Josh Gad Archives - The Wide Screen

December 31, 2020

What Brought The Tolkien Community Joy In 2020

2020 was nothing if not a hellish year that tested us in ways we hadn’t even thought possible back in 2019. But now, with the year finally ending and a new one about to begin, I thought it would be nice to look back and find some things that brought us in the Tolkien community just a little bit of joy and normality amidst all the chaos and confusion. Whether it was casting announcements for the upcoming Amazon series, or familiar faces reuniting for a good cause, Tolkien fans found a respite from the year’s awfulness in small, simple, pleasures that gave us each a smile and a laugh, and/or kept us at least partially sane throughout 2020.

I’ve tried to be comprehensive, but it’s been a long year, and I have forgotten much that I thought I knew. So if I’ve missed something important, be sure to tell me and I’ll happily correct my error! As I am just one Tolkien fan in a very big and very diverse fandom, these are merely my personal experiences. With that out of the way, let’s revisit some of the year’s few joyous Tolkienesque highlights.

As soon as lockdown orders went into place around the world, many of us immediately took the opportunity to crack open our old copies of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, with the intention of returning to Middle-earth for some much-needed comfort. But actor and director Andy Serkis went further than the rest of us would or even could, reading the entirety of The Hobbit aloud in a hyped-up livestream event with the full permission of HarperCollins (for whom he then recorded a new audiobook of The Hobbit). The 12-hour long livestream was hugely successful – raising more than £283,000 for charity – and hugely satisfying for Tolkien fans, as Serkis was able to trot out his iconic Gollum voice during the character’s single, memorable sequence in the book. I myself have read The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings, The Silmarillion, and assorted bits of Unfinished Tales aloud to family members even prior to this quarantine, and can confirm that, while taxing on the vocal cords, it’s a truly delightful experience to partake in (I personally like to do different voices and accents for all the characters, not just the ones I’m especially good at, but, well, I’m not claiming to be a better reader-alouder than Andy Serkis…or am I?)

The rest of us social distancing stay-at-homes, unable to monetize our reading experience in quite the same way, took to social media to share the joys of Middle-earth for free with people we don’t know and who probably don’t want to have their timelines continually clogged by abnormally long Twitter threads documenting our reactions to literally every single thing in each of the books and movies. Some of us did monetize our experiences, and were forced to distort Howard Shore’s beautiful score to avoid copyright infringement. There were too many of these to count, but a few I particularly enjoyed included a first-time viewer’s twelve-part reaction to The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, artist and animator Noelle Stevenson live-tweeting the movies while enjoying a lembas bread snack, and a live-tweet of Ralph Bakshi’s cult classic The Lord Of The Rings adaptation that is perfect viewing once you hit that stage of quarantine where days are blurring together and nothing makes sense anymore, least of all reality, so you might as well just roll with the fact that, yes, Aragorn is rocking that mini-skirt.

Not wanting to let Andy Serkis have all the fun, almost the entire main cast of Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings reunited for a livestreamed event hosted by actor and comedian Josh Gad, and attended by Jackson himself as well as the trilogy’s lead screenwriter, Philippa Boyens. It was, as they say in The Shire, a party of special magnificence: gathering on their individual computer screens, the Fellowship and more teamed up for trivia, re-enactments of famous scenes, and fond reminiscences. It was all too brief, but by that point we were growing used to brief and fleeting joys, and it felt refreshingly fun. Hearing Sean Astin recite his empowering speech from the end of The Two Towers also provided us with an excuse for a good old-fashioned ugly cry, which was sweet of him.

But even as the old cast was re-assembling, a new cast was coming together in New Zealand – the one corner of the world that was, for the most part, unaffected by COVID-19. Two huge casting announcements for the upcoming Amazon Prime adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work bookended this strange year; the first in January, prior to the pandemic, and the second earlier this very month. We welcomed a number of diverse and exciting actors to Middle-earth, such as Nazanin Boniadi, Sophia Nomvete, Morfydd Clark, Peter Mullan, and Lenny Henry, and we debated endlessly about who they could be playing, here on this very blog and on fan-forums everywhere (speaking of which, the homepage of TheOneRing.com is active again as of this month, after several years). Almost a year into production on the first season, and we still don’t actually know! We’re not even sure if this is the full cast yet, or if more are still to come.

But with production on the season’s two-part pilot apparently complete and director J.A. Bayona having just departed New Zealand, it does appear that production is now underway on the rest of the season after a number of delays due to COVID that forced the entire series to halt filming throughout the spring and summer. Amazon Prime has been keeping this whole project unusually secretive, so much so that we still don’t even have an official title (which, let me tell you, is getting on my nerves). We know it takes place in the Second Age, we know a little bit about the behind-the-scenes crew, and…that’s it, mostly. In the absence of concrete information, rumors have spread like wildfire and driven some pretty controversial fandom discourse (though it gave me a chance to share my knowledge of The Mariner’s Wife with the world, so I’m not entirely unhappy about that). Thankfully, a new YouTube channel named Fellowship Of Fans has been keeping us up to date with consistently reliable news from the set, and I highly recommend you subscribe now so you don’t miss a thing.

One can hope, however, that we’ll learn more official details sooner rather than later – especially with the Tolkien Estate having announced earlier this year that a new collection of previously unpublished writings by J.R.R. Tolkien is coming in 2021, which will provide new insight into a wide variety of subjects, including the Second Age of Middle-earth, something they wryly note will be “Of particular note, given the impending Amazon series”. How much of what’s in this book, titled The Nature Of Middle-earth, will actually be new is up for debate, but I’m extremely excited for it nonetheless.

But the greatest Tolkien-related joy of 2020 (and the one in which I participated the most eagerly) has to have been the Tolkientober event: a month-long art challenge organized by Noelle Stevenson’s wife, artist and animator Molly Knox Ostertag – who, incidentally, was also recently awarded a Forbes 30 Under 30 honor. Tolkientober brought us together through the inclusive power of art, and allowed us a sneak peek of some of the next generation’s great Tolkien artists. I don’t claim to be one of those, but I did have a lot of fun sharing my works with the Tolkien community on Twitter, and it helped me rediscover my passion for drawing and sketching: something I had put aside pre-pandemic to focus on writing. Tolkientober, a casual, judgement-free, noncompetitive event aimed at spreading good vibes around the internet, taught me how to balance my talents better and renewed my confidence in my art, and for that I will always be thankful.

But enough about me. What I want to know is what your favorite moments were: so if my list is any way incomplete, share your own thoughts in the comments below and tell me about your experience as a Tolkien fan in 2020 – see you all in the new year!

June 12, 2020

“Artemis Fowl” Movie Review!

From my understanding, the Artemis Fowl books are supposed to be pretty good. For my part, I never really got into them all that much – I read the first book (though, to be honest, I think I page-skimmed it), never picked up the sequel, and forgot basically everything that happens in the story fairly quickly. So I went into this new Disney film adaptation without any pre-conceived notions of what Artemis Fowl ought to be about.

And it was still a crushing disappointment.

Artemis Fowl, the movie, has a special place on the sadly long list of films that are somehow all plot and no plot at the same time. On the one hand, there’s oh so much going on: people are being kidnapped and ransomed left and right, shady deals are struck with the worst sorts of people, there’s an entire civilization of ancient Celtic fairies living in the center of the earth and they’ve lost a magical golden…vaguely acorn-shaped…thing…and some of them want to use it to…um, destroy the human race, I think….and there’s a whole subplot about who took the golden acorn thing in the first place and whether or not he was a traitor, but it’s hard to tell because this subplot is also only ever subtext despite being intrinsic to what I think was the main thrust of the story – and then on the other hand, this movie is basically just set up for a sequel which is never going to happen, because almost none of the story threads begun in Artemis Fowl actually end; they just peter out in the last twenty minutes of the movie, in a weirdly long, slow section of nothing happening.

This problem might never have occurred if the movie were about someone other than Artemis Fowl himself. Fowl, played by newcomer Ferdia Shaw, is a singularly uninteresting character who apparently is a masterful strategist, though we never get to see him work out any of his strategies – those are all explained to us with the help of some helpful narration from Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) the giant, treasure-hunting Dwarf who claims to be the true hero of the story so many times that, by the end of the movie, I was convinced he should have been. Fowl, unfortunately, has all of the bark but no bite – for a boy who boasts loudly that he’s a criminal mastermind and struts around in suits and dark sunglasses like a miniature runway model, he doesn’t actually commit many crimes or do anything particularly cool. Everything that’s supposedly going on inside his enigmatic mind is firmly outside of the audience’s grasp, and the attitude he projects outwardly – that of a bratty, too-cool-for-school aristocrat – is unappealing and grating after a while.

The film might have benefited from being reworked around a supporting character in the plot, Holly Short (Lara McDonnell). Short, a talented, up and coming officer in the fairy militia, is better written than her above-ground counterpart, and she has a more interesting story to tell, as the daughter of the fairy responsible for the whole mess with the golden acorn thing. And, while this might not be a deal-breaker when it comes to choosing your protagonist, she is also cooler than Artemis Fowl – she has mind-control and healing powers (underutilized, of course), a snazzy green outfit and wings, and technologically-advanced weaponry. She’s also one of the very few highlights of the film, and one of the only truly memorable performances.

And I say that with all due respect to Josh Gad and Colin Farrell (Farrell, never one to miss out on a Disney Dad role, is playing Artemis Fowl Sr.). Judi Dench is here and there throughout the movie as the fairy commander Root, and she has some good line delivery, but more could have been done with her character’s rough-and-tough personality and extensive vocabulary of imaginative insults. Nonso Anozie plays Domovoi Butler, the Fowl family’s bodyguard and butler (get it? Because his name is Butler?) with complete apathy, making it unintentionally comical when his character is supposed to break down in tears during “dramatic” moments. Then again, he’s given such wretched dialogue to work with, especially during his first few scenes, that I can’t honestly blame him for being unable to force out any emotions.

There’s a villain, but this is the type of villain who only works through clueless cronies and thus has virtually no real impact on the plot. Artemis Fowl never even has a confrontation with this character – presumably, that was being saved for the hypothetical sequel – and only ever gets to fight a few fairy soldiers and a troll. The former are dispatched with a variety of magical weapons in a bizarrely edited sequence that seems to operate on the principle that action is more exhilarating if it’s just sped up, and the latter is pointless, but takes so long to defeat that you begin to wonder if it’s actually the final boss battle of the movie, and then you realize that it is and so it’s yet another disappointment to add to the list.

As I watched the film, I was looking for something, anything, to compliment: at last, I had settled upon the music. It was Celtic, if a bit stereotypically so, and I like Celtic music. But then I made the mistake of listening to it as it plays over the closing credits, and that’s when I realized that the reason I liked it is because it’s virtually copied from Howard Shore’s brilliant “The Breaking Of The Fellowship”. It’s not completely identical – it’s nowhere near as good – but the similarities are unmistakable and made me dislike it too.

And while I may not know the books very well, I do happen to be an avid reader of Celtic, and particularly Irish, mythology, and so of course I was offended by the film’s reworking of ancient pagan folklore. The basics are there: the Tuatha Dé Danann were driven underground by humans long ago, and have diminished into the stuff of fairytale. But the modernized twist, with the fey folk now carrying modern weapons and listening to modern music (I was hoping beyond hope that the fairy music would have been provided by real Celtic musical artists, but I was, wait for it, disappointed yet again) felt like shoddy worldbuilding. The only bit that was clever, in my humble opinion, was the unusual but illuminating reveal that David Bowie was apparently a member of the fairy race.

This film, simply put, is a disaster. There is little to no cohesion; characters feel half-baked; scenes are shot and edited poorly; it’s definitely not Kenneth Branagh’s finest achievement as a director, and even without any real knowledge of the books I’m positive it’s a let down for fans of the popular series. Though the film ends with a hook for a sequel, I doubt very much that this incarnation of Artemis Fowl will ever return to screens big or small (and on that point, I’m glad this film skipped theaters and headed straight to the Disney+ streaming service, so I didn’t have to risk catching coronavirus just for this). Instead, let me console you with the truth that, no matter what was planned to come next, it would likely have been just as disappointing as this turned out to be.

Movie Rating: 1.9/10

November 23, 2019February 25, 2020

“Frozen 2” Spoiler Review! Villain Explained!

SPOILERS FOR FROZEN 2 AHEAD!

There’s a lot of movie to talk about in this post. Frozen 2 is completely different from its predecessor, which avoided controversy by sticking to more traditional Disney fare: true love, family bonds, embracing your differences, etc, etc. Frozen 2 takes risks by leaping into the thick of some of the most heated discussions of this century – there’s commentary on generational divides, nationalism, and environmentalism, among other things. And since this is a spoiler review, we can talk about all of it.

While the subject of nationalism would seem the most foreign and shocking in a family-friendly Disney movie about two princesses and a lovable snowman, it was actually the topic that I most strongly suspected Frozen 2 would touch on, in some way or another. Back in September, I speculated that Elsa and Anna’s peaceful city-state of Arendelle had some dark secrets they wanted to keep hidden: namely, their persecution of the Northuldra peoples. This persecution has its roots in the very real, very tragic story of the nomadic Sámi peoples of northern Scandinavia whose culture and history was almost wiped off the face of the planet by the governments under whose “protection” they dwelt. Mostly, the governments of Norway and Sweden – the two countries whose cultures have informed the creation of the peaceful sea-port of Arendelle, with its majestic fjord and majority-white population. The Northuldra tribe in Frozen 2, on the other hand, are very clearly stand-ins for the Sámi – to the point where the film even hired Sámi consultants. I guessed at once that Elsa and Anna might be in for a nasty surprise if and when they discovered that their country had actively worked to massacre an entire race of people.

But while I had worked out the basic framework of the story, I was unable to guess how important the Norway vs Sámi/Arendelle vs Northuldra conflict would be to the entire plot of Frozen 2. And that’s where the parallels to 1995’s Pocahontas, a film I referenced in my non-spoiler review as an unlikely contrast to this one, come in.

Both films deal with the interactions between a majority-white nation and a peaceful indigenous people. But while the early flashbacks in Frozen 2 indicate that relations between the two peoples were just that, peaceful, it turns out later in the movie that those flashbacks lied to us – or was it just that Elsa and Anna’s father, King Agnarr, was an unreliable narrator, leaving out the bits where his people turned on their friends and tried to kill them all? Yes, Elsa (Idina Menzel) discovers in the third act that her revered grandfather, King Runeard of Arendelle (Jeremy Sisto), attempted to wipe out the Northuldra by building a huge dam across the fjord which threatened their way of life – why, you ask? Well, the film does somewhat gloss over the notion of racial prejudice, but does touch on a form of bigotry – if not one we’re accustomed to seeing in the real world: Runeard’s fear and hatred of people who use magic (such as the Northuldra). Runeard’s plan to subtly undermine the Northuldra with his dam goes awry when the leader of the Northuldra sees through his deception and tries to stop him, leading to open conflict between the two peoples, one in which Runeard and the Northuldra leader were both killed by falling over a cliff.

Elsa never actually meets him personally, but she does have a brief encounter with…well, it’s not exactly his ghost, but I don’t know what to call it: ice-sculpture moving photograph? Confronting him over his fears and prejudices, Elsa wonders out loud what her grandfather would think of her, a brave young woman who controls all of the four elements of magic, in one of the most powerful moments in the movie. Unfortunately, Runeard is kind of dead, so it’s hard for Elsa to have any sort of meaningful interactions with him – but she doesn’t have to, because as I said in my non-spoiler review, Frozen 2 isn’t about clinging to the past, it’s about moving forward into the future. Runeard, the film’s only real villain, represents an older, more backwards-thinking generation who prevent change and progress: Elsa and Anna, representing millennials, are the change and progress, and they have better things to do with their time than get into arguments with the ghosts of bitter old racists. And so both Anna and Elsa turn away from the crimes and dark secrets buried in their family’s past and walk into the future hand-in-hand, helping to right Arendelle’s wrongs by destroying Runeard’s dam (even if it does nearly leave Arendelle drowned under a whole new fjord in what I can only describe as the Fords of Bruinen scene from The Lord Of The Rings multiplied tenfold), breaking the magical enchantments that separate Northuldran territory from Arendelle, and commissioning memorials to the Northuldra people. By acknowledging the crimes that white colonizers did to the indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, Frozen 2 is already a step ahead of Pocahontas, which blithely pretended that after Governor Ratcliffe was locked up in chains, everything was fine and dandy in the New World. By setting the story long after the violence occurred, Frozen 2 allows its young protagonists to learn the mistakes that their ancestors made, and do their part to try and fix them, since it’s too late to avert them – that’s a story that many young people can relate to, as they too inherit a world damaged by the actions of previous generations, what with wars, climate change, etc, etc.

The film also, somewhat more controversially, gives Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa a personal stake in the fight by revealing that they are…bear with me here…mixed-race. Their mother, Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood), was actually a Northuldran woman who danced with flying leaves in the wind before rescuing a handsome young blond man from certain death, falling in love with him and returning with him to his kingdom…hold on a moment, this movie really is mirroring Pocahontas. Anna and Elsa are still very much white, however, and that fact actually shouldn’t be a problem, since many of the Sámi peoples of Scandinavia are, in fact, white. However, Frozen 2 takes the liberty of interpreting the Northuldra as darker-skinned, with dark hair – probably in an attempt to make the diversity look more clearly diverse. In the end it somewhat backfires by making Anna and Elsa into the sole white women among a group of people of color, coming in to save the day and free them from their captivity in the forest…in other words, they get a bit of the white savior treatment, and it’s not a good look for either character, or for Disney.

In the end, though, Elsa actually goes to live with the Northuldra, feeling her true calling among her mother’s people. Having discovered at the end of the movie that she is the “fifth spirit” who can control the four elements of fire, water, earth and wind, Elsa has become a shimmering goddess of the tundra, resplendent in an Aurora Borealis-inspired gown, riding a water-horse and carrying a fiery salamander as her animal sidekick. And, um, yeah, the movie never really does anything to explain why she got stuck with ice powers specifically. Instead, it spends a lot of time focusing on Elsa’s environmentalist journey: abandoning the trappings of modern (okay, well, late 19th Century modern) civilization, Elsa goes back to nature and finds peace there, among the splendor of the Norwegian wilderness. Whether or not she learns to paint with all the colors of the wind, we won’t know until Frozen 3.

Speaking of Frozen 3, it’s time to talk sequels. The film actually leaves off rather conclusively – Elsa is living her best life in the far north as a magic guru goddess, Anna is the progressive new queen of Arendelle, we’ve learned pretty much everything there is to know about Elsa’s magic (I think), and there’s peace at last in fantasy Norway. But is that peace destined to last? Looking at the progression in Elsa and Anna’s stories over the last two films, a pattern emerges: in the first film, we saw them brought together by the power of true love, risking their lives to save each other; in the second film, their journey takes the two sisters in different directions, leading them to finally separate and lead separate lives. What’s left for a third film to explore? Frozen: Civil War, in which Team Anna and Team Elsa face off against each other in the most brutal snowball-fight ever animated? Well, I don’t expect it to get that extreme (though I wouldn’t complain if it did), but something along those lines wouldn’t be a bad idea. We’ve seen them together, we’ve seen them separate – now would be a good time to show them on opposite sides of a conflict, eventually realizing they have to work together once more to solve a problem. As for what that problem could be: well, I’d recommend an actual villain. Runeard’s legacy of evil worked for Frozen 2 because of the message it was trying to send, but a third film would be a great place for an actual enemy to arise and threaten fantasy Norway. There might even be some opportunities to play with the concept of Dark Elsa – after all, she was originally written to be the first film’s villain.

Some things I wouldn’t expect to see from the third film would be any more revelations about the sisters’ past – Elsa and Anna literally found out everything we could possibly care to know about the history of Arendelle. We even discovered exactly what happened to their parents, the good King Agnarr and Queen Iduna, when the sisters found their wrecked ship washed up onshore. Thanks to Elsa’s magic, the sisters were able to see exactly how their parents perished – turns out, they were on their way to the far north to try and find answers about what Elsa was when they ran into a storm and drowned, holding each other one last time as the waves swallowed them up. So any mystery about them and their fate has been conclusively laid to rest, in the saddest possible way (in case you’re wondering, this scene is one of the three I referenced in my non-spoiler review as being absolutely soul-crushing: the others being Olaf’s temporary death and Elsa’s aforementioned confrontation with her grandfather).

On the bright side, most of the characters get happy-ever-after endings in Frozen 2: Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) finally proposes to Anna and she accepts; Olaf (Josh Gad) is dead, but then he isn’t (something I also predicted back in September); Elsa maybe-sort-of-kinda-subtly has a thing going on with fellow Northuldran woman Honeymaren (Rachel Matthews), though Disney being Disney, it’ll probably only ever be in subtext, despite how fervently the internet clamors for Elsa to get a girlfriend; Sven gets a whole bunch of new reindeer friends, and presumably isn’t excluded from all their reindeer games. Frozen 2 is darker than this franchise has ever been, and it could be the darkest it’ll ever get – but then again, maybe in six more years we’ll be treated to a third and final installment of the story of the two sisters. At which point in the timeline Kristoff and Anna will probably be parents, Olaf will be older, and Sven will be…well, Sven should be dead at this point considering the average lifespan of a reindeer, but somehow I don’t expect Disney to go in that direction unless they’re feeling particularly dark.

How would you feel about the possibility of Frozen 3, and what would you like to see Anna and Elsa do next? What was your favorite Frozen 2 moment? Share your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!

October 14, 2019

“Frozen 2” International Trailer Review!

This is an international trailer, which I wouldn’t normally react to, except that this particular one has some intriguing tidbits of Frozen 2 material that we haven’t seen before. So, real quickly, let’s just go over everything that happens in this new trailer.

First, we see the prelude to the scene where Elsa rushes outside of the walls of Arendelle, following ghostly lights into the night: she stands up in the middle of a game of charades, and walks out of the room as if in a trance, through the hallways of her palace – she stares out the windows, almost like she’s following something in the sky (I’ve suggested before it could be the Northern Lights). We get a glimpse of some tension building between our holy trinity of Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff – Kristoff seems to be the odd one out in this movie: we haven’t seen him do very much in the trailers so far, but it looks like him and Elsa aren’t on the best of terms. He makes fun of her during the charades game, and, as we’ve seen previously, he grabs Anna and rides off with her before she can run to her sister’s aid. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Kristoff anyway, but I don’t know if hardcore fans would be happy if he’s portrayed as a bumbling, oafish nuisance to the two sisters. And bumble he does, as he is seen apparently trying to propose to Anna after the charades game, but can’t get her attention while she’s busy worrying about Elsa.

There’s more Olaf hi-jinks in this new trailer, none of which are outstandingly funny. The character, and his particular brand of humor, always runs the risk of being a little too much at times, so hopefully some restraint is shown. Then again, the film needs a comic relief character, and Elsa’s definitely not it.

Speaking of Elsa, we see a few new shots of her striding confidently through an ice-cavern with her hair down, looking elegant and regal. And then she seems to get transformed into a beam of light, which skyrockets through the ceiling, or into the sky, or something – honestly, it’s strongly reminiscent of the Bifrost Bridge from the Marvel Cinematic Universe; the portal of multi-colored light which teleports its user to other worlds or dimensions. Is Elsa similarly teleporting, or simply…actually, I have no idea what else she would be doing. Before she disappears, she also breaks some sort of window or sheet of ice that is filled with the colors of the Northern Lights, which causes a rainfall of the same floating runes that we’ve seen before. I have no idea what that could be: is she breaking a spell? Breaking free of a dungeon? Breaking stuff just for the fun of it?

There’s a good deal of interesting new stuff there, so I recommend you check out the trailer. Also, you can hear the recently released first look at Elsa’s new showstopper song “Into The Unknown” below. It’s brief, but tantalizing: the song doesn’t exactly sound like it’s going to be on the level of “Let It Go”, but it does have a haunting melody, and Idina Menzel’s vocals are still extremely impressive.

So what do you think of the trailer and song? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Trailer Rating: 7/10