One overlooked thing that really sets the Lord of the Rings films apart from other franchises is how earnest they are-
Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! 😉 Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”
But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.
And when Lord of the Rings does “lean on the fourth wall” to talk about storytelling within the film, it’s never to make jokes about How Ridiculous These Storytelling Tropes are (the way most films do)…. but instead to talk about how valuable these stories can be. Like Sam’s Speech at the end of the Two Towers: the greatest stories are ones that give you something to believe in, give you hope, that help you see there are things in a bleak violent world that are worth living for
All of this could be said for Xena: Warrior Princess (also filmed by New Zealanders in NZ with nary a jaded soul in sight). Late 90s/early 00′s film/telly was the last of its kind.
As a society, the history of autism makes clear that the notion that there is one best way to learn, one best way to experience the world, and one best way to be human, is bunk. That belief prevailed through most of the 20th Century, when psychiatrists elevated themselves into a position akin to secular priests. But it’s based on a false model of how human brains work, and it ends up stigmatizing and marginalizing people who have tremendous gifts to offer society.
Think about it: why would the community of human minds be less diverse than, say, a rainforest? But it isn’t. We’re part of the natural world, and nature thrives by experimenting, by fostering the development of many different types of individuals. In a rainforest, this wild riot of variety and difference makes communities of plants and animals more resilient in the face of changing conditions. As we face the challenges of the 21st Century — which include a rapidly changing global climate! — we will need many different types of minds working together. As a teacher, you’re helping to build the foundation on which the fate of humanity may depend.
If the show had a bit more honesty about it, we would have had a scene where Lexa, wanting to teach her Nightbloods a little history, takes the children, and Clarke out for a ride.
They reach the bombed out remains of another city, one much larger than whatever Polis might have been. We can see the range of devastation. They can sit on a hill and look down upon it.
Lexa tells the children how it used to be a great city, full of people, how the land they live on was once part of a great nation that stretched from one ocean to another. But. The people who built that nation weren’t honest. They were greedy and arrogant. They’d stolen the land from others, the ones who came before them. She tells them how the people were subjugated, murdered, pushed out of their land, their way of life, their homes and left to all but die out.
When Aden asks ‘why,’ she explains, looking directly at Clarke, at how the invaders had superior weapons, how they thought the natives were savage and inferior. They thought nothing of taking what they had, destroying their way of life, because the invaders saw themselves as superior, of more value.
But even if the natives were savages, if you can even believe that word, they were not without value. They were not inferior. They deserved to live and to grow and to thrive. They weren’t monsters. And they did their best to protect one another and what they had made and were proud of.
The Doctor Is Out 