"The Last Good Man Part 3" Now Available!

The final novel in my "Last Good Man" trilogy is finally here. Check it out on Kindle today and in Amazon paperback on May 18th:

www.amazon.com/The-Last-Good-Man-Part-3

Owen Bronson and his companions are in a fight for their lives. Driven from their compound by the deadly Patrol agents and unable to survive in a virus-plagued world, their only hope is an army base in Ivydale, WV. The soldiers who live there seem helpful at first, but it isn't long before Owen starts questioning the motives of his strange new hosts—and what they could mean for his team's goal of curing the virus.

Meanwhile, Jodi Sullivan is in an even bigger mess. Captured and forced to join the Patrol alongside many other survivors, she's now surrounded by enemies who could discover her connection to Owen at any minute. Things get worse when she learns what the agents are planning: a full-scale assault on Ivydale to steal back the cure and eliminate Owen's team.

Time is running out as the Patrol close in. Can Jodi, Owen, and the soldiers of Ivydale band together to save themselves? More importantly, can they trust one another enough to finally save the human race?

Also be sure to check out the entire trilogy at this link: www.amazon.com/The-Last-Good-Man-Series

When I Get My Force Twisted

Now that we've all had a chance to calm down after seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I think it's a good time to discuss one major aspect of the film's story. I'm not talking about a particular character or subplot, but rather a trend that was present all throughout the movie and has been pretty controversial in film for years. What is that topic?

Why, the utter refusal to bring podracing back into Star Wars, of course! What the heck, Disney? You have a scene set on a gambling racetrack and you give us some cliche animal rights message with puppy-eyed giraffe monsters instead of a podrace? I know you don't want to raise the spectre of the prequels too much, but come on! Just show a quick shot or two of a podrace, then have Finn and Rose hijack a podracer and fly it through the casino as a diversion so the slave children who were being abused can escape.

Actually, the trend I really want to discuss is plot twists that toy with viewer expectations -- which is sort of what my little rant there did, so I'll count it as staying on topic.

Writer/Director Rian Johnson has said in interviews that he wasn't aiming to subvert the fans' expectations in The Last Jedi, stating that doing so "would lead to some contrived places." He claims that everything that happens to Rey, Kylo Ren, Luke, Leia, and Snoke in the story is what felt like the most natural course to take with each character. I'm willing to believe him, especially after reading his explanation on Slashfilm.com for what happens with Kylo and Snoke:

"[...] Kylo’s arc in this movie, besides his relationship with Rey, I saw as the big arc for Kylo breaking down this kind of unstable foundation that he’s on and then building him to where by the end of the film he’s no longer just a Vader wannabe. But he’s stepped into his own as kind of a quote-unquote villain, but a complicated villain that you understand, right?  So with that in mind, the idea that Kylo would get to that place by the end of it led me to think, well, then what is Snoke’s place at the end?  And does that work with him just kneeling before Snoke at the end?  No.  If Kylo’s gotta get to a place of actual power the ultimate expression of that would be him ascending beyond his master.

And that also then gives the opportunity to have a great, dramatic moment that you don’t expect of getting Snoke kind of out of the way.  So that really is where it all stemmed from.  It was thinking about Kylo’s path, thinking about where I wanted him to be at the end of the movie to set him up for the next film.  And thinking okay, that means we’re gonna clear away this slightly more familiar dynamic of the Emperor and the pupil.  Clear the boards from that, and then that’s much more exciting going into [Episode IX], the notion of now we just have Kylo as the one that they have to deal with.  You can no longer take a rational guess at how the Snoke-Kylo thing is gonna play out in the next movie."

Still, after how much The Force Awakens borrowed from the original Star Wars, I doubt very much that Johnson never noticed any of the resemblances to The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi while writing this film. So many of the setups in The Last Jedi, such as Rey's attempt to sway Kylo to the light side during a showdown in Snoke's throne room, are so familiar that you'd swear Johnson started writing those scenes by copying and pasting the ones from the original trilogy screenplays. 

Maybe the studio pressured him to follow tropes of the series, or maybe he felt compelled to follow the precedent of The Force Awakens (which he didn't write) for consistency. Whatever the case, I'm not sure if it was totally his choice to have such derivative setups throughout his plot. Since those setups are so derivative though, it only stands to reason that their payoffs should be different this time around. That's not toying with viewer expectations so much as being a good screenwriter by avoiding redundancy.

What I find more questionable are the plot twists that Johnson put into the film's secondary storyline, the one that doesn't borrow so heavily from the previous films.

Here's the rundown: After Leia ends up in a coma, the command falls to a female admiral that the character Poe Dameron doesn't trust. Her plan against the villains seems suspicious, so he comes up with his own plan and sends Finn and Rose to find a master hacker who can bug the computer on the villains' main ship. They find the master hacker, but get arrested, then they happen to meet another, better hacker in jail who breaks them out. He hacks the villains' ship like they wanted, then he betrays them because he was actually working for the villains all along. Then Leia wakes up and knocks Poe unconscious when he tries to accuse the admiral of treason. Then he wakes up and learns that the admiral had a better plan all along that she and Leia were hiding to teach him a lesson about trusting authorities.

So basically, that entire subplot was irrelevant.

To be fair, I suspect this storyline was the result of Johnson being saddled with the supporting cast of The Force Awakens and not entirely knowing what to do with them. However, a part of me does still blame it on the trend that we're discussing today.

I'm probably not the first person to say this, but I'm starting to think The Sixth Sense is actually M. Night Shyamalan 's worst contribution to film -- in that its only lasting impact has been the notion that movies must contain big, surprising plot twists in order to be good. I know plot twists were a thing before that (a certain big reveal in a certain other Star Wars movie comes to mind) but The Sixth Sense seems to be the film that really made using them the trend that it is today. I know I'm not the only person who jokingly thought "What a twist!" in an Indian accent after seeing The Last Jedi.

And I mean it, practically every movie contains a twist now, whether it's revealing a surprise villain, revealing a character's secret identity or agenda, revealing a red herring, or most notoriously, revealing that it was all a dream. And you know what? The majority of those plot twists seem to just confuse or annoy audiences.

I think screenwriters need to view plot twists almost like a special effects budget: you only have so much use that you can get out of them, and if you want the quality to be top notch, then use them sparingly and make the story justify each use. Otherwise, you're likely to just cheapen them.

As for The Last Jedi, I still liked the movie overall. The confusing, pointless story arcs are over for now, and I am genuinely curious to see where the core characters go from here. My biggest hope is that since the story is far enough removed from The Force Awakens now, Rian Johnson will have a lot more freedom to write what he wants in the next film. If the second part in a trilogy is supposed the lowest point for everyone involved, then maybe he can truly give us the third part that resolves everything both on the screen and behind the camera.

Wait. He's not writing or directing Episode IX?

Recapping in Sequels

As an author who's published four books in a still-ongoing series, I can't think of anything more imposing to write than a sequel. Not only do you have to keep track of the details from multiple books while writing it, but you also have to keep finding ways to build on characters and storylines in ways that make sense and feel natural without changing the essence of the narrative too much. And if you botch a sequel, there's a chance you'll also ruin the entire series that came before it.

Even the mere structure of a sequel can pose a lot of difficulty for the writer. When you get right down to it, most followup stories are at a disadvantage from the start because their foundations exist in an entirely separate story -- the story that they're a sequel to. Readers typically won't fully understand or appreciate everything that happens in a sequel if they don't start with the first book in a series, so how does the writer get around that?

The most obvious solution, which I want to discuss today, is by reexplaining the premise of the series in the sequels.

I'm sure we've all read at least one book sequel that pumps the breaks in its opening chapters to remind us of who the characters are and what the series is about. It's one of the most aggravating things you can possibly write; you're trying to get on with the story of your next installment, but every time something comes into play that was introduced in an earlier book, you feel obligated to stop and recap what it is, and that just kills your momentum. Even if you clearly number each book on the cover, you still have to assume that most people aren't going to read the whole series in order or remember every detail throughout it. Some might argue that this shouldn't have to be the author's problem, but catering to your audience at least a little does help both of you in the long run.

The question then is how extensively you should try to reexplain things in a sequel.

Literature is all over the spectrum with this. For instance, the sci-fi series Animorphs takes time out of nearly all sixty-four of its books (including the final one) to reexplain its premise. The Lord of the Rings, in contrast, doesn't reexplain anything from book to book. Granted, that was actually meant to be a single book before the publisher split it into three, but the lack of recaps clearly hasn't harmed it.

A lot of factors weigh on which of these extremes you want to lean towards. The age of your audience, the number of books, the length of each book, and how closely the plot of each one ties in with those of its predecessors are just a few. However you decide to do it, the important thing is to keep the recaps as brief as possible. Otherwise, you will kill your momentum and potentially lose readers' interest.

I posted a survey on Facebook a while ago to get some opinions on this subject. The comments ranged from giving a refresher whenever necessary throughout each book to only doing it in Book 2 and then leaving it up to the reader to figure things out in all future installments. One comment even suggested tapering off the recaps over the course of multiple sequels until you reach a point in the series where the readers are most likely fans who don't need reminders anymore.

The strategy I've chosen for my own series, The Rokshena Revolution, is sort of a combination of all these ideas. The overall story is made up of three separate plots that lead directly into one another, and each plot in the "trilogy" has actually been split into two books because of the length. As a result, I give increasingly smaller reminders of things as they come up throughout the series, but I only do it in every other book.

This is obviously a unique case. However, I do think the tapering idea is a good middle ground to go with. It might even encourage people to start reading your series at an earlier point than they might have otherwise since they'll get a more extensive backstory the further back they start.

In any case, the key to all of this is building a strong rapport with your audience. Getting into a series can be a big commitment, almost like a friendship, so much like you would with a friend, you want to show the reader that you're aware of them and help them out every once in a while. If you're inviting and willing to put in the extra effort for them, chances are they'll be receptive and put in the extra effort for you.

Farewell to the Planet of the Apes

I've never mentioned this before on my blog, but I'm actually a huge fan of the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes movies. Almost embarrassingly huge. I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes four times in theaters, I've made memes and fanart, and I created my own OC character who's a gibbon because I've always wanted there to be one in the series. I even used to post Chuck Norris-style "facts" about Maurice the orangutan all over the internet to try and build the character's fanbase because I love him so much.

And for the record, Maurice doesn't ride his horse. He levitates himself with his superpowers and just holds a horse in place under him so he doesn't look more impressive than Caesar. Maurice is humble like that.

As you can imagine, I was anxiously awaiting War for the Planet of the Apes, and I finally got to see it this past Sunday. So what did I think of it?

Frankly, I think this movie gives The Dark Knight a run for its money. But let's look back on the Apes reboot trilogy as a whole first.


Rise of the Planet of the Apes 

It's astounding to see War for the Planet of the Apes and realize that it's in the same series as 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. As much as I love Rise, there's no denying that it can be a very silly film. Most of its human characters are laughably one-dimensional, the apes are way too intelligent before receiving the virus that's supposed to enhance them, and it leans on one contrivance after another in order for its story to happen. The movie fails so much at depicting how biology labs, ape sanctuaries, and police squads function that I question whether the filmmakers did any research at all.

Despite that, you can tell that there's something a lot more compelling and meaningful underneath all of that. Rise is a summer blockbuster that spends its first two thirds almost entirely on heartfelt character development and centers around someone who (for the most part) can't speak. It's a character study first and foremost, and it tackles difficult moral issues while exploring concepts like self-identity and hubris. I should also mention that Andy Serkis's performance as Caesar really is some of his best acting and that some of the CGI ape effects are pretty darn impressive, even looking like tangible creations at times. And yes, the film does have a lot of entertaining action scenes.

It's actually pretty interesting to read about older drafts of Rise's screenplay. It sounds like the filmmakers wanted it to be a lot darker and more challenging originally, but eventually toned it down and lightened the mood. My guess is that Fox Studios pushed them to play things safer and simpler since Tim Burton's 2001 "reimagining" had a lot of people leery about another Planet of the Apes picture.


Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The second film obviously fared much better. Dawn's post-apocalyptic setting allowed it to scrap all of that real world red tape and focus just on the characters, and Rise's success gave the sequel more freedom to be gritty and complex. In place of the mustache-twirling corporate creeps and bully stereotypes, we get human characters who are mostly good at heart but willing to oppose the apes out of desperation. We even see a lot of parallels between the character dynamics in their group and the ape characters. What's more, the main villain is actually one of the apes whose tragic backstory makes him intriguing and sympathetic to a point. All of these things really blur the lines between species and give an interesting commentary on what defines humanity.

Granted, Dawn does still have its share of silly elements, but it earns them. You can have a stock, self-proclaimed "asshole" character if you surround him with well fleshed-out ones. You can have an acrobatic final battle on top of a burning city if you've fully built up the conflict and the stakes. And when you give us a charming, atmospheric scene with little dialogue where characters bond over a 60's song whose lyrics reflect and foreshadow the events of the plot, you are totally allowed to follow it up with a bonobo on a horse firing machine guns in both hands while howling in rage like Rambo.

Seriously, that's got to be the most ridiculously amazing shot in the whole trilogy.

I will admit though that the extreme anti-gun message in Dawn is pretty awkward when you remember that this franchise once starred the president of the NRA. Then again, the Tim Burton film featured said president delivering that same message himself, so this is much less awkward by comparison.


War for the Planet of the Apes 

And that brings us to the new film. We get a lot more nods to the original Planet of the Apes movies in this one than in Dawn, though not nearly as many as in Rise. In fact, the references in War serve more as setups for the original film (or more likely, a future remake of it) than they do as homages. Even the music sounds similar to the original's score at times, which is a pretty clever touch.

We do get a slight downgrade in the villain and a lot less moral variety in the humans this time around. There's one little girl who's good and everyone else is an ape-hating soldier. There's also a female chimp that I'm pretty sure was just thrown into the script in response to the complaints about Dawn's near lack of female characters. She doesn't hurt the film though, and neither do the humans. In fact, their overall ruthlessness actually contributes a lot to the story's concept of the human race starting to devolve; they're losing their humanity in more ways than one.

War is by far the darkest and harshest film of the three, but never once does that tone feel forced or manipulative. It's all done to show that the script isn't pulling any punches in addressing its themes. It explores the definition of humanity and how hatred can corrupt noble intentions, just like Dawn did, but it also deals with emotion versus logic and reason versus instinct with the external conflict of man versus beast as a metaphor for that. The big twist in it is that it's the apes who view the world more humanely than the humans do. Most poignantly, it conveys that sometimes the best way for good to overcome evil is not to destroy it, but just to endure until evil destroys itself. I don't know many other summer action flicks that can pull that off and still exhilarate an audience.

And for a bit of levity, this is the movie where the apes finally grant my wish from six years ago and solve a problem by throwing poop at someone. I don't care how super-intelligent they are; they were born as normal apes and they should have remembered a long time ago how effective that tactic is.

~

I think a big part of why these new Planet of the Apes movies turned out so well was the way that their releases were paced. Ever since Lord of the Rings, a lot of film franchises have fallen into the mindset that they need to crank out an installment every year in order to stay relevant, but more often than not, this results in a lot of very rushed, mediocre, unmemorable films. This series took its time though, and not only did that allow the filmmakers to create the best movies they possibly could, it also gave us more time to grow attached to its world and characters before the story ended.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out just a couple months after I graduated from college, and over these past six years, I've evolved and matured right alongside this trilogy. These movies have become really special to me because they represent a transformation, an ongoing change throughout the stages of one's life. They show that those changes can be daunting, but if you approach them thoughtfully and carefully, you'll pull through to the end.

And if it seemed like overkill to say that War for the Planet of the Apes gives The Dark Knight a run for its money, I should reveal that the Joker actually got his scars from Maurice the orangutan.

"Godfather Syndrome" in Movies

It's no news to anyone that movie sequels tend to pale in comparison to their original films. This can be disappointing enough to fans, but it can be all the more disappointing when a film has at least one good sequel and then a bad one. It gives us a false sense of security, a belief that the creative minds behind a franchise can do no wrong, and that makes it feel almost like a betrayal when a bad sequel finally comes along.

We've seen this happen in series like Terminator, The Dark Knight, Scream, Shrek, and dozens of others, but the odd thing that a lot of those franchises seem to share is that they didn't start to go bad until their third installment. This occurrence is so common that it's even come to be called "Godfather Syndrome" after one of its most infamous casualties. Why is the third time not the charm in so many franchises? The reasons vary, though a few trends do seem to crop up.

One frequent cause of Godfather Syndrome, of course, is studio interference. The second film in a series is often made as an experiment to see how fans of the original will respond to sequels. If that experiment is a huge success, like the sequel Aliens was, the studio tends to apply more pressure on the filmmakers for the next sequel in order to take the most advantage of the franchise's popularity. The result in this case was Alien 3, which had its release date announced before the script was finished and had to severely compromise its story, effects, and most other creative aspects in order to meet that deadline. There's also the case of Spider-Man 3, where the studio forced director Sam Raimi to include a popular villain from the comics despite his story already having two other villains in it. In the end, each franchise was left with a third film that most fans consider to be a convoluted letdown.

Another common cause of Godfather Syndrome is a change in the creative team behind a film series. Filmmakers have changing passions just like any other type of artist, so it's rare for them to remain involved with a franchise to the same extent throughout its entire run. However, if the director, writer, or any other major player hands the reins to someone new in between films, the change in style is usually noticeable. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if the key visionaries in a film series are replaced after making the first two films, a lot of their understanding of the series's themes, character arcs, and overall identity is at risk of being lost in Part 3.

For instance, the original X-Men trilogy saw a change in director from Bryan Singer to Brett Ratner for its third film X-Men: The Last Stand, and this led to a huge shift in the presentation. Major characters acted nothing like themselves, subtle undertones were replaced with ludicrous action set pieces, and storylines set up in the previous films were either badly mishandled or dropped altogether. This sequel simply didn't mesh with its predecessors, and when that happens with the third film of a trilogy that follows an ongoing story arc, it can cheapen all three films.

Probably the most disheartening cause of Godfather Syndrome, however, is when the original creators themselves simply lose their touch. Just look at the syndrome's namesake, the Godfather trilogy. The Godfather Part III was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola just like the first two films, but more than a decade had passed in between the release of Part II and the beginning of Part III's production. No storyteller is going to have the same style or perspective after such a long time, and even though Part III tried to center itself around this idea of time changing people, the fact remained that it didn't feel like a Godfather film.

In other cases, the writers run out of ideas within the scope of the series's universe after two movies and they expand the scope too much in the third one. That's why we got a third Pirates of the Caribbean film that barely took place in the Caribbean and had more characters and storylines in it than a George R.R. Martin daydream.

These aren't even the only three causes of Godfather Syndrome. Sometimes if the second movie in a series ends in a cliffhanger, the third movie gets bogged down with having to resolve those plot threads while also telling its own story. Other times the franchise starts to become self-aware after the second film's reception and panders more in the third installment. And then there are instances where a third film isn't inherently bad, but the second film was just so good that no other sequel can measure up to it. All three of these factors seem to afflict Return of the Jedi, and while it often gets hailed as the weakest film in the original Star Wars trilogy, I really don't know any Star Wars fans who hate it.

Bottom line, making any good film is something of a cinematic miracle. It takes a perfect storm of things going right in order for the product to turn out well, and unless that film is Part 1 of a preplanned story arc, every one of those things has to go right all over again for each sequel to turn out the same way. If a franchise is lucky enough to make that happen more than once, it probably can only make it happen twice -- but that doesn't stop Hollywood from trying at least three times. We fans may see Godfather Syndrome as a stab in the back from the film world, but in the words of The Godfather (and also, sadly, the third Pirates of the Caribbean film), "It's nothing personal. It's just business."

To Find Our Long-Forgotten Theme

Music has always been one of the most pivotal elements of the Middle-earth universe, both in the books and the movies. Ever since the first chapter of The Hobbit, songs have been frequently used as storytelling devices to set tone, to give exposition, and even to develop many of the characters and cultures in Tolkien's tales. What's interesting about their use in the books, as Tolkien points out in his lead-in to the very first song, is that they have no actual music to accompany them in that medium. This of course leaves the door wide open for how readers can choose to hear them and has led to several different interpretations in various adaptations.

One of the best renditions of any Tolkien song is probably the song "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" as it's performed in An Unexpected Journey, the first of the three Peter Jackson Hobbit movies.

The song is an account of how the singers, a company of thirteen dwarves, lost their mountain home of Erebor and all of the treasure inside of it to the dragon Smaug and how they intend to reclaim it from him. Only two of Tolkien's verses are sung in the film, but the melody composed for that version is present all throughout An Unexpected Journey as something of a theme for both the company and their quest. Even the movie's end-credit song "The Song Of The Lonely Mountain" is built around the tune of it. It's about as perfect as movie themes come, being flexible enough for just about any emotional context while always creating atmosphere and hearkening back to the source material, and it's one of the most memorable pieces from the first film's soundtrack.

So why don't we hear it anywhere in the second or third film?

It's not as if the story changes in those installments. The main plot still revolves around the dwarves and their quest, so "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" would still be a fitting theme to use. No official explanation has ever been given for its disappearance from the trilogy, at least none that I've ever found, and this has created almost an air of mystery around the piece for fans. Seeing how the Extended Edition of An Unexpected Journey recently made its debut in theaters, this is perhaps a good time to explore this issue again and try to draw a conclusion.

To begin, "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" isn't the only theme associated with the dwarves and their quest. There's also Erebor's theme, which is played in all three films. It's played at all of the appropriate times too, such as whenever the dwarves see the mountain in the distance and when they enter it. These have all been times that fans have cited as good moments to play the "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" theme instead. This leads to the belief that Tolkien's song was never meant to be the theme for the dwarves or the quest in the movies, which then raises the questions of what its real purpose was and what became of that purpose after the first film.

Looking at the context of the song's initial performance, we see the dwarves singing it together in the home of Bilbo Baggins, the story's main protagonist, while Bilbo eavesdrops on them from another room. This is the last that Bilbo hears of the dwarves before waking the next morning to find them gone and deciding to join their quest, which at the time was being described to him as "an adventure." An Unexpected Journey is by far the most lighthearted of the three Hobbit films, so it's possible that "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" is being used to convey the excitement and fun of the quest from Bilbo's point of view before things grow more serious in the next installment. 

It should also be pointed out that "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" is not the only theme to disappear from the Hobbit trilogy after the first film. The theme for the wizard Radagast is also absent from the other two soundtracks, despite his presence in all three movies. This is perhaps because his theme was meant to reflect his eccentric and whimsical nature, which is subdued in the sequels as the tone of the story grows darker. This theme disappearing at the same time as "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" could just be a coincidence, but the above logic seems to suggest a pattern of the soundtrack letting go of the story's more innocent ideas as things progress.


If that is the reason though, then why isn't the "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" theme replayed at a later point in the trilogy to remind viewers of those better times? The theme for the Shire where Bilbo lives, for instance, is played in all three films for that exact reason. In addition to providing  emotional throwbacks like that, the act of reprising old themes in later soundtracks is a good way to unify the music of an entire film series. Dropping a major theme one third of the way through a trilogy can feel unbalanced to a lot of listeners, as this trilogy has proven.

Another explanation could be that the Hobbit movies were doing something similar to the Lord of the Rings movies, where the tune of the song "Into The West" was only incorporated into the soundtrack of The Return of the King, the film that featured that song in its end credits. This presumably was done to give that movie a more distinct soundtrack and to foreshadow events that are described in the lyrics of "Into The West." This could perhaps be the case with "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold," seeing how the song is actually called "Misty Mountains" on the soundtrack for An Unexpected Journey and the film ends with the characters entering and then leaving those mountains.

However, giving it the title "Misty Mountains" is an inaccuracy. The song was only called "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" originally because that's the first line in its lyrics. The song isn't really about the Misty Mountains; it's about the Lonely Mountain of Erebor. The fact that the end-credit song built around its melody is called "The Song Of The Lonely Mountain" only drives that point in deeper.

Furthermore, the tune of "Into The West" isn't introduced until the third and final Lord of the Rings film, so its use in only one film works fine in that trilogy. The filmmakers didn't introduce it and then exclude it from any sequels. Even if they did do that, "Into The West" is used sparingly throughout The Return of the King's soundtrack and isn't associated with any particular characters the way that "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" is, so its disappearance might not have been noticed had it dropped from The Lord of the Rings before the third installment.

A third possibility for the disappearance of "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold," and probably a more realistic one, is that time may have been simply working against Howard Shore while he was composing the soundtracks for the Hobbit film trilogy.

It may be news to some people that the song's melody in the Hobbit movies wasn't actually composed by Shore. It was composed by Plan 9, a company in New Zealand that creates music for film and TV. Having helped with the soundtracks for many of Peter Jackson's other films, including The Lord of the Rings, Plan 9 was approached to write a tune for the song that the dwarves sing in Bilbo's house. Long story short, Howard Shore loved what they came up with so much that he worked its melody into the score that he had written.

What isn't news to people is that the Hobbit trilogy had a very problematic production from the start. The temporary change in director, constant pressure from the new studio, and the evolution from two movies to three partway through shooting made things so difficult for the filmmakers that it really is a miracle that the films turned out as good as they did. Is it possible that in the midst of all of these setbacks, demands, and deadlines, Shore simply didn't have time to work the "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" theme into the later soundtracks?

The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies would have been far more affected than An Unexpected Journey by the change from two films to three, and sources say that Shore wasn't even available to conduct the orchestra himself for the recording of Desolation's soundtrack. It could be that in the rush to finish the music that was absolutely needed for those later films, he had to sacrifice the luxury of later additions and revisions.

Looking at all of the above mentioned reasons, it's likely that every one of them played some part in the disappearance of "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold." Maybe when his workload suddenly increased from two to three soundtracks, Shore decided to limit the theme to the first movie for the other discussed reasons and it just never occurred to him that people might miss it later.

Things may have turned out very differently had the production of the trilogy gone smoother, but that's not at all to say that the music replacing that theme in the later installments is bad. Howard Shore, Peter Jackson, and everyone involved in the Hobbit movies did the best job that they could with a much less favorable situation than they had with The Lord of the Rings, and they should be admired for that. The fact that Shore put "Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold" in his score at all when he didn't have to shows that his heart was in the right place.

Perhaps in hindsight, we can look on that theme's use just in An Unexpected Journey not as a loss, but as a musical equivalent of the Arkenstone in Erebor's treasure hoard; as a rare gem that should be remembered fondly but not obsessed over.

"The Battle of the Five Armies" Extended Edition - Early Review

I've finally seen it.

After ten months of blogging theories and a few days of trying to find a construction-free route to the one theater in town that was showing it, I've finally seen the Extended Edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

I should backtrack a little though to talk about this event as a whole. Just as they did with the Lord of the Rings trilogy in June of 2011, the company Fathom Events recently hosted a one-time-only, three-night screening of the Extended Editions of the Hobbit film trilogy in select theaters across the country. Fans like myself naturally flocked to cinemas to see the Extended Editions of the first two films last week, and both were highly entertaining experiences. However, this week's screening of the never-before-seen third Extended Edition was the star attraction of this event.

This was apparent not only from the much larger turnout in the audience, but also from the much more visual presentation of Peter Jackson's pre-movie introduction. Instead of showing one simple shot of the director talking to the camera like the first two Extended Editions did, the third one's intro featured music and clips from all three movies along with a full-screen graphic at the end. This extra bravado for the third Extended Edition makes sense, seeing how underwhelmed so many people were by the theatrical cut, and I for one was very excited for the movie to start after Mr. Jackson was done giving his thank-you's.

With that said, and with the promise not to give away much, what did I think of the Extended Edition of The Battle of the Five Armies?

To begin, there's only about 20 minutes of bonus footage added, not 30 minutes as was originally planned, and the bulk of it is more battle scenes. There are some scenes added before the battle, including a simple but poignant one that fans have been hoping to see since almost last December, but expect a first half that's very similar to the theatrical cut. There's also a bit more wrap-up after the fighting is over, though most of the minor storylines still don't get the closure that a lot of people probably wanted for them.

On a more praising note, there's actually quite a lot of humor throughout the bonus footage. Some of it is just goofy slapstick and sight gags, but the jokes involving the main characters give this version of the film something that was sorely missing from the other: a sense of fun.

Bilbo may be the heart of this story, but in the movies, the dwarves are the soul of it. They're the key to what made Bilbo and the audience come to enjoy this whole adventure in the first place, and having their presence diminished so much in the theatrical cut of The Battle of the Five Armies sapped nearly all of the enthusiasm out of it and left us with a terribly bleak final act of the Hobbit trilogy. Thankfully, the dwarves get way more screentime during the battle and we get more of their action antics like those in the first two films. Fans of Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur are especially going to walk away happy from this movie.

For anyone concerned about the Extended Edition's R rating, don't worry. I can point the finger for that at exactly two shots, and what happens in them is mostly aimed to draw cheers and laughter from the audience. What that says about our modern-day senses of humor is probably more disturbing than the actual onscreen content.

There's really only one deleted scene that I lamented not making it into the Extended Edition, since it likely would have been a major character development moment and was sort of a centerpiece of the film's original trailer, but ultimately, I do understand why it was cut. There's also a scene added in that I've thoroughly spoken against in a previous blog entry, although the way that it unfolds is just so ludicrous and yet poetically fitting that another part of me couldn't help liking it.

And since it's been almost a year since I wrote my "There's Something About Ori" essay, I might as well mention that the little dwarf scribe photobombs Bilbo twice in one bonus scene. It's not the journal scene that I was hoping to get, but I'll still call it a victory.

In short, the Extended Edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is worth the wait. I wish we had gotten this version in theaters instead last year, and given its 164-minute run time, it feels more like a theatrical cut anyway. Like I said back in December, hardcore fans are probably going to look back on this movie and all five of its predecessors as films that were preceded by condensed editions rather than followed by Extended Editions.

But in the end, I'm grateful that the filmmakers of the six Middle-earth movies cared enough about their fans to give us two versions of each to choose from. We're a very lucky bunch, if you do believe in luck.

The Hobbit: The Long and Short of It

It's fairly safe to say that the latest Hobbit movie, The Battle of the Five Armies, is a polarizing film. It seems like for every viewer who loves it, there's one who detests it. The US stock market looks steady and consistent compared to the ratings on this movie's IMDb user reviews. That's nothing new for Peter Jackson's prequel trilogy, but one thing that most of the reviews for this film appear to agree on is that it feels way too trimmed down and even incomplete.

I just got back from seeing the movie myself, and while I of course loved it...I do kind of have to agree with that complaint. I don't know why The Battle of the Five Armies ended up being so much shorter than the other Hobbit films, but I think its 144-minute run time suffocates it a bit. A lot of storylines and characters don't get the closure that they need or deserve, including a few that don't come back in Lord of the Rings. The movie is so conspicuously edited down that even before its premiere, Peter Jackson announced that 30 minutes of footage would be restored to the film's Extended Edition.

This brings me to my topic: the Extended Editions. Releasing these versions in their elegant, book-like cases with disc upon disc of special features has been a tradition since the first Lord of the Rings movie, and while they can be tougher to view in one sitting than their theatrical counterparts, they are much more in-depth and truer to Tolkien's source material. It's no surprise that the book fans tend to prefer them.


It should be noted though that their bonus scenes are usually just that -- bonuses. They enrich the movies but aren't necessarily required in the story. The only bonus scene from the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions that I would call necessary is Saruman's death in The Return of the King, as it finally gives a proper send-off to the most prevalent villain from the first two films. Other than that, the Rings Extended Editions don't have to prop up the theatrical ones too much.

The Extended Editions for The Hobbit have been a slightly different matter. Sure, An Unexpected Journey was satisfying enough even without that 13 extra minutes of fun sprinkled onto it, but the 25 minutes added to The Desolation of Smaug practically gave us a different film. Entire characters with entire subplots were added, sporadic character decisions were explained, and seemingly pointless characters were suddenly given reason to be there. It's the biggest skyrocket in quality that I've seen from an alternate version since the Assembly Cut of Alien 3.

The obvious question then is why so much of that material was cut. The commentary by Peter Jackson and Screenwriter Philippa Boyens seems to point the finger at pacing issues, and while that likely was part of it, I think the answer can be hit a little more on the nose. The reason was probably box office reports.

One of the biggest criticisms of An Unexpected Journey was how slow and meandering a lot of people found it to be. Since its earnings also reflected a drop in viewer interest from Lord of the Rings, the studio likely pushed the filmmakers to shorten the next film in an effort to restore those numbers. Thus we got the theatrical version of The Desolation of Smaug...which actually earned even less money.

Luckily, DVD's don't have to worry so much about pacing, so a lot of that cut material returned in the Extended Edition. You can still argue that most of the bonus footage isn't necessary to the plot, though it does make for a much clearer and less rushed product.

And then there's The Battle of the Five Armies. My theory again is that the studio panicked over the previous film's drop in revenue and (still feeling that brevity was the way to go) pressured the filmmakers to make the third one even shorter. The problem is that while skimping on closure can work in Part 1 and Part 2 of a trilogy, it doesn't work in Part 3. There are no more parts after that to save the closure for.

That's part of why The Return of the King's Extended Edition ended up being an hour longer. Too many subplots, albeit minor ones, didn't have endings in the theatrical cut. Yes, I just said that The Return of the King didn't have enough endings in it. Not so many people objected to those loose ends though because The Return of the King was by far the longest installment in the series. The filmmakers made it as long and as sufficient as they possibly could for a theatrical release and eventually just had to stop.

The Battle of the Five Armies, on the other hand, is by far the shortest installment in the series. What's more, it was made that short for reasons beyond the filmmakers' control. Why would they announce anything about the Extended Edition so early if they were happy with the film they put in theaters?

This leads me to a belief that I think a lot of fans have had for a while: that the theater is not the right venue for these movies. Jackson and his crew have to cater to that venue first since it's where most of their budget money is made back, but those watered-down versions of their films only play for a month or so. Then they can release DVD's of the original longer versions, which will be around forever. I think that hardcore Middle Earth fans will likely look back on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogies not as films that were followed by Extended Editions, but as films that were preceded by condensed editions. 

And no, The Battle of the Five Armies hasn't had a scene of Ori showing Bilbo his journal yet. That just gives me something else to hope for next November.