Tag: Lord of the Rings

Extra Sci-Fi S3E4: The Return of the King

Okay, I think the folks at Extra Credits got it wrong with this one in a really big way. Gollum didn’t redeem himself. That’s the entire point. Redemption is an important and very Christian theme of Lord of the Rings, but so is the problem of evil. Several comments on the video point this out:… Continue reading Extra Sci-Fi S3E4: The Return of the King

Extra Sci-Fi S3E2: The Fellowship of the Ring

Another fascinating episode from Extra Credits, this one focusing on the themes of generational passing and the diminishing of ages that is present in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I have a lot of thoughts on this episode, but they all basically boil down to one thing: Every generation reinvents the world. It’s a theme… Continue reading Extra Sci-Fi S3E2: The Fellowship of the Ring

Trope Tuesday: Knight Templar

For this one, I’m going to pull the description straight from tvtropes itself, since the whole page is pretty good: Sometimes, the Forces of Light and Goodness get too hardcore. In a deadly combination of Well-Intentioned Extremist, The Fundamentalist and, generally speaking, not so different, they get blinded by themselves and their ideals, and this… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Knight Templar

Trope Tuesday: Arcadia

What happens when you cross the Ghibli Hills with the Call to Agriculture?  You get Arcadia, a simple, uncomplicated utopia where people keep to the good old ways and live in harmony with nature.  As home sweet home for the farm boy and the country mouse, it’s often the starting point for the hero’s journey, though you’ll… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Arcadia

Trope Tuesday: Threshold Guardians

So the hero gets the call, refuses it at first (or jumps at it, as the case may be), but one way or another he eventually sets out on the adventure.  As he soon discovers, though, one does not simply walk into Mordor.  Adventures are not the sort of thing that anyone can do, and in… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Threshold Guardians

Trope Tuesday: The Call to Adventure

One of the first (and most important) stages of the hero’s journey is the call to adventure.  It happens when the hero first confronts something outside the experience of his ordinary world that beacons him to leave it.  It overlaps closely with the inciting incident, and marks the point at which the hero’s journey begins. However,… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: The Call to Adventure

Trope Tuesday: Deus Ex Machina

This one is by request.  A Deus Ex Machina, or “God from the Machine” ending, is basically when the author writes himself into a corner and pulls something out of his butt to resolve the story. The term comes from ancient Greek theater, which often employed this technique–probably because the audience was known to get violent… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Deus Ex Machina

Trope Tuesday: Freudian Trio

Last week, I blogged about the Three Faces of Eve trope.  But if we’re going to discuss power trios in any depth, we first need to examine the classic Freudian Trio, one of the most prevalent combos and, in some ways, a precursor to all others. As you might expect, the Freudian Trio borrows heavily from Sigmund… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Freudian Trio