Subject: I only hope that…
Author:
Posted on: 2024-08-23 11:07:51 UTC
there aren't actual instances of misplaced Japanese culture in the movie. I've already cringed my face into oblivion with one geisha traipsing around M-E.
Trailer. The only issue is… where's the Japanese voice acting?
Got there via this article on Nerdist, via a citation on the Wikipedia article. Knew to go looking for it because this analysis of the footage by Nerd of the Rings came up in my YouTube feed.
~Neshomeh
Now that we have all these movies and video games and tabletop games and theater productions… why isn't there a ballet yet?
And a release date in December... I guess it is the official Middle-earth Movie Month. :D
Wikipedia is low-key bickering over whether it counts as anime, given that it's being made by an American studio, who've hired a Japanese studio (Sola) to do the animation. That's why the original voices aren't Japanese. But... given what's going on with Helm's daughter, it's certainly anime enough for me.
In terms of the plot, from the trailer it looks pretty faithful to the tale of Helm Hammerhand. It's also visually a prequel to the LotR movies - that's our Edoras and Hornburg, not some new version. The main difference I clocked are:
a) Mumakil. We knew from the announcement that they would be in there; goodness knows what Haradrim gigaphants are doing in Dunland.
b) Was that a Watcher fighting a Mumak???
and c) Hèra, the extremely anime daughter of Helm.
Hèra is a canon character; she's the unnamed daughter of Helm who sparks the whole story of the movie off. She is not noted (in the relevant three paragraphs of Appendix A) as being this... well, anime. She swordfights with wrist-veils! She wears multiple random belts! She has a Great White Eagle buddy! Her voice actress thinks she's written more like a Miyazaki/Ghibli character than a Tolkien one!
But... for all that it's written by Philippa Boyens with advice from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, I think they've actually put a decent amount of thought into Hèra. Her name is actual Old English, and Wikipedia specifically discusses how they named her. It also says she was based on Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who is a fantastic historical anomaly (a Saxon ruling queen who fought off the Vikings for seven years, and passed her realm to her daughter). So I'm cautiously optimistic that she might not be as jarring as the trailer wants her to look.
Oh! Also! Miranda Otto narrates in character as Eowyn, which is amazing, and also explains why Hèra stands out so much against the other characters. Because if Eowyn was going to have a favourite historical character, it would absolutely be a Shieldmaiden of Rohan.
hS
I'm excited about Brian Cox voicing Helm. The voice and the name sounded familiar, and it turns out he was the narrator for The Colour of Magic and the voice of Death in Good Omens (plus a ton of other stuff).
The bit that gives me the most pause regarding Hèra (beyond the proportion of focus on her and her eagle buddy with whom she does the now-obligatory hand-to-muzzle bonding moment for some reason??) is:
-- "You know nothing of war!"
-- "I'm the fastest rider you have!"
which is a bit of dialogue that would be at home in just about any grrl-power Suefic. However, it's not clear from the editing whether those lines are actually part of the same conversation, so maybe it's nothing to worry about.
I dunno about the belts, either, but maybe the one below her bust is for, er, support? Maybe?
The Japanese version of the trailer gives a bit of a broader view of what the story is about (not just her), so I'm also cautiously optimistic.
Some of the comments on the English version suggest there was an alliance between the Dunlendings and the Haradrim, so that may explain why mûmakil, if not how. I'm not currently home to review the Appendices myself. I suspect nothing will convince me there ought to be a Watcher, though.
But if nothing else, it's so pretty. ^_^
~Neshomeh
... someone on the Barrow-Downs pointed out that a Dunlending-Haradrim alliance is practically text. From Appendix A:
"In the days of Beren, the ninteenth Steward, an even greater peril came upon Gondor. Three great fleets, long prepared, came up from Umbar and the Harad, and assailed the coasts of Gondor in great force; and the enemy made many landings, even as far north as the mouth of the Isen. At the time Rohan was assailed from the west and the east, and the land was overrun, and they were driven into the dales of the White Mountains. In that year (2758) the Long Winter began with cold and great snows out of the north and the east which lasted for almost five months. Helm of Rohan and both his sons perished in that war..."
I did some calculations, and it looks like the Romans built some barges that could just about carry two Mumakil, so it's not impossible. Still weird, and I wouldn't want to be the one to have to feed them, but especially if there's only a couple it's plausible.
I think Héra is strongly positioned as the protagonist by the trailer, which... I quite like? It would be so easy to make this a story about three strongmen bickering over the right to decide what to do with a piece of property, ie the girl. Instead they've given her agency of her own, which, she's the ancestor of Eowyn! Was she ever going to sit quietly?
"All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death."
hS
If they attack Rohan from the east? ... Though, assuming they go around Mordor to the east, that's an extremely long trek, possibly almost as lacking in fodder as going by boat. Maybe they could go through Ithilien instead, if they're already fighting with Gondor, too? IDK, all of these ideas seem bad in their own way. ^_^;
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of finding and highlighting women's stories in Middle-earth. My issue is that Héra's story seems to be one we've all seen done badly so many times: feisty princess who wants to do cool boy things instead of yucky girl things and is enough Not Like The Other Girls to get away with it. Now, being a warrior actually makes sense in Héra's case, given shield-maidens have always existed! But... I guess I'm jaded because it sometimes seems like people have no idea how to write female empowerment any other way. They made Arwen "more interesting" in the original trilogy by giving her a sword and a horse. They made Galadriel "more interesting" in Rings of Power by giving her a sword and a revenge complex. Éowyn was cool enough not to change because she already had a sword and a horse, and took them to go do boy things with the boys.
Granted, Rings of Power also has several other female characters with different MOs, and that's a good thing about it. But they still felt like they needed to make frickin Galadriel "more interesting" as a protagonist by heightening her more traditionally-masculine characteristics beyond, I think, what's indicated in the text, and at the expense of the rest of her personality.
And the problem isn't that women should never do "boy things." The problem is the underlying bias that boy things are cool and girl things are not, so the men's fighting gets glorified while anything that women do is downplayed or derided. Thus, Éowyn later finding fulfillment in marrying Faramir and becoming a healer seems like a let-down, a diminishing of her character rather than the maturation of it. It's clear that "maturation" is what Tolkien intended, but it can never work in a world where the line between masculine and feminine is rigidly defined and one side is implicitly regarded as more worthy (e.g. of tales; of a protagonist) than the other.
It's complicated.
But again, the whole "warrior princess" deal actually fits with Héra, so there's a good chance it all works fine... if they aren't playing too many tracks straight from Middle-earth Sue's Greatest Hits. I had this worrying thought that they might've looked at all the Suefic and gone "gosh, this stuff sure is popular; let's do exactly that!" ^_^;
~Neshomeh
Dunno if I'll watch, but it sounds like it could be good. We'll see.
--Ls
there aren't actual instances of misplaced Japanese culture in the movie. I've already cringed my face into oblivion with one geisha traipsing around M-E.