Some of you might have noticed something kind of funny about people.
Almost none of them like Treasure Planet.
And, considering I joined this fandom well over three years
ago by now, this comes as absolutely no surprise to me – and chances are, if
you’ve known about this film for longer than, say, a day, it fails to surprise
you, too. I mean, we’ve all heard the reasons, haven’t we – valid though they are, it’s depressing to hear them, the millions upon
millions upon millions of them.
“Sorry, the sci-fi
just wasn’t my thing.”
“I liked it okay, but
I can’t see myself ever watching it again.”
“The animation was
good, but I didn’t really like the rest of it.”
“It was…sort of weird
to me.”
“It doesn’t measure up
to Treasure Island.”
“It just wasn’t my cup
of tea.”
Or – and here’s the one that gets to me:
“I just really didn’t like the main kid.”
The words come across as pretty innocent – it’s just a matter of preference, it’s just their opinion, live and let live, nothing wrong with disagreeing…and there’s not. There’s really, really not. You can hate Jim Hawkins as much as you want. But you can look me in the eye and can you tell me why you hate him? Can you tell me why, exactly, that’s the argument I’ve heard the most out of any of them? Can you tell me why, in my 3+ years in this wonderful fandom, in the thousands of days I’ve now spent promoting the shit out of this film every chance I get, can you tell me why that argument is the one I find myself dealing with the most? Can you look at me and can you tell me why you hate Jim Hawkins? Can you do that?
Because here’s the thing – I can tell you why I love him. And I got shit to back up me up.
Let’s get down to business. Let me tell you why I love Jim Hawkins – every habit, every quirk, every mannerism, every virtue, and every flaw. Let’s plunge right in.
He’s kind.
Sure, you can roll your eyes if you want to, but honestly? Being really, truly, simply, genuinely nice is such a rare quality in the world, and Jim has – and displays – this quality in abundance. I mean, for one thing, bringing Billy Bones to the Benbow when he seems ninety percent sure the guy’s just crazy? Yet he takes a chance anyway, because the sailor’s sick, the sailor’s injured, it’s raining really hard, he shouldn’t be out in this in his state, here, give me your arm, let me help you, you can come in out of the rain and stay in my house for a bit.
And what about the time he met that half-mad robot on Treasure Planet and, despite the fact that BEN blatantly oversteps his boundaries a good ten times (”Will you let go of me?/Stop touching me!”/Will you quit hugging me?”) or so within the first five minutes of their introduction, despite the fact that he is very obviously unhinged from all that time alone, despite the fact that BEN is loud and attention-drawing and the word stealthy isn’t in his vocabulary, despite the fact that he’s putting the captain and the doctor and himself in peril by doing so, Jim allows BEN to come with him – all he needs is to hear about the robot’s century of solitude, his loneliness, his desolation, and he just drops everything and says, “If you’re gonna come along…”
And don’t even get me started on the deleted scenes – such as the one where he offers to fix this child’s scooter, even though he and this kid have never met before, never even spoken to one another, and yet he offers to fix this scooter because aww the kid’s sad let me fix it for you.
Because, beneath that black jacket and that dark scowl of his, Jim has a huge, huge heart and it’s there and it’s evident for anyone willing to look. Because Jim just legitimately cares about other people, and there’s no ulterior motive, he doesn’t ask for compensation, he doesn’t expect anything in return, he just genuinely likes helping others.
(And as I don’t happen to have an image on hand for the child’s scooter bit mentioned above, have a few bonus pictures of times when Jim was nice)
Comforting a frightened Morph despite the fact that his life is in the most immediate and intense danger
And how about the time he lets a pirate – the leader of a mutiny in which he was supposed to be killed – walk the fuck away from him because he believes there’s good in Silver?
Don’t get me started on this kid and his kindness. Don’t. Get me started.
And he’s smart.
I don’t mean passing-his-finals-with-flying-colors oh-haha-that-was-a-total-seat-of-my-pants-test can’t-believe-I-pulled-through-with-a-B I-was-pulling-answers-out-of-my-ass kind of smart.
I mean completely, incredibly, off-the-charts, blow-your-mind brilliant. He might be failing his high school classes, but it’s certainly not due to the challenge; he doesn’t put any effort into his work because he just doesn’t care. I mean, we even hear Sarah state that he built his first solar surfer when he was eight. So let’s let that sink in for a second.
This kid
was no older than that when he built one of these
Just let that sit a minute. He built one of those gizmos
when he was eight fucking years old. Hell, I’m not one hundred percent sure I understand them now, and he was eight and he understood them so well he could make them. (Sure, he ultimately uses it to cause trouble and ride straight into restricted areas, but it still makes him pretty brainy.)
And not to mention, when Silver tries to teach him how to steer a skiff, he doesn’t even let the guy finish his sentence before he starts powering it up. Despite the other’s best attempts to stop him, Jim ignites the engine and sends them whirling straight into a comet. He fucking steers a boat – with limited knowledge, considering Silver didn’t get a chance to teach him everything – he steers a boat into a comet, and rides that comet to its end and does it without ever missing a beat, without ever throwing himself or his companion out of the boat, without ever messing up or getting hurt or hurting Silver or anything, just gets the hang of it right off the bat.
And at the end of it, all Silver says is, “If I could maneuver a skiff like that when I was your age, they’d be bowing in the streets when I walked by today!”
Oh, and did I mention he powers up a century-old crashed boat in sixty seconds? No? Well, he did that, too.
Oh, and he also made another solar surfer, this time at fifteen, out of the useless parts of their failing ship while the planet explodes around them.
And, when said surfer begins failing, threatening to send him plummeting to his death in a raging river of lava bubbling and frothing beneath him, he keeps it going – literally rams it into the wall, striking it against the metal surface until enough friction occurs to power the thrusters again, and he does this all in the space of thirty seconds.
Oh, and he figured out where Flint’s trove was hidden before anyone else, just based on the fragmented bits and pieces he’d picked up from other people
And did I mention yet that he was the only one who could open the map leading to the planet?
There were people thirty and forty years his senior trying to figure it out
and he figures it out in seconds
And he’s brave
Remember when he casually faced down a whole crew of pirates three and four times over, all in the space of twenty-four hours?
And how about the fact that he refuses, at great risk to himself, to open the map for the pirates – until Silver threatens the captain and the doctor?
Or when he’s fixing that hundred-year-old boat we discussed earlier, and tells BEN to leave without him if he can’t get away in the next five minutes?
Oh, and when the star Pellucid goes supernova on their voyage and the hands are sent to secure the solar sails, not only does Jim immediately ascend, no hesitation
he also spots Silver, who followed him there, fall from his perch, and literally fucking throws himself down onto the wood and hauls the cook – who, to be honest, has a good hundred pounds on Jim and probably almost took the kid down with him, and definitely dragged the kid closer to the edge than would be advised – back up to safety.
And later in the film, he receives an order from the captain to scout ahead and find them a better place to hide – and even though the pirates were spotted seconds earlier, circling the skies in a longboat, Jim expresses no hesitation, simply obeys.
And, oh, uh, you remember that solar surfer we talked about earlier, the one he constructed as the planet bursts into flames and burns down around him?
Yeah, here he is riding it through the fires and eruptions and random debris, here he is casually risking his life to save everyone else, most of them being pirates who would have loved to see him dead.
Yep, don’t mind him, he’s just saving everyone else. He might die doing it, but damn, he’s doing it anyway.
But wait. I did promise to discuss his flaws as well, and, so far, I haven’t been making good on that promise, have I?
Fear not, for Jim Hawkins is far from perfect and it’s time for us to explore the reasons why.
He’s impulsive
While most readily refer to this as a “Mary Sue trait” and “not really a flaw” , I can’t help but disagree; if we consider it an undesirable trait in a real person, why on earth would we think it little more than a cute quirk in a fictional character? Believe me when I say, Jim’s consistent failure to think before he acts is not a charming little thing – it’s a flaw, plain and simple.
For all Jim’s kindness, for all his bravery and unfailing ability to think fast on his feet, he is impulsive as all hell.
Like when he, in his first meeting with Silver, throws out several thinly-veiled accusations – showing his cards, playing his whole hand right off the bat on the off chance that his opponent might show his, too.
Unsurprisingly, of course, Silver does not rise to the bait – meaning Jim revealed everything to the man who will later become his enemy, in a sense losing the only advantage he really held, whereas Silver lost nothing and now has additional information to help him on his way. And all this could have been avoided had Jim just kept his mouth shut.
And that time when he attempted to eavesdrop on a couple of the other hands cause he thought they were acting suspicious
But it’s not long before they notice him and immediately shut up – meaning Jim has now given his suspicions away to four different people, four people whom he suspects. (Five, if you count Oxy and Moron as two.)
Or how about when they find that map we talked about earlier, and when he opens it up and realizes it leads to Treasure Planet, his first thought is to follow it? Like, this could be anything. A trap, a red herring, a fool’s errand, and Jim just throws himself headlong into it because look there’s a slim chance it could be treasure let’s go right now!
I mean, there’s just no room for doubt: Jim is super impulsive, and that’s not a good quality to have. Sure, it gets shit done, but cautious people get shit done too, and they probably get it done better because they’re not making snap decisions every 2.5 seconds.
And Jim is selfish.
Sure, we all love him. Well, some of you hate him, and some of you love to hate him, but the sentiment stands; we all love Jim, but you can’t love somebody for too long without noticing his flaws. And Jim has his flaws.
And it’s especially obvious in scenes like this
where we see that Jim was just out on a joyride while his mother visibly struggles to run the inn by herself.
It’s obvious he uses that solar surfing hobby to escape, to distract him from his problems after a tough day, but this, in turn, suggests that he feels his problems at the moment are more important than Sarah’s, and so puts himself before his mother.
And he makes things harder on her than probably anyone else in her life, going out and getting in trouble all the time and bringing the police to her door
Not only is this probably really bad for business, it’s also likely embarrassing and obviously upsetting for poor Sarah – yet Jim offers no apology, offers almost nothing beyond the words, “Mom, it’s no big deal!”
And when they open the map and realize where it leads, Jim jumps on the chance to leave Sarah
Not just their lonely little planet, but Sarah, he wants to leave her. And though his intentions here are honorable (”We could rebuild the Benbow a hundred times over!” / “I’ll make you proud!”) it still fails to completely sugarcoat the fact that he left her there, lured away by the promise of adventure.
Because Jim is selfish.
He’stouchy, and defiant as all hell.
Sure, this is a flaw. Sure, it’s not a great quality to have. Sure, it holds him back more than anything, and it probably gets him in more trouble than it’s worth – but I still tip my hat to Disney for introducing this flaw at all. It has been proven in the past that children with absentee parents – particularly boys with neglectful fathers – tend to become obstinate teens with no regard for authority, and I’m just so proud of them for doing their research on that one.
Admittedly, however, this quality does cause him more trouble than it’s worth. I mean, he makes himself an enemy out of the scariest alien aboard in the first five minutes, all because he has to have the last word.
As a matter of fact, when I think about it, Jim has single-handedly gotten on the bad side of every one of these pirates on board this ship, with the obvious exception of Silver, and he does it all because he is just that feisty.
On the other hand, however, his pluck is the first thing Silver notices – and likes – about him. It’s obvious that while the pirate captain plans to work the spunk out of him, he can’t help but respect it, too.
Like, for instance, on Treasure Planet, when Jim refuses to allow Silver to leave without him
there’s an instant where Silver looks like he’s about to argue
and he could, he could just hold the captain, the doctor, or even BEN at gunpoint, and chances are, Jim would likely obey just to spare those he cares for. Despite the fact that Silver is clearly the one in power here, he gives into Jim’s demands – because, even if he doesn’t like it, Jim’s defiance is something he can respect. They may be enemies now, but Silver recognizes and respects that Jim makes a worthy enemy.
And let’s not forget that he’s stubborn.
Seriously, once he’s found something to fight for, he’ll fight for that, and he’ll get it, no matter what it takes, and there’s nobody in the world that can change his mind. If he gets it in his head that he wants to do something, if he gets it in his head that he should do something, he’ll do it, no matter what.
And in some cases, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means he has a strong sense of right and wrong and knows the difference between the two, and will do what he believes to be right, regardless of what other people say. He has a moral code, and a strong one, at that, and he rarely deviates from it. And this is actually a good thing when, say, there’s a treasure-hunting pirate captain attempting to bribe him into betraying the captain and the doctor and handing over the map.
And, when this fails and Silver resorts to trying to frighten him into submission, the kid doesn’t even blink. He can’t be bought, and he sure as hell can’t be intimidated.
Of course, this isn’t always a good quality to have; while it does make him more resistant to tactics such as temptation, it also makes him inflexible and, in some cases, extremely resistant to change, even when that change would be for the better.
But that iron will has another advantage.
It makes him hardworking.
Whether it’s as trivial as swabbing the deck, or as enormous as seeking out a legendary treasure trove, if Jim sees the point in a task – if he sees, for himself, why it’s worthy of his time – he will put his all into it, no questions asked. So though most would call him a delinquent, and while the robo-cops on Montressor outright tell him that he is a loser
Jim is actually extremely industrious and capable – he just doesn’t always show it. But it’s there, if you know how to look.
Like when Silver leaves him with this huge pile of dishes in the galley
and he just picks up his brush and keeps right on going
and in fact, is so determined to finish up that damn stack that he ends up falling asleep in the galley, head resting on the pot in his hand
but the dishes around him are gleaming.
Or how about when he was failing at school at the beginning of the film, and by the end, he has graduated from the prestigious Interstellar Academy?
Can you imagine how much work it must have taken to get himself into that Academy? I mean, how long did it take for him to pull those grades up, to convince others he was really serious about this, and can you imagine how much work it took to get through the Academy once he got there? But Jim got there anyway, and he did graduate, and he did do all that amazing stuff, and he did it because he works hard.
Oh and remember
He was lost
Though by the end of the film Jim is high-spirited and confident, we know from the beginning that it wasn’t always so. His father’s absence left a hole in him, a hole he felt it was too big to fill – a hole that left him feeling worthless and rejected, it left him feeling angry and defeated, and it left him thinking he wasn’t good enough. It left him with a strong, deep-seated fear of abandonment, and more than that, it left him searching – searching and searching and never quite finding the missing piece he so desperately needed.
Jim felt he had no future; Jim felt he wasn’t worth a future; Jim didn’t really know where he was going, and that’s the kind of relatability I’ve come to expect from Dreamworks. I don’t go into a Disney film expecting to find real characters, so this came as a pleasant surprise.
And something else I’ll probably never get over
Jim is sensitive
So, this one actually sounds funny. I mean, I just said earlier how selfish Jim is, right? How he’s always putting himself before Sarah? Yeah. That whole argument still stands. It’s just that Jim isn’t all selfish, all the time. Can he be selfish? Yes. Extremely. Is he selfish? Sometimes. But he’s also, as mentioned before, a genuinely nice person. A person with honest empathy. His instances of self-absorption don’t cancel that out.
Now, while most define a sensitive person as “one who understands and feels for others” – and while Jim certainly does that, too – we’ve already tackled that. We’ve talked about Jim as a compassionate and thoughtful individual, and I’m not here to talk about it again, though I could.
No, there are drawbacks to feeling for others, and I’m here to talk about them.
I mean, Jim cares about other people – Jim feels deeply for people, deeply enough to welcome complete strangers into his house and offer lonely individuals a place at his side, Jim just feels for people even if he’s never experienced their hardships for himself. And if he can feel so strongly for strangers, if he can look upon a person he hardly knows and want to help ease their pain, if his heart squeezes upon seeing others’ suffering, how much do you think it hurts when he experiences his own?
His father, for example. An indifferent, neglectful parent, the heartache they cause, it would sting even the most impervious – but for somebody as thin-skinned and tender-hearted as Jim, it absolutely devastates him. And when the man finally gives up on his family, leaving behind his wife and their eight-year-old, it just tears the kid apart.
As a matter of fact, it hurts Jim so deeply that it takes him seven years just to realize that it wasn’t his fault, or anyone’s; his father’s rejection caused him so much pain that he is well into his adolescence before he can even begin to accept that he’s gone.
But this isn’t just one instance; it’s not merely a festering childhood wound, no. Jim takes the slightest slip-up straight to heart – and upon believing he caused Mr. Arrow’s death, he spends what appears to be hours beating himself up for this perceived failure.
And ultimately, he might have continued indefinitely had Silver not intervened and comforted him.
And of course, less than twenty-four hours later, Silver tells his bloodthirsty crew – and, unwittingly, an eavesdropping Jim – that his attentions were all for show, that he had to be nice to the kid to keep him from suspecting the crew of anything shady, he had to win the lad’s trust or risk his suspicion…and Jim really believes it, and, in fact, is so hurt, that he appears to take a moment to swallow back tears.
Jim is just so easy to hurt.
And to be honest, it’s great; it makes his empathy for others more believable – after all, if his own wounds have left such obvious marks, who’s to say another’s tribulations won’t win over his sensitive heart?
And, hey, hey, don’t forget
He’s just a kid
I mean, he’s doing all this awesome shit, he’s building solar surfers
and saving lives
and working his ass off and being super kind and impulsive and defiant and selfish and everything, he’s doing all this, and he’s only fifteen years old. Like. He’s fifteen. He’s not even an adult yet. He’s not even of legal age. He’s just casually amazing at fifteen, but what do you think he’ll be like in five years, ten years, twenty?
As Silver says, he really is going to rattle the stars.
Now let’s review before we go:
Jim is kind.
Jim is smart.
Jim is brave.
Jim is impulsive.
Jim is selfish.
Jim is touchy and defiant as all hell.
Jim is stubborn.
Jim is hardworking.
Jim was lost.
Jim is sensitive.
Jim is just a kid.
Just please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t ever forget Jim Hawkins.
tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”
it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.
he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself – i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.
maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.
people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.
it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.
Seriously, the Dursleys would have not only let her drown, they would have let her drown so they could blame Harry for it afterwards. (Although the loudest “Potter, too busy winning to care about anyone else” voice in his head would probably be Snape’s.)
Incidentally this is even more clear in the first and second books, to me. Because Harry DID go to adults and say someone’s trying to steal the stone, and what did the adults do? Did they say, yes, we know, we’re taking precautions, real, good protective measures? Noooo. Did they say, thank you, we’ll look into it, even? Noooo. They said, don’t be silly, it’s not your concern, nothing to see here, little boy, run along and do your schoolwork.
And they said this to a boy whose entire life experience has never involved an adult that can be depended on. And they lied, lied about their own knowledge, said “that’s silly” when they know “that’s true.” And they were too convincing: since he as well knew the truth, what they ended up convincing him was that they didn’t know. And it fit right in with his expectations. Adults, whether actively malicious (the Dursleys, Snape) or well-meaning but oblivious (Mrs. Figg, Harry’s primary-school teachers, the other Hogwarts teachers), can’t be depended on. If anything’s got to be done, Harry and his friends have got to do it himself.
Second book, same thing—they’re headed for the teacher’s lounge to tell the teachers it’s a basilisk, and overhear the teachers saying that Ginny Weasley’s been taken by the monster, and they need to close Hogwarts, and their only plan to rescue Ginny is to send Gilderoy Lockhart—knowing full well he’s a fraud, a coward, and no match for a Cornish pixie, let alone a basilisk. Once again, the adults are flat-out useless and if anyone is going to save Ginny, it’s gotta be Harry and Ron.
Notably, this is after another ball-drop on the part of the adults: when Harry’s been framed for underage magic and locked up in his room and starved by people who have every intention of keeping him out of Hogwarts forever, it’s other kids, Ron, Fred, and George, who go rescue him, and when the adults find out, one of them punishes and scolds and the other is only interested in how his car worked.
In book three, we meet a couple of adults that are competent, helpful, and willing to listen—Sirius and Remus—and the other adults come in and the end result is, one’s fired and the other has to go on the run lest he have his soul sucked out by dementors. Dumbledore does listen and give them the necessary hints, but it’s Harry, and Hermione this time, who have to do the work.
And then in Order of the Phoenix, in comes the smothering bullshit about how he’s too young to be in the Order and needs to leave everything to the grownups, after the grownups have dropped the ball four years running and are batting zero on the trust-and-listening factor—no wonder he threw a tantrum, I would’ve thrown a tantrum, he was fucking entitled to one.
“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” said Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels.” Harry remained quite still as the impact of these words hit him. Then he turned on the spot to face her. “I forgot,” he said.
– OotP
“he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts… it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.” – @gaelissfelin
…this. Harry sees people as: a. him and people he trusts, b. people to be evaded, and c. people in need of help. When he gets backed into a corner (Voldemort inside his head, heading down the trapdoor alone, off to the DoM alone, into the Forest alone), the circle of people he trusts shrinks down from the DA/OotP, to the Trio, to just himself. Harry never wants to be a hero or gets off on it, he’s just a person who’s suffered from the bystander effect and doesn’t want to be a bystander himself.
…that’s what it is, why it’s useful, I think. It’s not a hero complex, it’s an anti-bystander complex. Sometimes it only takes one person standing up.
When I was younger I never understood why people thought Harry wasn’t thinking things through. But now that I am older and have my diagnosis of PTSD I realize that I was just one abused child identifying with another. It was logical to me that Harry not trust the adults in his life because I couldn’t trust any in mine. No one ever believed me when I told them I was being bullied, my parents were too wrapped up in screaming at each other to give a fuck about me. You go that long feeling like a shadow without a voice and you just start doing things on your own because who the fuck cares about you. You wind up with a protective streak a mile wide because in the back of your mind you know that things can’t change for you but maybe you can change them for someone else even if it means taking their pain as your own. No wonder Harry winds up an Auror, he’s been saving people and getting himself hurt since birth, he needs a psychiatrist to help him but he doesn’t trust anyone so he just throws himself into the only thing he knows how to do rather than healing. It’s by sheer force of will that he’s not catatonic or having PTSD flashbacks every time he goes to work.
#actually what i really love about obi-wan is that he *doesn’t* react like this though #at first he’s confused #but then he makes himself look at the stone again# really look at it #and he realizes it’s beautiful; he likes the way it feels in his hand #and he says #sincerely #‘thank you master. i will treasure it.’ #which is very mature #and very kind #and very important to me #yet another reason for me to love obi-wan kenobi
Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years
The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed
Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….
Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment
The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)
And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.
You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot
Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background
I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films
Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up
Eva is like if Marco were turned up to eleven and also a suburban mom.
Except that’s not entirely true. There are a few important differences. Like the dark reckless streak in Eva that cautious Marco would never really entertain. Marco’s terrible driving we can excuse on account of he’s a fourteen year old, but in #30 we learn that Eva also drove like a maniac and she was an adult-ass woman with a small child. She went out sailing by herself on the regular, presumably because she liked getting a fun and exciting break from her life. And let’s say nothing of her insistence on crushing Edriss to death even though she was beat to shit and needed to clear out of the Pool yesterday.
Also I get the strong sense that Marco is entirely irreligious, while Eva is a religious Catholic – in her own particular way, of course. Hands down my favorite Eva line is from Visser when she tells Edriss, <You infested me at random, so you believe. But I believe in higher powers, Yeerk. I believe I was taken so that my son would grow strong and wise and someday destroy you.> GOD I’m tearing up just TYPING that line. I mean holy SHIT. That’s Eva’s Catholicism right there: she believes she was taken so that Marco could become a FLAMING SWORD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE HAND OF GOD TO SMITE THE EVILDOERS. That’s how she sees her son. WOW.
(I mean lbr Marco would be totally weirded out that his mom thinks of him that way, but this is about Eva, not about him.)
No but seriously that is all so important to me. There are so many fictional moms who are broken up to see their hero sons are no longer the sweet innocent boys they once were. And that’s valid. But I love so much that Eva’s response to finding out her son has lost his tenderness and become a hero is, “Oh, sweet, now he’s a badass like me and he can help me bring the wrath of God to our enemies. Right on!” But it’s not in a shallow way, because she knows just how much the war takes from you. She cheers him on knowing exactly how much he had to sacrifice to get where he is.
You have ten minutes to present your chosen skill.
you can just see the moment she decides “fuck this I will make you pay for what you have done”
And this, too: that Peeta walked into this room (this room where you earn your rank, where you perform for your life against an uncaring panel, this room that helps determine your chance for survival) and said, this, this is my chosen skill.
You are sending me into a doomed field, to do battle against a few dozen strangers and the woman I love, to put blood on my hands and ratings on your networks, and you have asked me to step into this room and show you what I am worth. This is my worth, laid out on the floor, on a bed of flowers. You asked me to be a killer. This is how I kill you.
But also: that this is about Rue. This is a story about people mattering.Peeta is asked to present his skill, to prove his worth, and the thing he chooses is about someone else. He takes these precious moments of spotlight (the boy is so good at spotlight), and offers them up in Rue’s memory, for her, for himself, for the woman he knows will walk into this room after him. He has stopped caring about survival (he stopped in the first book, the moment they called his name), which leaves him space to decide what matters. This matters. This is how she died: loved, mourned. This is your sin and I will stain your world with it.
This is about a girl who never grew into a woman. It’s about an honest friendship in the midst of a manufactured murder spree; that in the middle of a war for her life, Katniss Everdeen stopped to mourn, because Rue mattered. It’s about this baker’s boy standing in a room full of weapons and the breaths of desperate, dying children and painting a remembrance of love and loss on the concrete floor.
In Peeta’s hands, love is a weapon. Katniss fires an arrow at the gamemasters to get their attention, and so does he.
This is a movie about a man turning into a llama and this is what you question.
Yeah, what we should really be questioning is how Kronk was able to make spinach puffs when spinach wasn’t introduced to Central America until well after the Spanish Conquest.
Not to mention the lack of wheat. Imagining the logistics of maize or potato-based anything-puffs is making my head spin.
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