Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
Tonight! December 2, @ 8PM ET.
Sorry for posting so late, week's been crazy.
Sorry for posting so late, week's been crazy.
No worries, it was a good suggestion. I don't think it quite fit with the descent into hell situation, but it would have been a shame to not even consider a way to reference the original Tale of Tinuviel here.
I hear you Dillon. I think we've given her a very noble death though. Her self-sacrifice is testament to her estel, despite long years of slavery. She dies to ensure that the Silmaril is liberated to eventually become Gil-Estel. In ensuring that the Silmaril gets out of Angband, she is doing something that her husband and her brothers cannot do by virtue of their oath. Perhaps she hopes for redemption for Curufin at some point?Breaking my heart with Díriel! Sad I couldn't be there for the discussion. (Guess this is my last chance to observe that Díriel began as a boy's name as an early name for the later Amras)
Naturally, that is waaaaaaay more campy/silly than we are going for with Angband! Buffy is working as a waitress in a diner named "Helen's Kitchen", among other things. And she spends about 1 day as enslaved labor, being able to fight back and overcome the guards/demons who have enslaved them. So, while they introduce the concept of lack of hope, and show how this place has used up many other people (100 years in hell = 1 day in the real world, so no one will even miss the victims), the protagonist does not experience the full weight of being trapped in hell. The dead bodies decorating the place are set dressing. Lots of quips and cheesiness.
love it!I have added a reference to 'the Lúthien effect' to the descent into Angband scene in the outline. Naturally, this did not come up during the script discussion, so I'm inviting feedback and suggestions on this idea.
My hope here is that, as Lúthien and Beren descend into Angband, we see the journey through Lúthien's eyes. She still has the bat cloak of Thuringwethil wrapped about herself, but she is not unrecognizable. And so...when she has to pass through an area where the enslaved elf prisoners are hard at work in Morgoth's war machine...we see her horror at their plight. She knows she cannot save them, or even help them. But, she's Lúthien - she would find some small act of kindness to perform to ease their plight in some minor way. Provide a cup of water, help someone who has fallen/dropped something heavy, etc. She's not going to sing or dance. She is sneaking. So, her usual healing effect will not take place. But she does something to help make one person's day a little less terrible, easing their burden in whatever way she can without drawing attention.
This carries over into our next scene with the prisoners. As we return to Guilin and Díriel, we see that some of the prisoners are similarly finding small things they can do to help one another. Lúthien's small action has a ripple effect, and each elf who has this touch of light is 'paying it forward' to the rest of the group. So...turns out this is a slightly-less-horrible-than-usual day to be a slave of Angband. Because, unbeknownst to them, Lúthien is there.
The idea is that we are priming the group for action when Beren and Lúthien try to escape with a silmaril. There is a reason they choose to spend their one free action on helping Lúthien escape - Estel.
Thoughts?
Could try it with a certain scar missing on Draugluin while Beren is disguised as him, similar to Darryl Revok, the main villain in Scanners; Revok has a scar on his head from a botched suicide attempt with a drill. When (spoiler alert) Cameron Vale takes control of Revok's body at the end of the film, the scar is gone.Disguises!
Based on the podcast discussion of Episode 9, the depiction of the disguises in Episode 10 is going to need to show the transformations as more than simply a glamor. Beren and Lúthien become Draugluin and Thuringwethil...and yet remain themselves. They are disguised, not transformed into these characters. So, I thought of two other examples on film where this happens.
Hermione 'disguised' as Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter via Polyjuice Potion:
Loki speaking to Thor as Captain America:
In both of these scenes, they first filmed the 'disguised' actor performing the scene, and then allowed the actor playing the disguise to mimic the performance. Ie, Emma Watson did the Bellatrix scene before Helena Bonham Carter, and Tom Hiddleston put on the Captain America costume for the scene before Chris Evans filmed it. In the Harry Potter scene, it is not at all difficult to tell that it's really Hermione - the final scene is a blend of both performances. Similarly, there's very little of Steve Rogers in Loki's impersonation of him.
The first scene is tense, while the second one is more humorous...obviously, we are going for tense during the descent into Angband! But it's fine if it's obvious at times that this is Beren and Lúthien, not Draugluin or Thuringwethil.