So, Can We Put A Moratorium On Lord of the Rings Clones?

[Con T.]

This evening, I went to go see Snow White and the Huntsman. Aside from the horrible, horrible trailers (Seriously, Rock of Ages? Oh, Brave can’t be that bad; I just wonder when Pixar picked up the How to Train Your Irish license from DreamWorks. Eh, I can hope that Les Mis won’t suck… Key word hope…), the only thing that really stood out to me was how hard this movie tried to be Lord of the Rings. Oh, it tried hard, I tell you; at some point, I felt pity for the movie, wanting to avoid its own mortality and shelf life by clinging to our love of the Rings franchise. Sadly, this movie hasn’t been the only one to come from the Lord of the Rings gene pool; clearly, if there weren’t more movies, I wouldn’t be making this thread right now. Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Chronicles of Narnia; all wanted so passionately to be just like Rings. Of course, it isn’t only mediocre films that tried; what are to make of The Last Tensai (Err, Samurai), which probably came the closest to copying the Rings formula, and being good at the same time? Now, let’s get this out of the way; I fully get that before Rings, there was Bravehart, and before Bravehart… I dunno, Ten Commandments? I get that the Hero journey is a needed motif in movies; what I’m saying is that it’s time to place a moratorium on these Lord of the Rings clones, as long as hacks less talented than Peter Jackson are going to try capitalizing on the formula.

Now, I get there are people who haven’t seen the movie yet, so I’ll try to speak more about where all the clones fall short, and if I’m going to speak about Huntsman specifically, I’ll put the spoilers tags. But let’s look at where all of these clones have failed so far, first by starting with the protagonist.

Now, Rings has more than one protagonist really, and that allows for characters to go through their own growth and development, and flesh themselves out as completely separate heroes. What makes Frodo and Aragorn such great heroes is that even in the same movie, they have completely separate traits and flaws, that make them fully developed characters. They also fight different inner and outer conflicts, so they have the chance to fully develop characters. Of course, it always helps that they had three movies, and nine hours to do so, but that was the point; Peter Jackson gave the characters time to develop and flesh out. All of the clones I’ve mentioned? Yeah, they try to follow that same “chosen one” archetype as Rings, but they wind up doing so in a rushed, forced way, because they don’t have nine hours, and three movies. Rather, they try to cram all of Ring’s protagonist issues into the chosen “champion” (note the singular tense there) of the movie; Alice in Wonderland’s probably the best case of this. Alice is the clear hero, but she is given all of these traits, with few of the flaws, because she’s the chosen “one”, and only one. Consequently, we rarely, if ever, see her develop, because the movie doesn’t have time to allow it; Alice never changes as a character, and if the director tried to make her change, he failed at showing it, because he tried to fit Ring’s archetype into a much smaller amount of time. Where Frodo and Aragorn develop, Alice stays static, and dull as shit.

Spoiler

Huntsman is no better; you can clearly tell that Snow White wants to be Frodo, but there is no internal conflict, and there’s no change. There is no temptation from the evil force, nor is there any explanation or preparation for Snow White to face her destiny. Instead, it’s forced into the audience’s head that she’s ready because… Well, she is, and that’s about it. There’s no struggle with the power she’s been given; it’s just like, eh, cool, I’m the savior, time to whip some ass, I guess

Well, what of the antagonist, you say? Somewhat of the same issue, but different really. In Rings, Sauron is the villain, and is able to control his minions with magic. He himself can’t fight; for most of the movie, he’s a really creepy eye. What does make him so powerful, however, is how much power he holds over the heroes, namely Frodo. Sauron is able to burden Frodo with the power of the ring; it’s really a psychological attack, more than anything. And Sweet Jesus is it fucking effective; Sauron can’t fight, but he can control his minions, and he can control the protagonist, tempting the heroes with the power of the ring. His power is known by all, and is always felt in the story. Even then, his power is limited, and it’s a reasonable explanation. Note that reasonable I added there.

The clones I speak of? Pfft, fuck off with that. They aren’t the devil; they’re merely practice. They mainly hold a physical threat to the character, and nothing more. I guess you could argue that the Narnia villain is able to maintain a psychological temptation, but she doesn’t wield any true power. Unfortunately, the best example of the clone’s flaw here comes with Huntsman, so cue the spoilers!

Spoiler

The Queen in Huntsman uses magic, too, but she doesn’t really hold any psychological advantage over Snow White. Further, her powers are limited; her biggest power is to take the youth of others, and live forever. Fine, but she also ages whenever she doesn’t… I don’t know, eat a soul, or something? Sauron’s power never wavers; he’s always a badass, even though he can’t actually fight anyone. Ravenna, on the other hand, becomes limited by her power, and it actually makes for one of the more stupid aspects of the movie. As Snow White gets farther away, Ravenna gets older and starts to wither. Apparently, her powers can’t work in the Dark Forest (That’s never explained either, but we have bigger fish to fry), and instead of sucking the youth out of more people and buying herself time, she just kinda… waits there, while her minions dick around? Where’s the threat in that? This villain isn’t powerful; she’s just got some weird power that’s never explained, and logic holes that are never filled. It gets even more ridiculous when Ravenna is able to leave her castle, and do her magic… So what was the point of the whole “my powers won’t work here” again? They try to make Ravenna this all-encompassing evil character, just like Sauron, but she doesn’t even have a quarter of his threat.

I could go on, but I feel I’ve made my point. Lord of the Rings was great guys; we don’t need another twenty attempts to recreate what was done right the first fucking time. So is time that we put a moratorium on the Lord of the Rings clones?