaker: He is a very different anime archetype as well. Like he is, I don't know what it's called, but you know, the short dude who moves too much when he talks, that's what this guy is, which is very different from like the rest of the Rohirrim are kind of that like more, you know, Sailor Moony kind of like hero.
Speaker: no character her design and the fact that he is taken out within the first 10 minutes of this movie really like kind of closes the door on wolf's like cultural heritage and in some ways because like you can almost read him becoming the leader of the hill men as galadriel kind of colonization character three You could definitely do that if you're not that i taking into account that he is, to some extent, a part of that. all Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, and I think Janet's point about how in some, ah i would argue, some of like the lesser known moments of Tolkien's writing, we get glimpses of negative perspectives held Tolkien.
Speaker: the other side of our point of view characters, which I think then also points to nationalism being problematized as well. And I think that is also interesting in how we treat it in the in the primary world today and how we tell stories because there have been a lot of issues caused by the idea of blind nationalism that should then result in the eradication of a people
Speaker: yeah
Speaker: anyway yeah yeah um ah something that i I guess related to Wolf and kind of gets into it a little bit. Like Freca does die very, very quickly, but the rest of the timeline of the movie actually extends out pretty far.
Speaker: And i feel like it gives... a lot of weight to especially the ending that is the siege at Helm's Deep. Like it felt like a long time. Like it felt like time had passed in between Wolf amassing his army and also Wolf arriving and everybody starving and Ghost Helm appearing. Like I felt like the passing of time was something that I felt without it being like, oh God, this movie is dragging on forever.
Speaker: it was like, I could feel like the the weight of time. And Janet, I think that this was something that you had possibly suggested or pushed.
Speaker: Is that right? Yeah, i I wanted to make sure that they took into account the timeline in the story. now yeah We know that the timeline in and The Lord of the Rings was short between the time. Yeah. yeah yeah but but i felt it it really,
Speaker: in order to be realistic and to have fine but go back and brood and brood and brood on this thing and amass this army and just keep reinforcing his own anger and hatred in order for this to make sense.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, there's striking while the army is hot and immediate revenge and all that, but that isn't this story. This is a story of long-wotted revenge.
Speaker: This is a story of Wolf waiting until he's strong enough because he knows he needs to be really strong to take on Helmhammerhand. He needs to have forces and alliances that Helm does not expect him to have.
Speaker: So I'm glad that they went with the ah time span that's actually in that little snippet of story we get. Yeah. Like, this is a story about ah grudges, right? yeah And, like...
Speaker: and brooding over wounds and like just on both sides, I guess, you know, like Helm's sort of stubbornness, I think sort of ah stubbornness ah so feels like a really light way to say it, but it's sort of like his obstinacy is sort of like another reflection of, you know, that holding a grudge and that kind of holding on to a degree of of bitterness.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So we we do see an interesting contrast in this movie between immediate passionate reaction. You know, the punch, the killing, the banishment.
Speaker: And the other side, this this long brooding and and nursing of an anger. Yeah. And this this long siege where but we Ghost Helm starts taking out the army one by one by one. And you're like...
Speaker: And that goes on long enough to be noticed. It goes a long time to be noticed and to like build up a collective fear and collective like... That's really how I want to be perceived.
Speaker: Like that's fucking goals. The longer I contemplate you, with the more you more fearful I become. The more fearful I become. You want to be perceived as like a ghost who will rip you apart in the night?
Speaker: Yeah. yeah just this like this nameless fear like around the camp like that that's that's fucking power yeah that is that now there was something else that went on a long time that i know alicia wanted to talk about oh man i guess we got it we got to get into it you guys it's time it's time it's time
Speaker: So the tentacle porn monster.
Speaker: It is right out there. a bit no listeners to create a visual it was beautiful watching janet just just wake up laughing at that beautiful
Speaker: it is kind of related to what we were just talking about though because this whole like interlude with the tentacle porn monster is one of the ways in which the time passage is being shown it's so long good so long like yeah I mean, i mean you to to lead up to it, you can see why they had to have something there.
Speaker: They had to have something to show passage of time. They had to show the Mumak coming into that area. they And they had to have something that would separate Hera from her companions so that she could be captured by Targ.
Speaker: But did it have to be a tentacle porn monster? Did it have to be a tentacle porn monster? Did it have to be hentai that with a bush on top of it?
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Yeah, with this with a tree on top of it. It's like an island, right? Yes. Yeah, are they pulling in something from from that Vestido Calan poem of tokens or something?
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. hoon Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. I have thoughts about the tentacle porn monster. um Drop him. and knew you will And I have facts about the tentacle porn monster.
Speaker: Drop us some knowledge. some knowledge First of all, tentacle porn monster a canonical in the Peter Jackson ah Tolkien universe right as seen in The Watcher in the Water.
Speaker: I am so fucking glad if that was the depiction of what The Watcher in the Water was going to look like when it fully surfaced that we did not see that in the live action movies because the The Georgia O'Keeffe-ness of this thing's mouth really disturbed me.
Speaker: I don't know how anybody could not see it as and anything other than a pussy. Vangina dentata? Yeah. Vangina dentata. I was just like, I i was uncomfortable with how much.
Speaker: was like, this is some comment on the overall theme of the movie. Yeah, exactly. was like, what is this trying to say? I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me.
Speaker: Going back to Zelda, because it's half of my life, there are things in Zelda that mimic this creature. Like there like octopod things with like rocks or trees or whatever growing on their heads. And like, I had never thought that it might be a cultural reference that I wasn't getting. But I think more and more now that it is a cultural reference that I just don't know what it is.
Speaker: Like some kind of legendary like folklore or something? Yeah. Yeah, and i will 100% say that I can't talk about this octopod with thing on its head as like what that could potentially mean, although I am now incredibly curious about it. However, the tentacle porn...
Speaker: ah aspect of this I can talk about because I went to art school
Speaker: and when you take an art history class that is something that comes up as well as I'm a millennial and I grew up on the internet and I have seen things that I probably shouldn't have seen at that point in my life but we've all seen so many things right so like erotic tentacle art is a thing in Japan and has historically been a thing in Japan since like the 1700s like the late 1700s you start getting woodblock prints of tentacle erotica and I recently learned when I was looking up the exact date of it because I i knew it was the 1700s but I didn't know exactly when it dates back to 1781 apparently in the Wikipedia article
Speaker: They go into kind of like why this has continued to persist in Japanese culture. And think this is very interesting, although it is not directly tied to this movie at all. You're getting this fact anyway, because I had to read it.
Speaker: Part of the reason why it persists in Japanese culture is because of World War two When the Allies were occupying Japan, they put in into place a bunch of censorship laws.
Speaker: And what's a good way around not being able to depict genitals? Tentacles. So like there is a quote in here oh that says, it was illegal to create sensual scene in bed.
Speaker: I thought I should do something to avoid drawing such as a normal sensual scene. So I just created a creature. His tentacle is not a penis as a pretext. I could say as an excuse, this is not a penis.
Speaker: This is just part of the creature. You know, the creatures, they don't have a gender. a creature is a creature. So it is not obscene, not illegal. ah That is a Toshio Maida.
Speaker: I think that it is beautiful that this historic art form has been kept in context because... fuck these white people because these white folks who are occupying our country we're gonna fight back with tentacle porn it is sending me the radical roots of it yeah because it's a beast it's a creature it's not it's not illegal it's not wrong or obscene and i'm like What planet are you from?
Speaker: Where this is not obscene?
Speaker: I love that this is such a deeply ingrained part of Japanese culture. I love how fucking weird it is to Western people to like come across it i and I did find it strange to see in a Tolkien adaptation.
Speaker: I was going to say, and now it's canon in Tolkien adaptation. And I feel so bad for that momak because he did not like anything that was happening. He did not any part of it. That was what was distressing me.
Speaker: So also part of the like the whole historic tentacle thing is that it is non-consensual. That is part of the trope. And you nailed it with it consuming this momak because he looked real upset the whole time. was not happy about it at Oh,
Speaker: I was hoping he was dead by a certain point. I hope so too. I was like, this is distressing. The fear that they managed to put into that thing's eyes.
Speaker: I was like, as an animal lover, I'm kind of like, I don't know if I can handle this. Maybe, maybe I need to take a moment. This is the part we fast forwarded through within the rewatching.
Speaker: I was just about to say, I'm curious to like, what does the dog die have to say? about Oh my God. Yes, exactly. If you don't know, there is a website called does the dog die. I believe it's does the dog die.com.
Speaker: And it literally just lists out problematic things that happen in like shows. It's trigger warnings and content warnings for mostly films, but they're doing, starting to do books and TV shows as well.
Speaker: And I rely on it heavily. this that is actually one of the things that keeps me from re-watching this film a lot is that there are things when people and things die that make me sad and they make me sad and i have too many feelings but yeah yeah it's rather dark coming back to the tentacle porn monster to go for it I'm just doing a little bit of research right now I'm fascinated and delighted to find, but there is a yeah sculpture, like a polystone sculpture of the Watcher in the Water.
Speaker: Oh, as depicted from the Lord of the Rings movies, the sculptor being Tiger Kang, who works for Waito Workshop.
Speaker: And I can see some other things where, like other way to workshop projects that are non middle earth affiliated that she's worked on as well. But it is fascinating to me that this may have actually gone back to earlier conceptualizations from the Lord of the Rings films that weren't fully it put on screen because the things that echo are still like, they're still there, but yeah, that fascinating.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, no, I can definitely see that. I remember its mouth, right? But I don't remember like much anything else because it's like a really dark scene. But yeah, it definitely has the like frilly things around it. said Its mouth doesn't look nearly as vaginal, though.
Speaker: No, that's true. just notge It's little teethy grippers are also still... So I think it's fascinating that as that gets pulled into an animated...
Speaker: presentation that we get more of those historical tropes added on too in ways that i don't know if western audiences are always going to pick up on but fascinating or prepared for in my case yeah like if you if you didn't know That would have been so surprising.
Speaker: I mean, like they show the tentacle monster in the preview, right? Like in the trailer for it, like you see the tentacle monster, so you know it's coming. And like when she ran into the woods and into that swamp and threw that spear at that island, I was like, that's where the tentacle monster is coming from. I know this from Zelda.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I was anticipating. i was like, OK, yeah, this is where it comes in. But I was not anticipating the vagina dentata of it.
Speaker: quite that much. Yeah. But dear listeners, that means that if you perceived it too and you thought you were alone, you're not.
Speaker: I am reminded of the original character design for the mouth of Sauron. They had his mouth switched vertically and then they realized, no, oh that's too much.
Speaker: Let's just make mouth very big and instead of all the Fs. My mouth just dropped open into a shape that I didn't actually like as we were discussing that.
Speaker: that ah I did not know that either. i have watched the commentary too many times. was going to say, I have not watched that particular commentary enough, apparently.
Speaker: i will remedy that.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness. Well, is there anything else after that? How can we come back from this? How can we talk about further about this? I actually I do have one thing that I did really enjoy that ah just back in the scenes with Helm and as Hera is is going out into the snow, we get this shot that I've i've seen in one eye.
Speaker: other place that's clearly pulled from, I think, the appendices, Janet, correct me if I'm wrong, but where the orcs are going through the bodies and looking looking for rings.
Speaker: The other place I've seen that adaptationally is in the fan film born of Hope. Was it born of hope or was a hunt for Gollum? No, we watched them in the same night.
Speaker: think it was born of hope because the orcs raid a village. and Yeah, yeah. um Yes, yes.
Speaker: Aerithorn comes upon them, counting the rings, and they're puzzled as to why they're doing it. It's just that, you know, the Dark Lord says they need to. And so I'm curious if we'll see that in future adaptations that they're considering like the big budget hunt for Gollum one.
Speaker: But it's interesting to me that it's a piece that clearly sticks out from the, i assume the appendices as people are looking to adapt this and tie in that Sauron is already moving in this space.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. And again, I cannot, quote from what I wrote in response to it but I know I I looked at this and both Sauron and Saruman were trying to find any news of the ring that they could find kind of at cross purposes Saruman kind of like sneakily doing this on his own so it fits that this would be happening at that time yeah this specific thing, the specific way of showing it, yeah, it's interesting that it would be the same and in two different adaptations.
Speaker: It makes sense to show it that way. It's a clever way to do it. But I don't think anything specifically like that is shown in the appendices anywhere. Just the fact that both Sauron and Saruman are trying to track down what happens to the ring. Yeah.
Speaker: Without saying we're looking for a particular ring. Mm-hmm. collecting rings bring them all to me and bring them all ah i do wonder if that is a like an homage to born of hope then i wonder yeah pretty cute yeah yeah so like not only is it a cameo for dominic monaghan and billy boyd but also potentially a shout out to born of hope that would be great that would be lovely Yeah, I was so delighted when I saw their names as the orcs. I was like, oh, that's so great.
Speaker: ah So yeah oh I'd forgotten that. Yeah. Anything else that really kind of stood out to you? Or i guess, ah Janet, like, again, no specifics or getting too into it.
Speaker: But like, I'd love to know what really like delighted you from like a fan scholar perspective and what perhaps disappointed you in and some of the story choices. like Just watching it as like a fan scholar, I guess. yeah As a fan, i loved seeing this story fleshed out.
Speaker: I loved seeing a woman get a logical part. I mean, it did not not make sense for her to be what she wants, to be a shield maiden, to have shield maiden training, to have another human being her life. It all made sense.
Speaker: It didn't feel like anything was being forced into this story to me. So I was quite willing to let it carry me along. And they played around with a bit of chronology and a bit of where things happened here and there.
Speaker: But it wasn't so much so that it changed the beats of the story. You know, like we witnessed the one son's death, which Helm actually never heard. He never heard how his second son died. Here you've got it very graphically right in front of him.
Speaker: Well, it's not exactly how it was told in the appendix, but it reinforces what's going on in the story. So I was pleased to see that strong, thoughtful kind of storytelling going on.
Speaker: One thing that bothered me was the amount of paper. This is a formal culture. Yeah. but
Speaker: Yeah. yeah I can get why they did it. You know, you need to be able to to telegraph the treachery of Lord Thorne. And an easy way to do that is the impression from his signet ring in wax.
Speaker: But it just doesn't fit the oral culture. And yeah what particularly bothered me was poor little leaf and all these pieces of paper he's dealing with. Yeah. And now if you're a doc in that culture,
Speaker: You should be priding yourself on your memory. This should all be in his head. Those sigils should immediately call up the names that go with them. So yeah.
Speaker: That bothered me. I mean, it doesn't affect the story, but it was something that kicked me out of my suspension of disbelief here and there. That's totally fair.
Speaker: And yeah, that's such a good point about the sculp because like we sort of see Leif, I guess, and maybe perhaps at the beginning of his journey. But it's like he would be, as a fully trained sculp, he would be able to know...
Speaker: who these people are and their fathers and their mothers, he would know the stories of all of these people like from generations back. Yes. He would be the oral repository of these agreements. He would just tell me what the agreement is. He'd be able to tell you what the agreement was. Absolutely.
Speaker: You need to be on a piece of paper. Yeah. yeah
Speaker: I can't believe this is the first time we've actually mentioned Leif, but I... love that little androgynous character so much i know like it was great yeah i loved him so much he was definitely like a pippin mixed with a sam yeah but just like really just non-binary just like real gender neutral totally totally Well, yeah, like what did you think of Hera's other relationships? Like, we touched a little bit on Olwen, and I was really struck by the relationship between her and Hama, one of the little soft boy, Hama, who ah playing in his little lute and goes to war as well. And I thought that that was a really lovely, like, portrayal of what we hear about the Rohirrim is that, like, you know, they're singers. They're singing as they go to war.
Speaker: and I kind of love that, you know, him being a little, a little loop player doesn't take away from his manly warrior-ness, really. i feel like that was like the artifact that was really important to so many being like, this is a symbol of like our songs, our, our heritage and our culture.
Speaker: these are really important to us. But yeah, like one of the the really striking things besides the very graphic death that he suffers, unfortunately, is um when he's riding his horse as they're fleeing Edoras and the riders are coming up ah behind him and his poor horse just, she's an old lady and she just can't keep up.
Speaker: And so he falls further and further behind and finally he stops and she she can't go on and he gets off and starts comforting her and oh my goodness I'm like I'm cheering up a little bit because again that the reason I can't re-watch this movie very often I mean like we we don't see anything that happened to them thank goodness but it's just like this really really tender moment of the Rohirrim love their horses it was just a really beautiful moment of him like comforting her and being like you did great old girl it's okay it's okay even as this inevitable thing is coming up behind him oh absolutely heartbreaking totally i do like that they show that the horse isn't just like a car and that eventually yes yeah yeah oh yeah it's a game yes yeah her relationships with both of her brothers i thought were well handled
Speaker: Yeah. And I think we get a hint with the older brother that he may have been fostered out and was coming back that maybe she didn't seem as much growing up as she would have liked to. That's a really good point.
Speaker: Yeah. There's definitely a little bit more distance between her and him. got a bit of that gondorian polish you know hanging out with freil off i guess yeah one of my thoughts in all of this is that think sort of quite apart from you you being the tolkien expert on this work that you and Leslie Donovan did in editing Perilous and Fair and the way that that has had an impact on Tolkien's scholarship and the reception of female characters in Tolkien's
Speaker: I think had an impact on how people are prepared to talk about female characters in this space and what we are able to see on our screens because the idea of these characters is more firmly explored and complicated and there are archetypes to be able to unpack And all of that work, even though this is a very Finnish sort of space and and not the scholarly space, I think that that has had a tremendous impact.
Speaker: And so I want to thank you for work that you and all the contributors to that volume have done. thank Thank you. i mean, yeah, it's I really feel that Hera comes out of this backstudy of Eowyn that but some people did.
Speaker: you know these really deep dives into eowyn that perilous and fair push forward and made more available and that have been followed up i mean you guys with your work on her have just been amazing too so it made me rethink things but yeah but we wouldn't have i don't think we'd have hair exactly the way we do if there hadn't been people thinking hard about eowyn and what she means and and really you know building on what Tolkien gave us and saying, well, what this means to me is, what this does for me is, yeah.
Speaker: That's a really beautifully said, and I think that's a really kind of a beautiful way to to wrap things up. I feel like this film is a really lovely addition to Tolkien adaptations and continuing, I think, the story of kind of...
Speaker: of what thinking about like Eowyn and thinking about her legacy in the book and in the films and sort of bringing it to another generation of folks is, I feel like it's a really worthy addition all that.
Speaker: I hope that this is an adaptation that continues to have a lot of legs long after its theatrical release timeframe and that we get to keep coming back to it again and again and again, because think the way it's done, it's able to fit in to our conceptualization of Middle Earth in a way that isn't particularly based in like, oh, that's definitely a 2004 thing.
Speaker: So I think that's going be lovely. Yeah, it's got some depth to it. It's got some things to be discovered in it. Yeah, absolutely. Janet, are there any other things that you wanted to make sure that you shared with us about the film or any upcoming projects that you'd like to make sure to plug?
Speaker: Well, just, you know, if you haven't seen it yet, it is worth seeing. So, you know, go out and see it. It is long though. So make sure to plan your, plan your breaks and your snacks, you know, and you can, you can probably skip through the hentai part if you really want to.
Speaker: But I guess the, the next thing coming up on my schedule, besides myth lore and the proceedings of the OMS that we just had is There has been a open area at the National Popular Culture Association Conference for several years that Robin Reed ran.
Speaker: i co-did it last year with Bianca Peronio. She's going to take over the National, and I'm going to start up a similar area at Southwest Texas Pop Culture, and that is February in Albuquerque, and we are just about to put out calls for papers so think about that Albuquerque in February yeah well might get a little dusty snow here and there pleasant actually yeah usually Albuquerque is lovely yeah yeah better than Albuquerque in August oh yeah I've been there both times it's a heat it's fine it's a dry heat
Speaker: Well, yes. and Right now it's like 86% humidity here. So yeah. yeah well But yes. And thank you for the opportunity to natter on with you guys. and and Yes. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about it. It's, it's extremely cool. Like, like Alicia said, being able to see your name in the credits is very, very cool.
Speaker: Cause then. oh i and yeah i get go like oh Oh my gosh. yeah I get a little power boost and every time somebody cheers my name at these things. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Janet. And it's been lovely. This has been a wonderful conversation. you so much. Thank you. Alicia, do you want to take us out?
Speaker: Sure thing. All right. Please leave us a rating and review. ah You can find us on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify, where basically wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker: Please like, share, and subscribe on platforms that will allow you to do that. ah You can also stream episodes directly on Zencaster. That is Zencaster.com slash Queer Lodgings of Tolkien podcast with hyphens in between all of those words.
Speaker: You can also find us at our website at queer lodgings.com where we have show notes, resources, transcripts. We have merch there as well. We're also on so many social medias. We're on Facebook.
Speaker: We're on blue sky. Technically, we're on Twitter, but we only post episode updates on there because fuck Twitter. Fuck Elon. If you have any ah feedback you want to give us, you can um give it to us on social media. ah You can email us at Freelodgingspodcast at gmail.com or you can join our discord we do not have a custom discord server link yet but we do post about it on our social media and there is a link on our website to join our discord we would love to see you there thank you so much ya thank you so much everybody bye thanks everyone and if i'm allowed to say we have a merch plug from one janet brennan croft
Speaker: owns at least one if not two of our fueled by spite stickers oh shit you too can own one and be approaching as cool as janet is right
Speaker: ah
Speaker: For this especially, if like it was just like I was just like reacting, basically, and being like, okay, i want to make sure that this is in there. But, oh my god, I'm so excited and I'm so scared about the tentacle porn. i'm like know like I was looking up the but dates, right? Because I knew it was the 1700s, but I wanted to get like an actual date.
Speaker: And in so doing, I read the Wikipedia page for it, and i I'm about to drop a fucking bomb that is so hilarious. Oh my god. And Leah, it is also really relevant to your research.
Speaker: Oh shit.
Speaker: Amazing.
