THE DARK TOWER HAS FALLEN!
Which is a good thing, all told. Admittedly, the dark tower hadn’t even been mentioned up to now, but naturally it was the place where the evil force summoned from the beyond had taken up residence. Because, where else would it take up residence? It’s kind of hard to find a suitable flat if you’ve got no credit history and state your profession as “avatar of ultimate evil”. But landlords who have dark, gloomy towers full of foreboding, evil spirits and a general sense of despair to let are often quite flexible when it comes to potential renters – because they don’t get many of them. So, it’s kind of a natural match. Oh, and the visuals also work really well for a force of evil.
Speaking of visuals, that scene in LOTR where Baradur crumbles and falls is truly majestic and moving…but I still couldn’t fight the feeling that it was something of a wasted opportunity, as far as giving a shoutout to Tex Avery was concerned. I surely can’t be the only one who thought that. Or am I? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
On top of that…I’m not sure if I should be ashamed of the fact, but this gag is actually one of the oldest, so to speak. One of the very first ideas I had for this chapter, just after I had settled on a theme. My brain almost literally jumped from “Well, how about a fantasy/D&D theme?” to “There could be a scene where Baradur crumbles away underneath the eye of Sauron, and then it just hangs in the air until it looks down, like Wiley Coyote…” My muses aren’t fickle, but pretty weird.
Anyway, the metaphorical meaning of the scene is entirely intact, even if the visuals have been slightly altered: Evil has fallen and Good triumphs! Yay.
More on Thursday.
But what if the dark tower was just some benevolent watcher. Or fantasy police, watching for racism against hobos (goblins) and elfsexuals (homo- means humans, which they are not), and those who not respect waghmen (which is how orc women that goes to war spelled).
Well, that kind of comes with the territory – one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. But B-movies generally have to stick with the time-honored black-and-white approach, they just don’t have the time, budget or talent (both in terms of scriptwriting as well as acting) to make such subtle points. XD
(On a side note, and sorry for being pedantic…but the ‘homo’ in ‘homosexual’ does not derive from Latin homo = man, but from Greek hom = same, alike. To form a compound word with ‘man’, the Romans would, ironically, prefer the Greek word ‘anthropo’, so they’d have said ‘anthroposexual’.)