Looks like Your Favorite Movie is back on the menu, boys!!!!
I can't think of too many other people that I'd slog through hours and hours of Lord of the Rings for, but my brother-in-law Bob W***** is definitely one of them. Plus, maybe I owed him one—he's still mad at me for making him sit on my lap when we first hung out. If he was dating my sister, then he had to prove that he really wanted to be part of this family, right?
Well, he sat on my lap, and now he really is part of the family. And so, on family vacation in Wildwood, we sat down over a few Coca-Colas and discussed his favorite movie of all time. Unfortunately for me, this was the second film in an eleven-hour, three-part fantasy saga that I had never wanted to see in the first place. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers features epic battles, a long character list, and—Bob makes this clear throughout the interview, don't worry—absolutely NO GREEN SCREEN.
[Editor's note: there is some green screen.]
The following "precious" interview is transcribed with Bob's reluctant permission, and edited slightly for clarity and due to the fact that I'm growing a little bored with just letting people talk about plot points. Let's get personal with this shit.
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Bob: Yeah, they're always smoking and drinking.
Joe: With a big ol' fucking barrel of...
Bob: Pipe weed.
Joe: Pipe weed. Who are you, and who am I? Are you Merry, or are you Pippin? Who's who?
Bob: I wouldn't say that you're Pippin. But I am Merry, because Pippin's kind of like a wild card, crazy, and I wouldn't say that's you.
Joe: Pippin is Charlie from Lost, right?
Bob: No, Merry is Charlie from Lost. And I think Merry's the smarter one. He makes some bad decisions, but he's actually smart. He makes some decent decisions.
Joe: The two of them were actually a lot smarter in Two Towers than they were in Fellowship of the Rings.
Bob: For sure. They also had a mission in Two Towers, and that was to get the Ents to help with the war. So they really couldn't screw up.
Joe: They were wrapped up in a shitty plot in Two Towers—
Bob: No, that was a great plot!
Joe: —but at least it was better than being a plot device in Fellowship of the Rings.
Bob: Dude, the plot in Two Towers—
Joe: With the Ents?
Bob: Yeah.
Joe: What, riding around on a tree for two hours?!
Bob: Did you see the end of the movie?
Joe: Yeah, I saw the end.
Bob: They destroyed Isengard! It was a big deal!
Joe: That was a big deal, but there was a lot of... mindless lead-up to it.
Bob: But they destroyed the place where Saruman was creating armies. Which is a big help for the good guys, ya know?
Joe: Good, so Merry and Pippin rode around on a fucking tree, and the tree destroyed it.
Bob: No.
Joe: [laughter]
Bob: Because if you remember, Pippin said, toward the end of the movie, "I think we should go past Isengard"—
Joe: He was saying that on purpose?
Bob: Yes, and he lead the Ents, because he knew the trees were cut down, and it would piss him off, and he would call the other Ents.
Joe: I don't know.
Bob: That was part of the plot!
Joe: I feel like, just by happenstance, they tumbled into that plot.
Bob: No, he did it on purpose!
Joe: So, clearly, there's a lot of tiny little moving parts in these movies.
Bob: A ton.
Joe: It's one of the longest trilogies in movie history. So there is a lot that we could talk about.
Bob: It's just a lot of characters.
Joe: If we want to talk about, like, what happens in these movies, there's a lot to talk about. I don't know if that's necessarily what I want to talk about. We can talk about it as much as you want to—
Bob: I feel like, for us to have a full discussion, you'd have to watch the third one too. The third one, that was going to be my "favorite movie," but I didn't want to be cliché and say the third one.
Joe: [laughter] Okay, so you're reasoning for choosing Two Towers as your favorite movie of all time... may be a little weak.
Bob: Well, no, I liked the ending battle scene. It's one of my favorite scenes of all time.
Joe: The defending of Helm's Deep?
Bob: I love that battle.
Joe: It's definitely... I could see that being the original "big battle," and having watched something like Game of Thrones, I could see the influence that Lord of the Rings had on it.
Bob: This came out in 2002, so you're talking seventeen years ago.
Joe: And not only that, but the Battle of Helm's Deep happened, in literature, many decades ago. I didn't write down when.
Bob: I think it came out in the '50s.
Joe: It was definitely a while ago. It was definitely the "original" fantasy... like, it created a lot of fantasy tropes. I haven't read the books.
Bob: I'm reading them now.
Joe: Okay, so how do you feel about the books?
Bob: The books are... different. There's a ton more detail, and it's hard for the movies to capture that. Just like Harry Potter. It's hard to capture everything.
Joe: I guess it's unusual to watch the movies that are based on the books first, before you read the books.
Bob: I was young when [the movies] came out. I was eleven when the first one came out, and my sister was obsessed with it. I'd watch them with her. She was the one that got me into the movies.
Joe: It was a family activity.
Bob: And my brothers too. We all love them. And it has to be your thing. I thought you'd like them more, because you like Game of Thrones. Same concept. Except Game of Thrones is a lot bloodier, more nudity, a lot more fucked up shit.
Joe: Ya know, I always held Game of Thrones at arm's length, because... maybe that isn't my thing? There were definitely moments in Game of Thrones when I was, like, enthralled by what happened. And it's really interesting to think about Game of Thrones versus Lord of the Rings. The way I kind of see it is... Game of Thrones is the Beatles, and Lord of the Rings is Elvis. Elvis created this idea of rock 'n' roll, as we know it now. But then to listen to Elvis right now... it's too primitive for me.
Bob: Can I say one thing about the movies though?
Joe: Sure.
Bob: When the movies came out, they were... there was nothing ever created like them [before]. Like, the Battle of Helm's deep, when the ten thousand Orcs are coming, they actually dressed up hundreds and hundreds of people in actual Orc costumes, and painted them all, and made it look good. And the one thing I like about Lord of the Rings is, there's not a lot of green screen. It's shot in New Zealand, with real things.
Joe: Fair.
Bob: Movies now, it's all green screens, and you can tell. Lord of the Rings was real, and you can tell, that there wasn't any bullshit made-up shots. Everything was in nature, in New Zealand, actual shots, the actors were doing their own stunts. There wasn't a lot of green screens and computer, which is what I like. I don't like a lot of modern movies. There's too much computer shit. I think it ruins the movie.
Joe: It's interesting you say that. I talked to Dwyer a couple weeks ago, about The Dark Knight, and that was one of his reasons for liking that movie. It's interesting to understand what people consider "integrity" in movies. You consider the Lord of the Rings trilogy to have integrity because they used a bunch of extras and filmed real battle scenes.
Bob: They paid attention to detail, and I think it showed in the movie.
Joe: But then, so, how would you react to the character of Gollum, that there was this actor, and he wore a motion-capture suit, and clearly he didn't dress up like Gollum.
Bob: He's the exception to the rule.
Joe: Do you hate—
Bob: I hated Gollum.
Joe: Do you hate him as a character, or do you hate him because he was not real?
Bob: He's also a piece of shit.
Joe: As a character, but do you feel like the movie lacked integrity because they had to [use motion-capture]?
Bob: No, that was the one character that they had to make look like a hobbit that was really run down. He looked like a hobbit that was on heroin for a hundred years.
Joe: That's fair, and I personally thought they did a good job portraying that character. But it's... I am going to press you a little bit, because to say that this was a "very real movie" and then to have a very fake character, it's kind of at odds with each other.
Bob: He's also not in... they break it down into Sam, Frodo, and Gollum, and then there's Merry, Pippin, and Treebeard, and then you have Aragorn, and Legolas and Gimli. They break it down.
Joe: You like that aspect of it?
Bob: I love that aspect. Actually, my least favorite scenes are with Gollum, Sam, and Frodo. I'm not a big fan of those scenes. They're kind of boring.
Joe: But you like the fact that these stories were separated.
Bob: I love the Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ones, because I feel like there's always action happening.
Joe: But that's interesting, because I kind of... I don't want to say that I thought the opposite, but it kind of bothered me that there were times where it would be, like, a big action scene, at Helm's Deep, lots of sword fighting... and then you would have to cut to two fucking hobbits on a fucking tree.
Bob: Most of Helm's Deep... not a lot of it was split up.
Joe: It was intercut with slower moments from other storylines, and... that's the way it is.
Bob: They had to break it up a little bit. I feel like Helm's Deep is the best battle scene—swords and shields and stuff—in any movie ever created. And TV shows. Just the way they do it—they're coming up, they're banging their things on the ground, and the dude—you know what I'm talking about?—the one dude screws up, and he shoots one Orc, and it starts the whole war. And then Aragorn is on the actual wall, he's leading the elves that came to help—
Joe: [yawns] Right. Yeah. Look—
Bob: The king pisses me off because he didn't do shit the whole fucking time.
Joe: Um, correct.
Bob: Until they ride out. And then Gandalf comes in and saves the day.
Joe: What was that actor's name? Bernard Hill. The king. I thought it was interesting in the context of this week—I will be talking to my mom about Titanic soon, and Bernard Hill was the captain of the Titanic. [Editor's note: We never got around to talking about Titanic that week, but it's in the works. Patience, all you Your Favorite Movie fans!]
Bob: The captain goes down with the ship.
Joe: And that's exactly what the king did! He was in the cave, like, I'm gonna go down with my men.
Bob: He basically turned around said, "we're screwed," and Aragorn was like, "What do you mean? Your people died for you! We should ride! Ride for glory!" And then they ride the fuck out. And Gimli's blowing that horn [makes horn sound].
Joe: So this is redemption for Bernard Hill. Bernard Hill was a pussy in Titanic, he just let the water take him. He should've went out and punched the iceberg.
Bob: I like those... I guess you could call them "valor" scenes, where they step up. Aragorn, he fell off the cliff, right? And his horse found him, he sees the army, and he comes back, and he opens up the doors like a fucking boss. That's my favorite scene, he's just such a boss at that point. Love him. Aragorn was my favorite. I would name my kid "Aragorn" if Jenn would let me.
Joe: Will she let you?
Bob: No.
Joe: [laughter]
Bob: Maybe my next dog.
Joe: Right.
Bob: He did all his own stunts, all his own sword work, his own horse riding, all that. Orlando Bloom did all his own stuff. That movie took so long to film that all of the major actors in that film got matching tattoos. It took a decade to film.. You need to watch the third one. The third one is great. It's about four and half hours long, if you watch the extended ones. I think the problem is, you watched the extended ones...
Joe: Okay, so make a case for the extended scenes. Why? Why should anyone watch them?
Bob: I just always watch them, I just love them. I don't know. I don't really have a case. I just think that they add a lot of things that the books have, that people who don't read the books don't really notice.
Joe: Like, alright, so at the beginning of Two Towers, one of the extended scenes is Sam and Frodo talking about the strengths and weaknesses of Elvish rope versus regular rope.
Bob: It's just a little moment.
Joe: I just want someone to admit that it's not necessary.
Bob: ...that was not necessary. But you have to remember, when the movie came out, a lot of people didn't have those extended scenes. If you're a big Lord of the Rings fan, you buy the extended scenes to compare them to the book. Like in the first one, Lady Galadriel, in the extended scenes gave them all gifts, but in the non-extended scene, you only see the gift she gave Frodo. Did you watch the first one too?
Joe: Most of it.
Bob: The ending was the best though.
Joe: Wikipedia painted the scene just fine for me.
Bob: Aragorn turns around and he's fucking beating people the fuck up.
Joe: And Sean Bean dies, right?
Bob: Sean Bean dies in every role he ever has. But he died a hero, I hope you know that.
Joe: Sure.
Bob: He died trying to save the others. He took three arrows, and he was still fighting.
Joe: Good for him.
Bob: You have to watch it. The ending of that is great.
Joe: I don't know if I'll ever watch another minute of Lord of the Rings.
Bob: [laughter] I don't get it, why you don't like it. I just don't understand it.
Joe: Maybe it's the whole fantasy genre, it's never really connected with me.
Bob: I never knew that.
Joe: But okay, let's go back to the point with Game of Thrones. Because, I do want to press this comparison—
Bob: I feel like there is no comparison. It's different.
Joe: Game of Thrones definitely takes the tropes that Lord of the Rings created, and twists them, and turns them on their heads. Like, when you're watching Lord of the Rings, the main characters have what's called "plot armor," in that, you know the main characters, and you know they're not going to die at fucking Helm's Deep. Whereas, Game of Thrones—at least at the beginning—it was like, anyone could die at any moment.
Bob: Sean Bean died, he was a main character.
Joe: Exactly. He was the top-billed actor—
Bob: No, I'm talking about in Lord of the Rings, he was a main character.
Joe: But it wasn't... Sean Bean dying in Game of Thrones would be comparable to Frodo dying in Lord of the Rings. It's completely different.
Bob: You're talking twelve hours of a movie versus a hundred hours of a TV show.
Joe: Okay, but we're talking about things based on books. So it's not fair to say "it's just TV versus movies"—
Bob: But it is. Movies have to cram storylines and plots and character personality traits into a two-hour window.
Joe: That's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm not saying Game of Thrones is better or worse because it's longer or episodic. I'm saying that it was different, in that it wasn't a typical fantasy drama. Whereas Lord of the Rings was. It created the fantasy drama. It created a lot of tropes. Like listening to Elvis and thinking that that's primitive, I watched Lord of the Rings and think that's primitive. Because I've seen the inversion of those tropes already in Game of Thrones. So when I watch the original tropes, it's like, "this is a little boring."
Bob: I guess fantasy just isn't your thing.
Joe: Maybe.
Bob: I'm usually not a fantasy guy either. My sister really got me into Lord of the Rings when I was young.
Joe: Allie or Janine?
Bob: Allie. I also think I fall in love with characters in movies. I love Aragorn.
Joe: He was your favorite movie in Lord of the Rings?
Bob: Oh, by far. He's just a boss. A beast. I guess I just... I'm drawn to strong male characters.
Joe: Yeah, I kinda figured that would be a big reason you like this movie, because it's a quote unquote "badass" movie.
Bob: He's a just a badass.
Joe: So what do you think about Gimli?
Bob: Gimli, when I was younger, was my favorite character. He's comedic relief, kind of. But he didn't take no shit. Ya know what I love about Lord of the Rings? Legolas and Gimli start off hating each other, but you see their friendship grow throughout the movie. I think that's great.
Joe: There was some humor in the battle scenes, when they're comparing kills.
Bob: "That counts as one!" At the end, in the third one, they're fighting right outside of Mordor, and Gimli's like, "I never thought I would die side-by-side with an elf," Legolas is like, "How about side-by-side with a friend?"
Joe: Very nice.
Bob: That's a culmination—they started out hating each other, in the first one. The elves and the dwarves, throughout history, hated each other. And they came together and became really good friends.
Joe: I definitely appreciated Gimli in those action sequences more than Aragorn.
Bob: Aragorn was more the serious guy.
Joe: So what does that say about you as a person that, when you were younger you liked Gimli more, and now that you're older, you like Aragorn more?
Bob: I love Legolas too.
Joe: But, c'mon. Self-reflect. What does that say about you as a person?
Bob: I think I'm just drawn to stronger male characters. Like I was drawn to Tony Soprano. I idolized him for years, because he's a strong male character.
Joe: That's a little different, because he's the anti-hero. He's a sadistic, murdering freak.
Bob: You still root for him in the show because you don't want the show to end.
Joe: Sure.
Bob: Same thing with Walter White. I rooted for Walter White because I didn't want the show to end.
Joe: Right, but they're either anti-heroes or just straight up villains. Whereas Aragorn is not.
Bob: Well what do you think it says about me?
Joe: I dunno, do you want my armchair psychology?
Bob: I don't know what that means.
Joe: Like, I have a bachelor's in psychology but I don't know anything, someone like me would say, like... you idealize a stronger—
Bob: You're not gonna hurt my feelings.
Joe: Maybe burying emotions, Aragorn being straight, no humor, point the sword, whereas Gimli is enjoying throwing the ax.
Bob: I think that's the type of person I am. I don't really show—at any point in life—a ton of emotion. I just don't. I like—not me personally—but I like more of a strong, silent type.
Joe: I mean... you're quoting Tony Soprano right now.
Bob: I am, but—
Joe: [laughter]
Bob: I was going to say Gary Cooper, but I didn't! [laughter] But I like the more—you get your shit done, you don't need praise for it.
Joe: I don't think that that's necessarily uncommon that, ya know, the childhood whimsy of Gimli is buried beneath the adult responsibilities of Aragorn.
Bob: Well, I grew up liking Gimli because he was this sort of big guy, this thick guy, with a big beard, and a big battle ax. That's why I liked him. When I got older, I was like, well, Aragorn's the leader. Without him, there is no Gimli, period. Even when Sean Bean died, [he and Aragorn] were kind of at odds, but he brought them together. What does it say about me as a person? I don't know. Maybe I'm weak, and I need more strong idols to follow in my life, I don't know. Whatever.
Joe: Do you feel like you lack strong role models in your life?
Bob: I feel like I lack strong role models in my life, since I was young, because my dad left when I was a kid. So even when I was a kid, like if I had male teachers, I would grasp onto them. I used to do projects about male role models that were my friends' dads that I thought I was cool with. My dad left, and I feel like I always wanted some strong male role model who was just never there. Maybe that's why I like Aragorn, because he was the fucking man. I really think that that's part of it. Not to say "woe is me," that's not what I'm saying.
Joe: No, I didn't say that at all, shit.
Bob: That's part of it.
Joe: I think that's a pretty deep insight, man. I think that's an insight farther than you thought you were capable of.
Bob: I hope my dad doesn't read this. [laughter]
Joe: In terms of Two Towers itself, what would say is the main theme, or the—?
Bob: Well, the main theme of the movie is a combination of the two towers, Saruman and Isengard, and Mordor.
Joe: That would be the plot. Okay, say you are the film's producer, and you are creating this film, and you want an audience to get something from this movie, other than just eating their popcorn and saying "Wow." You picked Two Towers—
Bob: The battle scene is fucking epic.
Joe: Sure. But, like... do you think there's a theme? Or are you saying that this movie doesn't have one?
Bob: When you look at the prologue of the book, it says, "Yes, this is written as three books, but it's actually six individual books that are meant to be one." They're meant to be told as one story.
Joe: But pretend that Two Towers is its own separate entity.
Bob: The theme of this one is probably something like David versus Goliath. The people at Helm's Deep won with five hundred, six hundred people, they beat an army of ten thousand. Regardless of Gandalf coming to help at the end, and before the elves came, they had three hundred. At the end, they were still going to fight for what they thought was right. They thought that these Orcs are going to take over the world, and ruin the entire world, and cover the world in blackness. If we die, we're going to go out fighting for what we believe in. If we die, then we die. And Aragorn says that to Legolas, when Legolas was talking in Elvish, he was like [Editor's note: And here, Bob actually speaks in Elvish, and boy oh boy do I wish I knew how to transcribe this, because it's a hoot]. He's like, "They're all going to die!" and Aragorn's like, "Then I will die as one of them!" And he believed it.
Joe: I think you hit the nail on the head. I actually copied down a couple quotes that kind of wrap into that, the idea of fighting for what you believe in. The King of Rohan kind of questions it, when he's in despair, like, "What can men do against such reckless hate?" The answer was definitely, ya know, keep fighting... Sam, the Brave, he drops a couple good themes in this movie, one of theme pertains to the theme we're talking about now, "There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." He was telling that to Frodo, right? I mean, the whole movie seemed like a fight to me, a fight between good and evil.
Bob: David versus Goliath. Mordor, and the connection of the two towers... you're talking about a guy who built a ten-thousand-man army, and inside Mordor there's one hundred thousand. This was a just a small battle in the war, that they won. They talk about it at the end.
Joe: "We won the battle for Helm's Deep, but we have to win the war of Middle East."
Bob: Middle Earth.
Joe: Middle Earth.
Bob: And it's... you should watch the third one.
Joe: If I can find the standard version, not the extended version.
Bob: I think I have the standard version.
Joe: I thought another good theme of this was, when Sam and Frodo were talking toward the end, and they're kind of joking around a little bit, about, "Are people going to be talking about our story?" I thought that was kind of cool. It kind of put Lord of the Rings in a different light for me, because I had trouble getting a lot out of these movies. But to hear one of the main characters say, "Look, it can be just a cool story." That there's really nothing wrong with that. It kind of forced my hand, forced me to agree with that. Like, yeah, fuck it, maybe Lord of the Rings is just a cool little story and...
Bob: Can I give a spoiler for the third one?
Joe: I already read the Wikipedia article for it.
Bob: They get back to the Shire, and the four hobbits are riding horses with their Elvish gear on, and all the other hobbits are looking at them like, "you pieces of shit." The others didn't know that they had just saved the whole fucking world. They didn't care to tell anybody. And that's one of the reasons why Frodo has a hard time adjusting back into regular life, because he just did these major things and saved the world. Sam went out and got married, had kids. And then Frodo couldn't stand to live in the Shire, he felt like there was no meaning to life. He left with Gandalf, and the elves, and—now it's the Age of Men—and they go to the Grey Havens, and then that's it. They're gone forever.
Joe: It's interesting. What would be a real-world comparison to that? Like, somebody coming back—
Bob: If you were in WWII, and assassinated Hitler, and then came back... what's there left to accomplish in life? You just defeated the biggest asshole in the entire world. What brings you joy now? Frodo had just destroyed Sauron, who would've destroyed the whole world, and then he comes back. What gives him joy?
[Editor's note: I'm cutting about five minutes of Return of the King recapping from this section. I never want to hear about these damn movies again.]
Bob: I feel like there's a lot of deep shit in this movie.
Joe: But it's gets deeper in the books, is what you're saying.
Bob: I haven't read all of them yet. I'm a quarter through the first one, and the movie would've been over already. There's so much shit. They go into hobbit families, and stories—
Joe: The appendices?
Bob: Yeah, that the movies didn't need to have. But I really think it comes down to good versus evil. Are you willing to fight for what you believe in? Which I feel like you, personally, do that now. What you do. With what you believe in, with politics, which I personally admire. You have strong beliefs, and you fight for them.
Joe: I don't know if I necessarily fight for them. I'll drunkenly talking about them during a fucking movie interview.
Bob: You fight for them more than anyone I've ever met. And I admire that about you. You genuinely care about people, which has changed my mind about a lot of things recently.
Joe: I appreciate that. Sometimes I definitely feel like the King of Rohan. Just, the despair, of not being able to do it.
Bob: What did you think about the whole part where the King Théoden is being overtaken by Sauron, he's like, poisoning—what's the guy's name?
Joe: Wormtail.
Bob: Yeah, Wormtail.
Joe: No, Wormtongue! Wormtail is Harry Potter.
Bob: Grima Wormtongue.
Joe: Wormtongue, do you know what that actor's from? He's the fucking Doc from Deadwood!
Bob: Yes he is!
Joe: Crazy, I didn't recognize him without the mustache.
Bob: And he's in the Halloween movies.
Joe: Is he really?
Bob: The new ones.
Joe: He got nominated for an Oscar for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Supporting Actor. Which I guess is a bad segue into Oscars for this movie. Did it win any Oscars? I don't think it did.
Bob: The third one—
Joe: We're talking about Two Towers specifically. Return of the King won everything.
[Editor's note: More long plot descriptions here, FUCK.]
Joe: Definitely, in the past thirty minutes, during these spouts of you going over the plot, and what happens, I'm picturing those scenes from Parks and Rec, you ever see that episode? When Andy is—the cable goes out during Leslie's debate, and he acts out the entirety of Roadhouse. [Editor's note: Couldn't find the Roadhouse scenes, but here's where he does Rambo.]
Bob: I can almost probably reenact the Lord of the Ring movies. I've seen them all literally thirty times. I love them. You know what? When I watch them—let's say I go home and watch them on Saturday night—I try to look in the background and look for details, so I can be an expert on it. I'm never going to be, but...
Joe: I hope this isn't a repeat of a question earlier, but... in terms of liking these movies, these movies being your favorite... what does that say about you as a person?
Bob: That I like a good underdog story? I like good defeating evil. One of the reasons I disliked Game of Thrones for a while, but I still watched it... I hate that evil won every season. I almost stopped watching it! I hated that the bad guys won almost every season. Ned Stark dying, the Red Wedding, the Viper getting his head blown up. I hate it! It's depressing to watch.
Joe: So you just have this classical ideal of "The good should always win."
Bob: Good should always win. And sadly, with the world that we live in, it generally doesn't. Sometimes, when I can get away, and watch Lord of the Rings, I can know that the good guys are gonna win. And that makes me feel good. Usually, the bad guys win. I work for a corporate company where the bad guys always fucking win. And people like me get screwed. It's nice to be like... maybe I have a chance, and the good guy will win. When we live in a world where we have a president that thinks that global warming doesn't exist... when I can get out of that and watch Lord of the Rings, and know that the good guys are gonna win... it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like, maybe something crazy will happen, and people will realize that global warming is a huge problem, and we can finally fix it.
Joe: Honestly, man, you convinced me. I don't necessarily think a movie has to be "good prevailing over evil" for it to be a profound, effecting movie. But, I can definitely understand the need for a "good prevailing over evil" movie.
Bob: It's just nice to watch a movie that I know has a good fucking ending, ya know? Not like a horror movie, where they're pretty much all terrible endings.
Joe: Yeah man, a movie in which the people who rode around on a big fucking tree find a stash of pipe weed and smoke that shit.
Bob: Did you see the part where they drinking that shit and they're getting taller? That was pointless.
Joe: Me and Pam looked at each other and and said, "This has to be a fucking extended scene."
Bob: That's just a homage to the books. So the people who like the books—like, Allie, who got me on the extended scenes, because they just add extra scenes from the book that you wouldn't care about, but people who like the books would actually enjoy.
Joe: I don't know, man. I don't know if you've convinced me about the extended scenes. But—
Bob: I like that they show the old type of city where Théoden was—Edoras, that city. He lives in the citadel—
Joe: God, I'm going to have to do so much spellchecking when I'm transcribing this.
Bob: Sorry man.
Joe: [laughter] No, say what you gotta say.
Bob: They actually show the citadel, where the king lives, at the top point of the city. I like that they even throw that in there. Their attention to detail was good. They had a lot of extras, they didn't care about the money. They really wanted to make it seem like, the least amount of green screens as possible. The Hobbit movies, they were all green screen. I hate them. I couldn't get into it, and you could tell, and it sucks.
Joe: So would a well-made movie with well-made green screens be okay?
Bob: No, I don't like green screens. At all.
Joe: Really.
Bob: The Lord of the Rings made a billion each movie, without—Gollum aside... And then you even see the progression of Gollum. He sees Frodo as his master, but then when he's taking Faramir, when they see the elephants... and they take him, and Sméagol's, like, fishing, and Faramir's about to shoot him... you know what I'm talking about?
Joe: ...Sure.
Bob: And then Frodo's like, "Don't, don't, don't!" And then Sméagol thinks Frodo betrayed him, and at the end of the movie, he's like, "She will handle him." And Shelob is a big spider that he leads them to, that tries to kill them.
Joe: Right... and Shelob was a person in a big spider outfit...?
Bob: I think that might've been green screen. I dunno.
Joe: [laughter]
Bob: But the big battle scenes, though, dude, I just like that they made a thousand of the Orcs real. Most movies, the whole thing would be a green screen, man.
Joe: Certain things you can't do without a green screen.
Bob: Obviously. But I think that they truly tried to do as much as possible. You can go to New Zealand—which I want to do—and take the Lord of the Rings tour. I would love to do that. And they rode their own horses!
Joe: I dunno, I thought I saw that a lot of the horse work was... not green screen, and not CGI, but maybe motion-captured. [Editor's note: Yup.]
Bob: Well some of the battle scenes where they're dying, they're not going to kill the horses. People would be all over them.
Joe: Right. So what, are the battle scenes worse because of that?
Bob: No, but... I feel like you're just being nit-picky.
Joe: No! I'm just trying to get to the root of it. What makes a movie "good"? Is it realism? Because...
Bob: A lot of the background, they're riding through this great scenery—that's all real! A lot of movies, it would just be some asshole on a fucking treadmill, with a fucking green screen behind him!
Joe: Just the whole idea of this bothering you, and others, interests me.
Bob: Dude, all my boys are all into the Marvel and shit. I can't get into it, because the whole movie is just one big green screen. It sucks. It's awful. I can't watch it.
Joe: Okay, so, I get it. That's something I heard before, with The Dark Knight. But. Why though?
Bob: Why does it bother me personally?
Joe: Yeah.
Bob: Because it just doesn't look realistic.
Joe: You can tell the difference?
Bob: Yes, absolutely. This might sound absolutely stupid, but I'm going to say it anyway. Me and Jenn went to see Man of Steel, the Superman movie, with Henry Cavill, Russell Crowe. And he's fighting Jor-El or whatever—Jor-El is Superman's dad—whoever the fucking guy Superman was fighting. From Boardwalk Empire, the weird dude...?
Joe: Steve Buscemi.
Bob: No. Another guy.
Joe: Chef Jeff?
Bob: Maybe, I don't know. Whatever. [Editor's note: Michael Shannon played General Zod, and was in Boardwalk Empire, so that's probably it.] So they're having these battles. Skyscrapers are falling down, cities crumble. And in my head I'm thinking... they don't really go into what it would take to clean this shit up. Rebuild the city. You'd never be able to do it, it'd be trillions and trillions of dollars. That's why this shouldn't happen. The Dark Knight's not like that. Sure, some little shit gets messed up. In Lord of the Rings, they're knocking down trees and forests and, like, old forts that you don't even have to rebuild.
Joe: [laughter] You're talking about the monetary value of the large concrete wall?
Bob: You watch the Marvel movies, the entirety of New York City is crumbling to the ground, and in the end, everybody's happy. How about all the assholes that died when the Empire States Building fell over?! Or how much is it gonna cost to rebuild all the—? I dunno, maybe it's weird that that's how I look at it.
Joe: I mean, it's a fair point, and some niche superhero stories do address those concerns.
Bob: It's unrealistic for two superheroes to fight, and literally knock down entire cities, and they're fighting, and there's nobody in the city?! There's no asshole pedestrians in a pizza shop, and they're getting a pizza, and the building crumbles on top of them?!
Joe: You don't think Saruman had a pizza guy that got drowned out when the Ents knocked out the dam?
Bob: No, because they were all bad guys in Isengard.
Joe: That's actually a conversation that happens in Clerks. They're talking about, like, what about the contractors who worked on the new Death Star? Do we think they were evil too, or were they just taking a contracting job, building a big sphere?
Bob: But everyone who lives in Isengard is an Orc.
Joe: You don't think Isengard has a plumber?!
Bob: There's no plumber. They shit in the fucking woods!
Joe: You don't think they have a janitor who's sweeping up the Orc shit?
Bob: No, he's a wizard! He can do whatever he wants. He throws shit over the railing! And then the Orcs eat it.
Joe: You don't think Helm's Deep had janitors?
Bob: No, because the fort was abandoned before they got there. I'm sure they have outhouses. And they shit until it overflows, and then they just deal with it.
Joe: You don't think they're gonna hire some sub-contractors to rebuild that concrete wall?
Bob: All of Helm's Deep wasn't ruined.
Joe: They exploded the whole side of the wall! You don't think some dude is going to have to rebuild that?
Bob: They're gonna have to. But not at this point, because they have bigger things to worry about.
Joe: Maybe New York City had bigger things to worry about than a building crumbling.
Bob: In modern times, it takes about three years for a union contract to pass.
Joe: [laughter] Who knows what contract negotiations were like in Middle Earth.
Bob: You know what it was back then? Slavery.
Joe: And that doesn't bother you?
Bob: No, because it was Middle Earth, it was five thousand years ago.
Joe: That's the most capitalist thing you've ever said, man. Like, "Aw, the CEOs who own the buildings that got knocked down by Superman. Poor them! Pity them!" But the slaves that have to rebuild the Helm's Deep walls? "Screw them, they're slaves, so what!" It seems like you're nit-picking—
Bob: You're nit-picking!
Joe: No, you're nit-picking, like... "These are things I think about," but then ignoring other things that you should be thinking about.
Bob: Because it's one little wall compared to three skyscrapers! With electronics, and running plumbing, and elevators, and computers! You're talking about a brick wall! I could rebuild that wall in a week! ...Just give me a group of people to help me. [laughter]
Joe: ...I don't know how to continue this conversation.
Bob: [laughter] I'm just saying. I don't know how to explain my opinions to you. I just don't like green screens. I just don't. That's why, honestly, me and Jenn don't go to the movies anymore. It's annoying, seeing movies that are all computers.
Joe: Let me zoom out here, and ask you: What do you think the purpose of movies is?
Bob: Kinda like what you say about the Phillies. It's just something to take your mind off the fact that we're going to die. You go to the movies for two hours, and you forget about life, you forget about your problems, you forget about your mortgage, your kids, your bills, and just go to the theater, and enjoy the movie. Whether you enjoy it or not, you're going for an experience.
Joe: So why would you let something like a green screen trip you up there?
Bob: When I go to the movies, I just enjoy the more realistic aspect of it.
Joe: But if movies are an escape from reality, then why would you need that escape to be more realistic?
Bob: I'd just enjoy it more.
Joe: But movies are an escape though.
Bob: To some people.
Joe: You said you want to go to the movies and forget about things.
Bob: I hate going to the movies.
Joe: [laughter] What?!
Bob: Me and Jenn have been to the movie theater maybe once in the past three years. I literally hate going. I'm not even kidding, ask her! I never go to the movies, ever. You know what we watch on repeat? The Office. Because it's funny.
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