Transcript
00:05 - Julia Golding (Host)
Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I am joined by my frequent podcast partner, Jacob Rennaker, who is sitting over in Seattle and I'm sitting over in Oxfordshire. And what has brought us together across the Atlantic today is we are going to give our review of the War of the Rohirrim, the latest of the Lord of the Rings films coming out of the powerhouse that is New Zealand. So I'm sure everybody's caught up with this film by now, or at least knows it's out. It's an anime style film, so not live action. It's directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who is a Japanese director who's known for his anime films.
01:00
The script has a number of people involved. We've got Geoffrey Aldiss, will Matthews and then, closer to the old Lord of the Rings people, is Phoebe Gittins and Artie Papagiorgio, who are the daughter and son-in-law of Philippa Boyens, who many of you will know was part of the scriptwriting team on the trilogy of Lord of the Rings. And in the producer credits we've got Peter Jackson as an executive producer, but I think the main hand on the tiller of this was Philippa Boyens and at the voice actors, just to give you a sense of who's who we got brian cox, well known for his part in um succession and who he plays, helm hammerhand, and the other main person is gaia wise, who plays here, who is the point, the main character in this story, who also happens to be emma thompson's daughter. I don't know if you knew that, Jacob.
02:06 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
I did not know that.
02:08 - Julia Golding (Host)
Yeah, when you look at her you can think oh gosh, that looks like a younger Emma Thompson, and that's why, anyway. So before we get into the nitty gritty of our response to this film, let's go with what our star rating is. What did we feel about this production? It hasn't met with huge box office success. I must put that out there. What did you feel watching it?
02:34 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
I, I, I enjoyed it. Uh, I thought it was a fun kind of standalone standalone as standalone as you can get in Tolkien legendarium an interconnected, thickly woven web of characters and events. But as an independent piece of storytelling, kind of drawn from Tolkien works, I thought I enjoyed it. I didn't love it it's not one that I'll probably be re-watching anytime soon, but kind, this is the first watch through I was entertained. I was pleasantly surprised in several places, not bothered necessarily, but just kind of. There are some places that kind of tripped me up a bit from a viewing perspective. But overall I'm glad I saw it and was happy that folks were willing to take a risk in adapting Tolkien in this sort of format for a new generation of audiences.
03:46 - Julia Golding (Host)
Okay, thank you. So you said something which I'd written down here is I wanted to love it. I really really wanted to love it. I don't love it. I like parts of it which we will unpack.
04:02
There are some things which I thought were absolutely smashing, but I had several really big problems which I couldn't overcome. So I enjoyed my evening that I spent watching it and watched it for my husband's birthday. It was like a family viewing thing. We all nobody got up and started working on their phones. You know there was no, we didn't lose concentration. So that was. It worked that pretty well as as a viewing experience. But we also then unpicked it afterwards and you know we we weren't satisfied with some of the choices which were made. So I would say I'm on the 2.5, two star out of five type. Okay, now, I'm on that kind of rating for it. Anyway, let's go and find out what works and what didn't. So we're going to take this from the big picture of the story and we're going to drop down through the screenplay, the animation, the voice acting and the music, in that order. So the story, jac, do you want to tell people if they don't know what this is based on?
05:09 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Right.
05:10
So this is based off of a sketch of sorts from your appendices in our third. If you're reading Lord of the Rings in three separate volumes, it's in the Return of the King volume at the very end as an end matter, again as a way to kind of let Tolkien put in a little bit more information. Originally he wanted to publish the Silmarillion alongside of the Lord of the Rings together, and Stanley and Unwin were not willing to go that far, but they did end up deciding to include some extra matter. After the success of Fellowship of the Ring, they decided that they would be willing to put in a little bit of extra additional information about the broader world that Tolkien felt was necessary to fully understand what's happening in Lord of the Rings, and so that's included in the appendices. Appendix A has information about a number of different periods of history that impact the story of Lord of the Rings, one of which is this right that's impacting the Rohan storyline, and that's where you'll find us is, somewhere buried within Appendix A of your copies of Lord of the Rings.
06:31 - Julia Golding (Host)
Yeah, and what isn't hard to find? It's well, it is hard to find, but once you find it, it's not hard to read because it's only about two and a half pages, if that half, in fact. So it won't take you long to read and you'll see that what the animators have taken is, within that section, just a small part of it, and they've expounded upon one intriguing storyline that comes out of that section and the Rohan culture stands out in that it's a very young culture. We're used to talking in terms of talking about the elven cultures, who have these sort of centuries and centuries of ages of history, but Rohan is like the new kid on the block, but to them they feel old, their culture is already old. So it's interesting. I like that. Different perspectives of different cultures, all that is great fun and that's one of the richness of Tolkien.
07:27
So, in terms of the Rohan perspective, on this in the story, the voiceover is given by Miranda Otto, who is Erwin in the Lord of the Rings films, so it is a kind of back in the mists of time. This is the story of the shield maiden, which of course, is the basis of her character. She refers to herself being a shield maiden. So it's a lovely fact to choose that and pick that point up, because it's not in the Tolkien sketch. The daughter of Helm isn't even named and she's certainly not called a shield maiden. So this is an invention which is fitting within the world that they've put into the story. So do you want to sort of sketch out the line of the story that they've taken from the Rohan culture without too many plot spoilers?
08:29 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
So conflict between.
08:30
So this is so.
08:31
Rohan is kind of a confederacy of different, almost like tribal units that are kind of unified under a head, and that is Helm Hammerhand, who's our you know kind of main character at the very beginning of the story that this really hangs on in the appendices.
08:49
It's really helm hammer hand and how what his legacy is uh setting up, uh moving from the first line of kings of rohan to then our kind of following uh second line of kings, um, so helm, so Helmhammer hand, uh leading uh you know confederation of uh horse Lords, I guess, if you want to call them uh different you know domains uh and uh right Conflict with with one of them. Um, that leads to uh, uh kind of a uh all out uh battle between uh Helm, uh and his and those who and those who were, who were allying themselves with him, and Freca, who's the head of the other, the other house, and his group that was following him. Helm ends up having to escape to the Hornburg and pull up with his people while they are then sieged during a terrible winter and the story then kind of follows the story of the siege and then how the siege lifts and resolves with how Rohan is settled in the aftermath of this like large, very elongated battle that had. That took a toll on both sides really.
10:12 - Julia Golding (Host)
For those of you who are ticking off your sort of writer points, there is an important inciting incident at the beginning, which is in the Tolkien version of this, which is Freycke comes to ask for Hera, who is how they decided to name Helm's daughter, hera's hand, in marriage for his son Wolf. And Helm takes this as an insult because Frecke and his chaps are from the sort of wilder edges, the dumb lindings, the wild men. If you're thinking of the Lord of the Rings films, I think it's possibly only in the extended edition, but anyway there's a sense of these wild men are allying with Saruman in that and attacking Rohan. So it's an age-old conflict that keeps bubbling up. But at this point Freca is kind of extending a potential olive branch, but Helm thinks he's wanting to take the throne, doesn't trust the olive branch. So they go outside and have a scrap and Helm bashes freckle, freckle, dies and that means that wolf, the sun, is after out for revenge and is poisoned. Really his whole mind and mindset is poisoned by his desire for revenge. So it drives him into sort of Jacob revenge tragedy, extremes of wanting to stamp out Helm's children get his revenge on Hera and so on. So that's the inciting incidents at the beginning. Okay, so we have a story here which has revenge. It has, um, a heroic woman arising to the top of her, leading her nation, uh, after everyone else has been killed. Um, I would say that just on the level of story.
12:17
While it is great to see a female centric story in the Tolkien world and hurrah for that I mean that's one of the best things about this film is that I did like to see the idea of picking up on the shield maiden. Hera is accompanied by her sort of serving lady Olwen, who then transpires is a shield maiden. It's played by the rather fine actress Lorraine Ashbourne, who British people will know from TV over here. It was bugging me who she was and then I saw her picture and thought oh yeah, I know exactly who you are, great character actor over here. That is, for me, the guts of this film and why I liked it.
13:06
It's a powerful story and I feel the tone of it is very much picked up in the rather underused song which I think appears in the trailers but isn't much used in the film itself, the Paris Paloma the Rider, which I would encourage you to go and listen to on Spotify. Very moving song, and I think that's what they were going for. The words to that song are brilliant, the feel of it is just right, but they didn't quite carry it off in the actual execution of the film, for several reasons. So let's drop down to the level of the screenplay. What did you feel about the way they were doing their script? Did that work for you?
13:56 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question, I think. So having as a framing kind of a script, framing story framing element, having aon as your narrator, that that was good and it seemed like a natural fit, uh, given that this culture, the rohan culture, is kind of based on old you know english, uh, you know culture, uh, and with that, the tradition of oral storytelling, and so this is you that's framed, that this is stories that are told around the fire, and AON is essentially telling this story to an imagined audience in Rohan Gondor, where, who knows where, we're never told.
14:40 - Julia Golding (Host)
This is one of my problems with it. So, Jacob, you're saying that and I agree with you and I'm saying yes, yes, oral storytelling, but was it ever established that this was Erwin?
14:51 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
No, that she said she didn't. She doesn't say that she's a did I miss?
14:56 - Julia Golding (Host)
did I miss a blink blink? You know where?
14:58 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
no, no, no, not at all. No, I think they're right that they're depending upon your familiarity with the voice, or, like the you know preliminary material uh, press releases that this is who's doing that and then waiting to the end to see oh, aoin, miranda, otto is doing this, but she never says I am Eowyn.
15:23 - Julia Golding (Host)
Because what I wanted right at the end is I wanted it to move to. Obviously they'd have to stay in an Eowyn as anime character, but I'd love to have seen an anime Eowyn standing in front of the barrow for Hira or some sort of banner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with some little chap or chapess, probably her daughter, maybe Then you can have Faramir come in and stand aside. We would have all absolutely melted at that point if that had happened. But they left it with this narrator, that who isn't established, we don't know who, who she is in terms of this right, and she's doing the classic telling and not showing thing, which is fine in ori or storytelling, but it is all the way through through right.
16:16 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, she pops up every so often. It wasn't just at the beginning, it's kind of a prologue and then an epilogue at the end, but every so often, and that was what was part of those. Those interesting is how they employed the use of voiceover by the narrator, um, which can be used to great effect depending on how you're using it. But you're right, that that's it. It wasn't, it wasn't tied through the script to eowen specifically and what the story has said. And that would have been that. That would have been something that created a nice kind of tie-in, natural tie-in, and, like you said, I really like your idea of having you know if this eowen's daughter teaching you're passing this on, because at the very beginning she says you know, by by her hand, many great deeds were done.
17:01
Talking about hedda um, but do not look for her tale in the old songs. There are none right. So this is this like secret kind of, kind of orally passed down among women or other folks, um, and this is like almost an oral only or a parallel tradition that's being preserved, and then to say that she aon as somebody who's kind of from this line, who is kind of butted up against this larger kind of patriarchal culture of rohan, and now she's passing on this wisdom, uh, this heroism, to her daughter. That really would have been a a really nice, touching, a kind of exclamation point on the end that this is there's hope, and there's hope in the following generation as well. Yeah, there would have been a really nice, touching, kind of exclamation point on the end that this is there's hope, and there's hope in the following generation as well.
17:40 - Julia Golding (Host)
Yeah, there would have been a cheer. I'm sure there would be a cheer and there would have been the possibility for okay, so what does that daughter? Do you know if they wanted to ban the Tolkien universe? Yeah, okay, so, um, that's the voiceover, the actual. Going to how they're talking.
18:02
I think that actually the script is quite secure, that they talk in an appropriately convincing way. I never get thrown out of the world by the way they're addressing each other and there's some wonderful moments which kind of rise to Tolkien feeling language like Helm doing his, they're quite good at. Rohan King's about to go into battle. You know, paint the dawn red with the blood of our foes does feel kind of like it could. Yeah, these snippets of Tolkien put together Someone might point out it's there somewhere. I haven't seen that particular line in that way in Lord of the Rings, but it felt right and the way the fond interaction between Hera and her brothers felt right as well. So I actually thought the detail of the script was the right register for the people of rohan. Bit of humor, um, hero heroism, um, yeah, so I, I actually quite liked. I think I'd enjoy reading the script again. I, that wasn't my problem really. Yeah, how about? What did you think on the pacing of it?
19:20 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, I didn't find myself bored. There were some slower parts, but I didn't feel that there was anything that really dragged for me. I'll be honest, I watched it in a few different installments. I serialized it to make it fit what I was doing, so I wasn't able to sit down and watch it straight through. So perhaps my mode of watching it and this is one of the benefits and drawbacks of watching things on streaming is you can watch it, you can choose to get up, like you said, get on your phone. I never got on my phone while I was, while I was watching it. But you can start and stop it and it's not meant to be consumed in a picking it up, putting it down sort of way. Um, but you can watch it, uh, a little more easily. Uh, so that's so for me, I think.
20:15
Yeah, I, I didn't notice in my you know kind of two and a half sessions of watching it. Um, there weren't, I mean when, when you were sieged in at the Hornburg, there were slower portions where there's longer dialogue, um, but, and there was enough in those points, enough mystery of what was happening, tension that was building outside of the gates, right wolf having to interact with his. You know dunlending uh leader that he was kind of his his uh. You know lieutenant uh, in a way, general.
20:53 - Julia Golding (Host)
He sounds like a character from star wars actually, doesn't he? Uh?
20:56 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
yes, it does yes it probably worked fine.
21:00 - Julia Golding (Host)
Um, so I did actually do the cinematic thing sit down and watch one bite. The one bit which I sort of hummed over, hummed and hard over is the rabid um mama kill with the watcher in the deep octopus oh yeah fight.
21:18
Now, I don't know, this is where I'm. I feel my education in, um, the traditions of japanese anime might be letting me down, but I did wonder if the kind of monster fight is something which is expected in the form, yeah, format, the Godzilla versus, I don't know, king Kong type link, yeah, um. So I did wonder about that. For me, I could completely dumb about that, yeah, um, and it seemed to me not unnecessary. But I I will stand corrected if it's required by the form and the director's style and a month easing the, the anime, the people who are coming to this as an anime film as opposed to a fucking fan. So I've just put that. For me it was, yeah, nah, not, not my, I'm not really into monster fights, but there you go, okay. So so far the story. Hooray for the female-centred story. Screenplay, pretty good. So it felt as though it followed on the kind of language in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So let's go to the animation. What was your response to seeing this realized as an anime?
22:40 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
um, I, I appreciate seeing visual elements translated from one medium into uh, into another. So, um, it's, and it's, it's fun. It's interesting seeing how that works. Um, for one of the games that I was involved, uh, working on, it was and this has officially been announced so I can can share this is that the? Um, one of our lines of games the villainous game, uh, have featured largely cartoon characters, so 2d animation and then brought on 3d animation with, with, with disney, uh 3d animation and Disney 3D animation and Pixar. So having those adapted into a painterly style was kind of like the house style for this series of games. So seeing the adaptation from traditional 2D to then painted or 3D, kind of like flattening that image to a 2D image. But now we just announced that we're doing our first live action villain that's adapted into a 2D painterly animation style. So, going from, yeah, so it's interesting for me to see what you're taking into consideration in that, moving from the dynamism of of you know, you know not photo realism, because it is, it's, it's actual you're taking still photos and putting them together in a sequence to create the illusion of uh, moving images. Um, right, so that?
24:14
So there's things that there are trade-offs from translating it into any medium, one of which is, uh like, facial expressions, right. So you have to cartoonize a person, caricaturize a person, capture, if you're wanting it to look like somebody else, getting the strongest features, um, so that it's recognizable in this different format. And so, with with the animation, what's one animation, one of the challenges is you can't capture the same sort of level of detail of emotion in a character's face. With anime is that you have to kind of heighten the emotions, the actions that are happening around something so that it it communicates more clearly what's actually happening internally, emotionally, with these people. Because you can't hold, you can't have the sort of degree of you know incredible performances that we had in Lord of the Rings with these you know incredible actors, where you can see just the tiniest you know twitch in their eyebrow, the furrow of their brow, movements of the corner of the mouth. That's something that's harder to depict in animation. So it's you're not going to have as nuanced, uh of, or layered of, a visual performance with characters. Um, so, knowing that going in and what the limitations are, it was so I appreciated visually changing that to that, not just as a replica of what a normal, if you were just to do a one-to-one of a human or animals, but in the style of anime, anime which has a different feel or flavor visually, um, I like, I like seeing them translated into those and thought that it was fun to see lord of the rings characters in that kind of hyper, hyper or like, uh, caricaturized, realistic way, um, moving through this world.
26:16
And there are things that you can do with that that you can't if you're just doing it as strictly photorealistic. For example, helm jumping off of the walls, down from the top of the walls below to save his daughter that's something that you'd have to do a lot if this was this was a film version of that to kind of for the audience to buy that. But in this kind of like animated style it's easier to buy a character jumping off the top of a wall and not crushing every bone in their body upon impact, uh, below. So I think there's there's some leeway that you can have when you move from live action to to animation, um, and so that was fun to see them kind of exploit that in the action sequences, the stylized, some of the fight scenes, yeah, and just kind of like the dynamism of that art style to see that applied to a middleware.
27:09 - Julia Golding (Host)
Okay. So this is my problem. This is my problem with the thing, which is I felt the backgrounds and some of the camera angles and the way sequences were put together were wonderful. And it's particularly pleasing that they've used what we're used to from the Lord of the Rings films. So when you see Edoras, for example, you see Edoras plus a realistic number of houses for a village which was always a bit sparse on the set of Edoras, but they've been able to sketch in a more convincing little town. I loved all that and really enjoyed sort of spotting the familiar landscapes and seeing the extension of them in this. So the backgrounds were very good, but the foreground characters were very uneven.
28:00
When you look at the stills on IMDb or even just online the poster behind me, for example it looks as though they're very full drawings, but actually there are places in it where people's features are very sketchy. It's not consistently good. And particularly poor are the horses, which is a disaster in a film about Rohan. The horses don't move like horses move and in fact, when they're galloping away, there's often this sort of gliding movement. And in fact, when they're galloping away, there's often this sort of gliding movement which is something from cartoony, which is. I just didn't like it at all so I thought it's the wrong. I came away thinking, actually, this is the wrong medium for this story. I would love them to remake this as live action with a really good actress as Hira. Do it properly with actors and I would watch that film because I think it's a strong enough story.
29:10
I think the anime undermines it and makes it underwhelming and a sort of so what. So, for example, one of the things that came out for me is, as well as her relationship with her father, she has a relationship with her brothers, who are called something like Harmer, who's the musician, and is it Haleth, who's like the warrior? I think it's that one, and it's hardly established. Uh, particularly, you see harmer once, but you're not even quite sure who he is. He's disguised, singing, and you know you don't get much time to set up the emotion that when they I'm sorry, it is not not surprising they don't last long, because that's, you know, that's the fate. There's hardly any time to establish how important they are to her. And I think with something which is acted as opposed to a character, you can do that with the same number of scenes, because if you think how the death of Theodred, how moving that is, even though we never actually see theodred alive. Right, right, uh. So I think the animation style is the problem so yeah, it's definitely it.
30:30 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
It favors, it privileges the action sequences right um at the cost of deeper character, uh, character building and character work but even a better form of animation.
30:44 - Julia Golding (Host)
There are many, many. I think it was the actual choice of anime, for this is the mistake. Um, there are other forms of animation which give a wider range of performance. So for me, I don't know, I suppose if you're an anime fan, maybe this is a good version of anime. I don't know, but it didn't seem that good to me particularly. Just take a horse and look at how a horse moves and you think you know, go back to it doesn't work, um, so that's why I'm underwhelmed by it and why it's a 2.5 stars.
31:20 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, when I actually like the story. Yeah. So if the if the primary yeah, so it seems like what you're saying is like for the primary.
31:28
if the primary audience was anime, if that's what they were hoping to grab and that's where the money would be returned, just based on anime audience, then perhaps if that's who they're wanting to please most, then great, you probably did a really good job better than I do yeah, right, but if your target audience is a typical, like four quadrant film that's appealing to a broader audience of Lord of the Rings first fans who are not just Lord of the Rings but like Lord of the Rings film fans, um, then perhaps, yeah, the visual style, like what you're expecting from the storytelling there, and the level of nuance and character, uh explorations, that that's going to be something you're going to be disappointed, uh, by based that.
32:17 - Julia Golding (Host)
So, yeah, I, I would agree with you there and there's also just some you were talking about um helm jumping down that cartoon level, because these are humans as opposed to elves. There are some elements which they don't quite tie up. So there is this question that has Helm become a kind of monster, a kind of Daphne-type figure, like a revenant-type figure haunting outside the walls with these superhuman abilities? Is somehow some sort of magic or something happened to him? It's kind of posited and then never really answered, and it could have been the snow troll or ice troll or whatever it is. Um, and maybe he's just a very strong man, and I found that these questions are sort of raised but not answered annoying.
33:25 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, you're right, and I think what I did appreciate about the building up of the legend of Helm, as he is stalking outside the walls and doing kind of these surgical well, not surgical, they seem to be rather brutal but kind of more focused attacks, forays into the enemy's camp and then coming back and then returning. I thought they did a good job depicting that it affected the morale of the Dunlending Plus folks that were at the Hornburg who were sieging them. This was a story you know, know, they're telling each other, they're scared, they're, you know, heightening what's happening themselves, but they were not shown clearly. So we're, like, allowed to see what they think of this and so, like, they're building him up to be this right. Then they used the word right, right, specifically that he is a ray, that is, you know, that can't be killed, and he does this, and so we see where that's coming from. It's not coming from the folks that are on the other side of the wall.
34:36
They're not saying that this is what's happening to him, but this is the people who he's striking fear into the hearts of, and so, um, I think, yeah, but in the animation itself, even when they're showing him punching, and if you see a still like, at least on IMDb.
34:52
One of the stills they have is just Helm, close up on his face and his eyes are whited out, which suggests that he is supernatural, has some sort of supernatural bent to what he is doing. So they're definitely playing with that. They don't come on firmly either way. Now, if this is just, if you're framing it as a story, that would, I think, be a good place to have the narrator come in and like clarify that. Like some some say x, others say y, but in the hearts of those who feared him he was always z, right. So like that, that's somewhere where having the narrator could come in and kind of tidy up that a little bit to make clear whether or not he is actually possessed of a supernatural power, or if this is just doubling down on the kind of idea of stories and how legends arise in people's minds in the moment as well as in retrospect, you know, through the ages so a couple of other little niggle points.
35:57 - Julia Golding (Host)
This is, you see, what we all sat around talking about after we watched the film. Um, another niggle point is just how unreasonable wolf is he. He's got a very good general, general Targ is actually very sensible, but he is His character flips, the switch flips and he doesn't come back at all, and so it feels there isn't a glimmer at all of anything redeeming about him, even though he's given lots of chances. So he becomes quite flat out villain, which makes him a problem. And when he dies it's kind of oh well, that's good, he's out of the way, as opposed to the sort of it could have been more emotion there because he's seen his father killed. You know, there's some reasons why, right, and then there's some.
36:53
Just a really ridiculous point is about harmer and his horse, because I think really this film could be subtitled. Men are stupid, women are wise. Uh, it was far too much sailed far too much into that territory because harmer dies because he's taken a clapped out horse from the stable into battle. Um, surely, surely there was other choices. You know, he's the king's son, he doesn't have to take one, he's gonna conk out, poor thing. So there was some sort of silly I don't know there was. I suppose it went too much to making all the men flawed and really a bit dumb or violent. And it's the women who come through, um, to save the day, because even even what's his name, freilach, the cousin who comes back to establish he becomes the new king. He's very much an afterthought. He's not really a hero, he's a bit like the, what I felt was going on there. It reminded me of Hamlet, where you've got 14 brass come in and say, oh yeah, it's all right, now I'm here, um, he was a sweet prince.
38:13 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
You know, you come in at the end to take over without actually really having been much part of the, the narrative anyway, so I've got lots of niggles with it yeah, well, I think you've highlighted something with those characters, and Hama in particular, that we didn't see him much, there wasn't much set up with him, I will say, like strong and battle hardened.
38:36
The other one has a liar and he likes singing songs, and so there's this kind of contrast of the two, which is which is part of the you know more of the source material. I think leaning into that a little bit, um, but in showing that this is this, this kind of reluctant Prince who doesn't want to be part of the battle and he just wants to sing songs and ride on his old horse and then when he you know, when the when the horse does give out and he has to stop, um, and he's kind of talking there with this horse, like, for me, that was a, you know, like it was a sweet, it was a, it was a sweet moment, um, and then I think it was tragic.
39:26 - Speaker 3 (None)
You know, it was absolutely so.
39:27 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
I didn't so so I did like that note that he was, you know, he was so committed to this, his, his favorite horse, lifelong, maybe lifelong. So. So that was, at least for me, like like seeing that's like okay, like that was. That was kind of like a nice, like little little spot, but then, like you could see, like you know, like exactly what's happening. It's more of this like fear, like dread, that like okay, they're catching him and then what are they going to do to him? Um, so that was that on the ham and on the wolf.
39:53
I think you're right that the to show him as a more multi-dimensional, um, or conflicted character would have made it more compelling. And so I think part of the challenge is, from the outset you just have Freca, wolf's father coming in, you know just kind of blustery, come in demanding. He looks, you know, visually he looks kind of grotesque because he's, you know he's larger, he's overweight, he has these, you know, skin, he has tattoos, skin markings, and just kind of coming in and just kind of gross and demanding that the king's daughter is going to marry his son, and so he sets him out clearly as this, like you know, one dimensional, one note, kind of villain, whereas you kind of see Wolf there a bit not fully-.
40:42 - Julia Golding (Host)
You see him as childhood friends as well, so you've got yeah, yeah, yeah, we do see that.
40:47 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
So I would have liked I think what I've liked, would have liked to have seen is something that showed wolf's relationship with freka a little bit more, even as they're just like coming up to the king, or wolf's reaction to his father could have been a couple lines even. You know one line of dialogue between the two to establish this is their relationship. And so if, if you saw the love, for whatever reason, that Wolf had for his father, then seeing his father, that you already see that they have an emotional connection to see that taken away from him, ripped away from him, then I think that would make it more convincing and clear that it's not just a duty that he has as a son to, by tradition, that he has to avenge his father, but if there was something that more of an emotional tie between them, then that would show how his emotions played into that, similar to his emotions. I think they did communicate a little bit, at least exposition wise that wolf was attracted to harrah and harrah and always wanted to. You know, end up with them that that was always the hope she saw and always wanted to. You know, end up with them that that was always the hope. She saw them always as just friends. But and so, like the flashback scene I thought was nice to at least establish that they're kind of friends is a bit, but I think deepening that would have been really helpful.
42:02
And to show him being more conflicted than, like you said, just kind of like flipping the switch and now he's just full evil and just, you know, running them into the ground, um, or trying to do so even after they'd technically won, when helm had died and, you know, the crown was not on his head anymore. It seemed, yeah, that that was. It was hard to engage emotionally with the film at that point. It was just kind of waiting out what's inevitably going to happen, that he's going to run his resources dry and that people of Rohan are going to escape. So it wasn't as interesting emotionally because of Wolf's kind of you're right, that kind of like one note irredeemable evil, with no, you know, unalloyed, uh, and with no real compunctions or inner conflict.
42:53
That was yeah yeah, something that I think would have deepened and enriched it yeah, yes, yeah, I, I, I.
43:03 - Julia Golding (Host)
That's. That's my problem with that character. I think the voice acting was strong throughout. I think everyone was well cast. I got no grumbles with that. Brian Cox makes a great good. You know hell hammer hand, and I thought Hira Gaia Wythe was very good at her part. You know a lovely, rich tone to her voice. All of that was, I thought was, really strong. I don't know about you Any, any, any quibbles there.
43:32 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
No, I mean I was delighted to for the cameo of uh Marian Pippin, uh Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, uh featuring as a couple of trolls the two trolls that are featured in there. That it's additional material in an attempt to kind of tie it into technically they're orcs in a company of a troll yes, something like that, anyway it's not not much exactly, yeah and they're collecting rings, which is a big wink.
43:58 - Julia Golding (Host)
Oh yeah, um saron's after rings, yeah so it's fun.
44:01 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
And to see uh the actually using christopher lee's voice, uh, at at the end to have Christopher Lee make an uh audio appearance, um, after the fact, like so that that that was fun, I will say, yeah, I didn't know what to think. I had to think about that one for a while to see if it was earned. Um showing at the very end, you know, saruman coming in and using Christopher Lee's voice. A nice, a nice cameo, but really mostly, or if not entirely, just a nod and a wink to the audience, the people who are there from the films who are there from like the Lord of the Rings films, not because that didn't really that didn't add anything at all to the story itself the self-contained story.
44:46 - Julia Golding (Host)
Yeah, and I think they got permission from the uh the estate to dig through the archives and find his voice, which is, which is great, because he was such a talky aficionado. Um, so one of the very, very strongest parts of the film is the music. So it's uh, composed by stephen gallagher based on the themes that Howard Shore created, and then I've already mentioned the rather wonderful, underused song by Paris Faloma. I thought that that was great, and I've been listening to the soundtrack and thinking this really does deepen my response to the material what's about?
45:26 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
yeah, it was. I like the reworking, yeah, that it was. You know, taking that theme, the Rohan theme, and building it out and using it in different ways. So it didn't, it didn't feel like it was derivative, it wasn't just like trying to copy Howard Shore, but yeah, I, I, I enjoyed it. I thought, yeah, that it added to it, it maintained that environment. So, like the feeling that you get that initially, that you know the howard shore was able to establish with that feel, the violins um of of rohan, then turning that into the kind of like background music for the entire film, um, yeah, it was.
46:02 - Julia Golding (Host)
It was good, I enjoyed it as well, in sum, we've got the thing here where, um, the story is pretty satisfying, not too bad. A couple of things we might want to reedit, but not too bad. A good, good choice to go with the shield maidens, some things which could have been better, but for me the problem was the choice of animation style not fitting, not just not seeing, not just not working for me, um, and but I, I do have time for the story. You know that I do have time for the story. So a bit of a miss, in the same way as the Hobbit was a bit of a miss, the material promising, but actually a bit of a miss. So the question is what is your thoughts now as this group, the Peter Jackson, philippa Boynes, fran Walsh, andy Serkis and so on take on the hunt for Gollum?
47:09 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, that's a good question.
47:10 - Julia Golding (Host)
It's a live action film and the Hunt for Gollum fits in again. It's appendices, material and bits of storytelling in Lord of the Rings, but it's a prequel to Lord of the Rings. Thoughts on, so this is yeah.
47:29 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
So yeah, to take like maybe, a bit of a step back, to then answer this or to hear I'd love to hear, julia, how you thought from this.
47:37
So this was clearly by including Miranda Otto, to imply that Eowyn is the one who is speaking you know this story. By including, you know, orcs who are searching for a ring, who say the word Mordor, to tie it, by bringing in Saruman and Christopher Lee's voice there, by including eagles, the Mumakil, the Watcher, by including those characters, they're clearly trying to tie it, kill the, you know, the, the watcher. By including those characters, they're clearly trying to tie it to the lord of the rings, larger lord of the rings films. So my question for you, uh, julia, is how much do you, how much do you feel this film for you to recontextualize the lord of the rings films for you or for, maybe for a broader audience? Was there anything that you saw like after walking away from this film that deepened an appreciation for any of the motivations? Or, you know, just like background, broader understanding of the world of the Lord of the Rings film. Like background, broader understanding of the world of the Lord of the Rings film.
48:49 - Julia Golding (Host)
Well, I think what it did do but didn't do quite right is it does explore the idea of what a shield maiden might be and where the warrior women would have been in this world, and I thought that was really. That was good. I liked that. It's not really within Tolkien, though, but if you're going to spin off something, it's in the cracks of the history. So you understand what tradition Erwin feels she is following, and I thought that was great because she is so isolated in Rohan she's the only woman we see other than background actors. So I think that that is what I value from it and, extrapolating from that, if the hunt for Gollum is able to draw out of that prequel material Arwen's story and some more feminized, have more women in the story, perhaps Aragorn's mother, for example, those sorts of characters. I think that would be interesting to see. Uh, and yeah, something new to say, because, again, you've got the problem that they have pieces of Tolkien which are sketched out. They're not fully realized plots, um, so they're going to have to fill out which characters they're choosing to put in. But they could say oh, yes, by the way, this, this world, also involves women, you know, um in, and you could even go further back, of course, into more of gollum's past, because the stores had the matriarchal families. You could go back further than that. I don't know if they'll want to do that, because, of course, in I think it's Return of the King, you see him fighting with Deagol, don't you? So they've already done a little bit of the prequel material there, but it's just two hobbit proto-hobbits on their own. It's not in their context. So there are choices they can make, but I'm going to flip the question back to you.
51:16
It seems as though, in order to ensure an audience, they're thinking of rounding up the old team. So Viggo Mortensen is being mentioned, ian McKellen is being mentioned, orlando Bloom is being mentioned. Ian McKellen is being mentioned, orlando Bloom is being mentioned. Notice, the women haven't been mentioned, but they've been mentioned Right right With the talk of using de-aging technology. Now I remember, if you watch the making of videos about the Hobbit, one of the reasons why Peter Jackson got really excited about it, because he wanted to use this new higher frame rate technology, which turned out to be one of the things that made the Hobbit look really odd, because eyes don't read it as real. Um, and also the over, you know, spreading out the material over too long was also another problem there, and I'm worried that the team are going to get really excited about this. Digital technology use older actors to reprise roles which they did really well 20 years ago and they're not brave enough to say let's go and find the new Viggo.
52:32 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah, pass the torch.
52:34 - Julia Golding (Host)
The new Orlando Bloom's and the new Ian McKellen's. We surely the torch does need to be passed on, or else give somebody else a chance, right? This is my feeling. This is my feeling, actors, without having like masses of digital um post-production work.
52:56 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
That's my feeling yeah, and that's good and that's yeah. So I see that the conundrum, uh that they're in, which is they want to capture the previous audience but also try to make it accessible for other people as well, and so if you lean too far on the nostalgia, then that's not going to be enough to take you in, or it's just going to age out as soon as those characters are too old to play, even digitally, versions of themselves. Yeah, or are you willing to do something different? So this is what they chose to do with Rings of Power, which we've talked about previously. Is recasting an Elrond, right? So Hugo Weaving is this iconic character, right?
53:44
Galadriel, cate Blanchett how do you find somebody you can't they could have? Presumably could have used Hugo we? Um, kate Blanchett, how do you find somebody you can't they could have? Presumably could have used Hugo Weaving or Kate Blanchett if they would have had the budget which it sounds like with Amazon. They did um to just use those characters and de-age them to keep that, but they used new characters, um, uh, which for some was probably a little jarring because in their mind, the platonic ideal of uh, right Of Galadriel is Cate Blanchett and I, which I personally happen to believe, um, but that but, but to see the difference it takes there.
54:18
There is a learning curve there, but it does make for a more convincing. You're right that, like sometimes the technology, or knowing that this is not actually how they look, or if it's not entirely seamlessly convincing, there's always going to be something that is causing you to, you know, suspend your belief in the actor of the performance. But yeah, it would. It would certainly be nice to see somebody who has know, in the same universe of of Viggo Mortensen, which I don't know that you can, what I've heard. You cannot replicate Viggo ever, worlds without end, just on how unique of an individual he is, but find somebody else who is equally as unique, who is still kind of in that same general vein, um, I would love to see a chance given to other actors to do something really important, right and really meaningful as a way to help them to further the story in the world.
55:21 - Julia Golding (Host)
The Star Wars universe have had to deal with this. So Ewan McGregor being cast to replace um oh alec guinness thank you, alec guinness. Um, nobody goes. I hate ewan mcgregor. They just say, oh right, play by a younger actor, and he he shades his voice to so that there is a feeling of continuity. Right, right, I'm just worried that all the budget's going to go on Peter Jackson aiming to escape Uncanny Valley because, digital enhancements really still read odd.
56:05 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Yeah.
56:06 - Julia Golding (Host)
The deepfake thing. You don't need to spend the money on that. You could spend the money getting a new actor yeah giving your older actors cameos or some sort of role or something yeah if you want to keep the team together, but actually letting a younger band come out anyway. So they're not listening to us? I don't suppose they don't?
56:30
yeah, but I think too much, too much fun is riding on this um, but I would you know, I, particularly in the case of ian mckellen, who's in his 80s, um, if he's really you know why not the chap who plays him in the rings of power does doing a pretty good job. You know, you can find somebody who can do it well and be able to ride a horse and hunt for Gollum properly, yeah.
56:54 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
And I think if, if they, if they hope to escape, they can never escape the gravity of the original films. So that's that's, that's a given, so it's the. The question is, how are you going to approach it? So the question is, how are you going to approach it If you want to make this as just another continuation and extension of that, or are you wanting to set this as a film that, in its own right, somebody can come to, can be completely captivated by? Because Lord of the Rings was 20 plus years ago and so there's a new generation of film goers.
57:31 - Speaker 3 (None)
you know audience members who you cast.
57:34 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
Right, yeah, yeah.
57:35
You cast for the new film.
57:36
If you want to appeal to a new audience, that's a great way to do that is find compelling actors who are of the age of these characters as they're appearing in the story, and not just de-aging the actors who played these roles 20, 20 plus years ago um, that could be.
57:52
And to make sure that the story itself is tight, right, is, it's self-contained, it's fulfilling, it's immersing.
57:58
And then, if that's, if that's your kind of gateway for younger audiences to then go in and and and be captivated by the films, to even go see extended you know, to then be willing to give the hobbit a chance or war of the Rohirrim to to step into the broader Tolkien world and and heaven, and maybe even they pick up a book and and read, you know, lord of the rings and and pick that and get immersed there.
58:21
So, but the only way to do that is not by using is just kind of going back to the well and just kind of retreading the same tropes and using the same actors. It's to find something that's energizing, right and compelling, and a story that speaks to that, that ties into the source material but also is able to, then is able to speak and like a primal, almost like archetypal uh level to uh, a newer audience, and that, if you can do that while also deepening, uh you know, the experience of those long-time fans, um then that is the best possible outcome of, of something like this, which I'm going to hope for, yeah, and that's all I can really do as the film poster says, hope has yet to abandon these lands.
59:09 - Julia Golding (Host)
Yeah, thanks, Jacob.
59:11 - Jacob Rennaker (Guest)
But it's getting real.
59:18 - Speaker 3 (None)
Thank you very much for talking to me about the War of the Rohirrim.
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