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I’m obsessed with the bit in the Hobbit films where Thranduil tells Legolas to go find Aragorn— because if you care enough to dive through the layers of obscure knowledge it takes to understand the timeline, then you’re also the exact kind of LOTR Film Nerd who knows why the moment actually doesn’t make sense.

Tiny brain: “oh cool Legolas will find Aragorn”

Small brain: “ummm actually in the first Hobbit film it says that The Hobbit take place 60 years before Bilbo’s 111th birthday in lord of the rings? So wouldn’t Aragorn be a baby?”

Medium brain: “ummm actually if you watched the extended cut of The Two Towers, it’s made clear that Aragorn is a descendant of Numenor who has an abnormally long lifespan. He is 87 at the time of Lord of the Rings; 60 years earlier, he was 27, a very reasonable age for him to have made a name for himself as a ranger.”

Large Brain: “Ummmm actually in the book it’s confirmed that there’s a twenty-year gap between Bilbo’s 111th birthday party disappearance to Frodo leaving the Shire with the Ring. The Hobbit quest happened 60 years before Bilbo’s famous birthday party. 87-60-20=7 years old. Aragorn would be a lil guy. He would not yet be Strider, the timeline makes no sense.”

Giant brain: “ummm actually the screenwriters have confirmed that the 20 year gap is not canon in the film’s universe. First, it’s really not portrayed as a 20-year-gap in the films— it’s written and shot as if it were a couple months. The screenwriters were also aware of the implications of removing it. For example, in a behind the scenes commentary they discussed how their portrayal of Frodo is much younger than the version in the book —because they removed the 20-year gap. Film!Frodo is an innocent youth going out on his own for the first time, in contrast to the book’s more mature adult— and that deeply affects his characterization throughout the trilogy.

We can consider Legolas’s journey to meet Strider an official canon confirmation that the 20-year gap did not happen in the film’s universe. So the timeline makes sense!”

Galaxy brain: “okay, but even if the timeline works with the LOTR films, this new backstory doesn’t work with the LOTR films’ portrayal of Legolas’s character.

In the Hobbit films, it’s retconned that Legolas went to find Aragorn because he was so overwhelmed by all the death he witnessed in the Battle of the Five Armies. It’s retconned that he has a mother who died when he was young, and a grief-stricken father, and that he’s constantly Angsting over both. it’s also retconned that Legolas was in unrequited love with a grieving woman who loved a dwarf tragically killed in battle. Legolas feels he can no longer stay in the Woodland Realm because of all this loss, which is why he decides to find a new purpose with Aragorn.

But in the Lord of the Rings films, part of Legolas’s character arc is that he’s witnessing death and mortality up close *for the first time in his immortal life.* He’s a fae magical immortal who’s not used to death affecting him personally. This character arc is unique to the films. (it is not reallllllly in the books, and doesn’t jive with the way Tolkien writes elves in general— but it is the way the films chose to rewrite Legolas’s storyline. )

film!Legolas reacts to Gandalf’s death with bewilderment, acting lost, as if he’s experiencing emotions that are entirely new to him. This acting decision is discussed explicitly in behind the scenes materials. Legolas has rarely encountered this kind of death, not in a way so close to him personally, so it’s hard for him to even comprehend. Legolas’s unfamiliarity with mortal death continues through Boromir’s death and into the Two Towers, where he gradually grows more worried over the lives of Aragorn/ the people of Rohan. He reacts with bewildered anger when told to leave Aragorn for dead, and then lashes out at Aragorn when he thinks that everyone at Helm’s deep will die (only to receive the response: “then I shall die as one of them.”)

This character arc ends in Return of the King, with a famous bit of dialogue that does not appear in the books. Gimli says he “never thought he’d die side by side with an elf,” and Legolas cheerfully responds “what about side by side with a friend?” Mortal death goes from something Legolas finds distant/unfamiliar, to something he accepts as a natural part of living among mortals.

This is similar to the changes the films make to Arwen’s character, vs the original book. In the films, both of the “young” elves have arcs about encountering death up close, and yet continuing to love the mortal world. The films contrast them with the “older” wearier elves like Elrond and Galadriel. Obviously this theme is more of a focal point in Arwen’s plotline, but it’s also relevant to Legolas. (And! In early drafts of the Two Towers, Arwen joined Aragorn at Helm’s Deep— I have a theory that the scenes where Legolas worries over Aragorn’s death were originally written for Arwen.)

So!

if you care enough about the Lord of the Rings films to understand that “there is no twenty year gap,” that Frodo is a young ingenue instead of middle-aged adult, that the films have their own storyline/characters/timeline separate from the books, and that therefore the timeline of Legolas meeting Strider can make sense …

….then you also probably care that Legolas had a specific character in the LoTR films, and this new backstory contradicts it.

Giving Legolas a new core motivation where “he’s overwhelmed by angst/grief from encountering too much death” undercuts his entire characterization in LOTR, which was meant to be about encountering mortal death up close for the first time. It also cheapens really impactful moments from LOTR— like Orlando Bloom’s performance after the death of Gandalf, where he really captures the idea that this fae immortal is struggling to comprehend the ordinary human emotion of grief.

And that’s why so many critics get that moment in The Hobbit wrong XD. People always try to critique it from a timeline/continuity perspective, when in reality, the timeline continuity makes perfect sense!!! The actual problem is the way it poorly attempts to retcon Legolas’s entire characterization. And IMHO that’s a much more serious flaw than a continuity error. It’s not “making a math mistake,” it’s undercutting the meaning of Legolas’s story in LOTR.

Super Mega Galaxy Brain: “nothing in the hobbit films is canon except the pieces I like”

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"kind of a shitty wizard" is such a character defining moment. the bullying of jenkins is the bedrock of tres horny boys. if you don't love taz at "and that word is my fucking name jenkins" you don't deserve it at "phantasmal and resplendent" okay.

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Spent tonight at a local short film festival. One of the shorts was made by two 12 year olds in their backyard and it was the best short of the entire night

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hey do you have any feelings about the obscure early modern playwright sir john suckling?

hey this feels like such a trap and it's driving me crazy because there are precisely TWO people in the world who could send me such an ask but I'm not sure which one this is.

You know what? I have SO many Sir John Suckling feelings but mostly I'm his number one apologist. Does The Goblins make sense? No. Is it fun as hell? Yes! Does it secretly fill me with dramaturgical joy when I'm the only person in the rehearsal room who has any idea what is going on in a scene? Also yes! Don't @ me, Suckling is better than Jonson if only for the fact that he's infinitely more meme-able and less pretentious.

I like it when actors suffer and audiences leave the theatre saying "what the hell" because I am a cruel and capricious dramaturg

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some beetles cant fly but they dont mind. they are more armored than agile and in certain situations this is desirable

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i’ve always thought reddit is a hellscape but my friend just sent me this and yk what maybe i’ll give it a chance

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This is killing me

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It has social anxiety okay ;-;

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(walks out of movie theater covered in blood) i mean it was fine i guess

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Do you want me to get Doctor Hilbert for you? It's tempting, but I've got this feeling it'll be pretty much the same conversation you and I just had.

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"It will knock her out for the next twelve hours, plenty of time for the talent show window to elapse." Love Hilbert's assumption, which Eiffel does not contest, that Minkowski is such a stickler for policy and procedure that she will immediately stop making them do the talent show if they exit the official window for such activities instead of just calling a raincheck and making them do it the next day.

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kepler threatening anne to provoke eiffel into attacking him (and knowing it will work) in into the depths, and eiffel's gut response to cutter bringing up his daughter in pagliacci - don't you dare even say her name, you slimy, stuck-up motherfu- - really stands out in the context of a man so otherwise committed to nonviolence.

eiffel gets angry, sure, and he's impulsive, and protective of the people he cares about, but, say... getting angry at kepler for usurping minkowski as mission commander, or getting angry at maxwell for the way she treats hera, just doesn't have the same connotations. those people are his adult peers (well, minkowski is technically his superior, but he respects her as a friend way more than he respects her as a boss) who can (and do) tell him, "it's okay, back off" and, even if he doesn't like it, he trusts them.

there is something significant about how that gut response, that jump to violence, is a uniquely parental instinct for him; it only happens when someone threatens his daughter. and, crucially, it's never an immediate threat - you can't really say he's just protecting her, because she's not even there. he knows this, and he's embarrassed after the fact. we don't know what "he turns into a bit of a good old-fashioned monster" fully means, but i think, in that, you can see the glimpse of a man who would kidnap his own daughter.

pretty often, i'll see people bring up that eiffel left a voice message for his daughter, his daughter who is deaf because of his own actions, and i think... on one hand, i think it's significant that anne is deaf and eiffel is the radio guy who likes hearing himself talk; it's a perfect symbol of the wedge his actions drove between them. on the other hand, i don't think eiffel leaving a voice message is just a product of the medium, nor do i think it's just him forgetting / another microaggression / etc. i think eiffel loves his daughter deeply, and i think that love is selfish in a way it's hard for him to let go of. i think eiffel feels doomed to be who he is, to say, "this is all i know how to do." i think eiffel knew there was a very good chance that message might not make it back at all, and even if it did... i think there's a way in which it was at least as much for him, for his own closure and finality, than it was in her interests. and if that file transferred over, if he heard it post-memory loss, if that's part of why he knows he needs to try to "set things right" back on earth... there's something about that that stands out to me, both the helplessness and the inability to express his love in the way that his daughter needs. it's the whole reason he's there in the first place.

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Was failing to go to sleep last night and thinking like. Eiffel is categorically unable to think of his crew as screw ups, he's the screw up and they're all amazing talented badass etc. even though you can make a case for any/all of them being kind of failures? Minkowski was rejected by NASA repeatedly, Hera's the rogue AI, and Lovelace lost her entire crew that she was responsible for. Eiffel knows all of this, but it doesn't even count as a blip on the radar. All his mistakes are evidence of how useless he is, but he only measures his friends by their successes. Idk, makes me think.

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hello wolf 359 fandom.

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would anybody like some eiffel expressions

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Not to diss on Daniel Jacobi but why do they need a demolitions expert on a deep space mission. Is he a necessity for his expertise or did they just bring him along because they think he's a pretty cool guy

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People sick of therapyspeak in indie stories should listen to Wolf 359 because everyone has so much wrong with them and refuses to admit it. The comparatively straight laced by the book commanding officer gassed her crewmates so she'd get a week of peace and she's not even a little bit sorry about it.