Results of Ruminations

A couple of years ago, Salt Lake City developed a hankering for some Comic Con (or ComiCon), ushering in a new wave of geek ephemera and focus on fandom. While my wife and I missed the first one or two, we decided to attend one of the cons when some of the Lord of the Rings  actors (particularly Sean Astin) showed up for the experience. Gayle put together a dress that looked like Arwyn from The Return of the King  and I wore some Hogwarts robes. We got a picture with Sean and generally had a good time. Since then, we've attended each convention, always going in costume. We've worn steampunk, Hogwarts, Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, and Queen Elizabeth with her Shakespeare. The boys sometimes come, wearing superhero costumes, dressing as Leonardo da Vinci, and even dressing up as dinosaurs. In short, we go and we participate and we enjoy the experience. Now feeling fairly familiar with how a convention works--how much there is to see and enjoy, how much time one is standin...

At writers' group tonight, we got to talking about the news that Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere (multi-book spanning cosmology) is being optioned and put toward film franchises. While this is cool news, it got me thinking about what Hollywood producers are aiming to get out of fantasy franchises. With the undeniable success of Peter Jackson's adaptations of  The Lord of the Rings , as well as the country's continued fascination with Game of Thrones , there's obviously a connection to well-rendered fantasy worlds that has mainstream appeal. I worry, however, that producers are reading the wrong message. For every Lord of the Rings , there are a dozen Eragon  or Percy Jackson  films. For every Game of Thrones , there's a slew of Legend of the Seeker -type IPs that get out there, flounder, and fade away. What's different? What sets apart some of the tentpole properties from the rest of the herd? First and foremost, the caliber of the stories has to matter. Whi...

I'm listening to a recorded book version of The Hobbit  with my boys as we commute to and from work/school. It's fun to be back in Middle Earth, especially since my kids are familiar with the story of the book, thanks to the LEGO video games. I've been wanting to revisit Tolkien's world for awhile now--it's been almost two years since I last looked at it during my Winterim--and it's the kind of story that deserves revisiting. Because today is my anniversary (12 years!), my wife and I decided to sit down and watch the extended edition of The Battle of Five Armies  that's been sitting on our shelf for nearly a year. Without the kids at home, we could listen to it loud and do the whole thing without interruption. I know that The Hobbit  films are much more polarizing than the original adaptation of The Lord of the Rings . I will concur that, taken as a whole, The Hobbit  is structurally weaker and feels more bloated than LotR . The structure, sadly, comes f...

Frodo Baggins and his loyal friend, Samwise Gamgee, are unintentional role models for how we ought to consider our place in the world. There's an important speech by the Gaffer's boy, which I think is illustrative in a lot of ways. (This is looking at the film's speech, in part because it is more compact, and because it works well here. Sam's book speech (pgs 712-713) work in many similar ways. Additionally, the reading of the film as text is the intention with this interpretation.) Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, th...