6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes
We humans devote a huge amount of our brain power to thinking of all the ways the world could suck less. Almost all of our entertainment is based on letting us escape to some other world where people can do magic and even the hardships look like fun.
What is interesting, though, is how terrible our fictional fantasy worlds really are. They look like fun for two hours at a time, but with a little thought you see why living there would make you want to drink yourself into a stupor.
#6.
The Disney Universe
Disney movies show us an animated world full of dashing heroes, beautiful princesses and loveable sidekicks. Everyone prances about so joyfully and carefree they must spontaneously burst into song and dance every once in a while just to let off steam.
If you're a good person, a happy ending complete with riches and true love is pretty much guaranteed. Death is apparently uncommon, at least on screen. Evil doers will get their comeuppance and everything always works out in the end.
"And then I fucking DIE? I should have read this script earlier."
Why It Would Suck
In the Disney universe animals talk, which at first all looks like good fun. When you're feeling lonely or rejected by your fellow humans, you can always find an animal sidekick to provide conversation, keep you company or at least entertain you with their bumbling/farting antics. Crickets give you goal-setting advice and adorable fish become your best friends. And even animals that apparently can't talk can still help out with household tasks, like the birds that help make a dress in Cinderella.
Which makes it all the harder when it comes time to eat them.
Yes, with every animal around you potentially being a fully conscious, thinking being, any animal product or service used by humans would involve murder, harassment or in the very least slave labor.
Want to enjoy some seafood? Then you'd better be OK with listening to Sebastian, the crab from The Little Mermaid, crying in his pidgin English all the way down your throat. Merely milking a cow becomes sexual harassment.
Becoming a non-leather-wearing vegan doesn't help either, because in this universe, inanimate objects can also be enchanted humans in disguise. Want to throw a cup at your prince after he comes home from another long night of "saving princesses," the stink of "magic potion" wafting from his crotch? Now you've shattered Ms. Teapot's son, you killer. Oh well, maybe he'll make you feel better by building a romantic fire with that old tree he just cut...
Oh, crap.
Everything you use to live, work, create a comfortable life and sustain yourself likely talks, wisecracks, parcels out sage wisdom and most certainly will scream their asses off when you take a hatchet to them. That mosquito you just swatted had hopes and dreams. The flower you just picked for your princess just found out it was accepted to Princeton, you dick!
#5.
The Marvel Universe
We're not going to try to pretend that being a superhero isn't awesome. The sheer joy you feel the first time you punch a bad guy and make him fly through a brick wall would render any such arguments ridiculous.
And life is never dull in the Marvel Universe, because there's always a supervillain around the corner ready to indulge in an impressive battle with you, which after varying amounts of struggle, you'll win every single time. So yeah, life would be pretty sweet.
If you were a superhero.
Above: Spider-Man and some normal chumps.
Why It Would Suck
The Marvel canon lists approximately 5,000 characters in its entirety. Even ignoring significant others, aliens and advisors and assuming that every single one of those is an Earthling with superpowers, this means that for every successful superhero, there are 1,400,000 regular people. So in Marvel world, the odds of winding up with super powers are less than half the chance of being hit by lightning (although to be fair, being hit by lightning in the Marvel universe would probably give you superpowers).
So that means you're almost certainly not the Hulk, but rather one of the screaming panicked bystanders running around the streets while he's flinging cars around. For those people--that is, virtually everyone--everyday life is a living hell.
Pray your insurance covers this.
Think about how long the trauma lasts in a city like New York after a terrorist attack. Then consider that in the Spider-Man movies alone, a superpowered terrorist attacks the city once every couple of years.
Throw in the Fantastic Four franchise and you've got shit exploding in the Big Apple every year or so. They wouldn't even have time to put a memorial together before the next one struck. The poor bastards living in the city are basically going to work every day in a warzone, where at any minute their office could be exploded by a costumed asshole who can do magic.
But would an asshole wear this?
But let's say you somehow beat the odds, avoided being one of those de-powered mutants or normal humans, and are a superhero. Lucky you! You can use your powers to scale buildings at will and blow up shit with your eyes. Oh, but there is a high chance of your loved ones dying and/or morphing into nemeses which you then have to ironically fight.
Well, at least there's an end to it all. You can retire, or die bravely in combat while saving the planet. Oh, wait, no. No matter how painful and final your death, no matter if you were an adult in the 1930s and everyone and everything you know and love has passed from this Earth, somewhere, eventually, you will be brought back to life and forced to continue your eternal, unending struggle to provide enticing drama in serial form.
#4.
Middle Earth
People want to live in Middle Earth--or one of the countless knockoff fantasy worlds it has spawned--so badly that they dress up, gather in the park and spend the day pretending it's true.
We can see why. All of these Tolkien-inspired worlds present us with a beautiful alternative to the complicated, hectic modern life of today. No traffic jams, computer crashes or student loan repayments. The bad guys are clearly and unrepentantly bad and easy to spot, politics are reduced to clear good versus evil. Plus, there are goddamn Wizards.
And they don't all sit around making tiny unicorns.
Why It Would Suck
Just look at the little hobbits, living in harmony! And here are the elves, in a completely separate, roped-off area, also living in harmony! And here are the people of Gondor, living in harmony in their homogenous enclave! And the dwarves, happily mining for minerals with other dwarves! And only other dwarves.
For there is no race-mixing in Middle Earth. There are no humans or elves living in the Shire, and if a hobbit is going to live in Rivendell, he'd better be a big goddamned deal. Ask yourself: If everyone has wound up perfectly segregated, how did it get that way? What happened to people who tried to intermarry with other peoples of Middle Earth? Whatever it was, it discouraged everyone else from daring to try it.
The orcs never stood a chance.
So maybe you want to do something to fix this, like electing a new government that makes it illegal for shops in Rohan to refuse to hire orcs. Well, too bad: power in Middle Earth is hereditary. You have a king, a lor, or maybe, if you're lucky, a thain. Were you pissed off when George W. Bush was in office? Well, imagine his line continuing in power, forever... and you can't move away because you (presumably) get your ass kicked if you try to buy land among another race.
Sure, we see a human get to bang an elf at the end of the saga, but he had to save the freaking world to earn the right.
Speaking of elves fucking, let's talk about that for a moment. Although most of the elves are hundreds or even thousands of years old, there are hardly any children around, and their population has remained relatively small and stable. Since it's unlikely that the staunch-Catholic Tolkien would have allowed birth control inside his creation, it is obvious that no one in the Elfish kingdom is getting any, anywhere.
We wonder why.
Of course all of this avoids the obvious, which is the fact that if you get a toothache in Middle Earth, you've got a date with a dude with a hammer and a rusty pair of pliers. Did you notice how the flashback in Lord of the Rings from thousands of years earlier showed there has been zero advancement in weapons, clothes or anything else since? That's because technology of all sorts was generally considered evil in Tolkien's imaginings, and pretty much anyone who tried to mass produce anything in Middle Earth soon became both immoral and insane.
No wonder everybody is baked on pipe weed every waking moment. It's the only escape from the soul-crushing depression.
I'd say the Imperium of Man would suck more, for various reasons- xenos, Chaos, Inquisitors, mutants, daemons, Tyranids eating who planets and nobody'll 'fess up to the fact that your 'God'-Emperor is dying... Good times, no?
Reply#5 is EXATCLY why I love the premise of Garth ennis' "The Boys" so much.
ReplyIf you haven't heard of it, look it up, it takes a totally crazy spin on the super hero thing
Because it's a movie.
ReplyWhat about the intense nuclear war on Earth that decimated human civilization just a century before the Star Trek universe actually begins? In the months following Hiroshima, the victims lost the will to do, well, anything. Now put that on a planet-wide scale and forever engrave it on the racial memory of the entire human race. When Rome fell, the shock it caused brought western civilization to its knees for a thousand years and even today we fear the barbarian horde. Really, the list goes on.
ReplyI am sure everyone else has already mentioned it, but hobbits and humans intermixed in Bree, even in the movie.
Replyand it continues to fall apart from there. The entirety of the Star Trek universe serves in Starfleet? I must have missed that memo. Only furfags want to live on Pandora, skip it. The prequels never happened.
I haven't seen the Star Wars prequels so can somebody tell me how the heck Padme gave birth if her legs were held together. Isn't that like shutting the door on somebody?
ReplyPerhaps it was a metaphor for the way lucas treated his fans with those movies?
"Everything you use to live, work, create a comfortable life and sustain yourself likely talks, wisecracks, parcels out sage wisdom and most certainly will scream their asses off when you take a hatchet to them." -- I couldn't stop laughing at that.
ReplyI always thought about the cost of insurance in the Marvel Universe. Glad I'm not the only one :) Merry Christmas Cracked!
ReplySo, kind of like real life, huh? Gee, can't imagine why...
ReplyThe author of this piece clearly did not do any research. Synthehol allows one to become drunk but instantly shake off the effects.
ReplyShut up
On Star Wars: (according to the Essential guide to Droids)
ReplyFor Padme, they were visiting on a nonhuman-operated asteroid. In fact, it was unknown why they even had a droid for human-style births. Therefore, it's probable that any medical staff would be quite horrible at figuring out what amount and what kind of anesthetic wouldn't kill a human. The droid that pronounces her impending death is pretty clueless, too, despite being award winning or something. For Anakin, well, he WAS being operated on by droids owned by an evil Sith emperor whose power comes from pain and anger. What better way could there be?
That must've been a group of tardbots then. I can google that s**t right now and find out. If they HAD the anesthetic, they should have an idea how it's used and if they don't have it, it's a moot point.
This article was poorly done, most of the analysis of the universes were superficial and his conclusions were forced.
ReplyYou should actually read Tolkien's books. The races like to live separately because they are among people who understand them better. Unlike ethnic groups in real life, who are all human, the Middle Earth races really are different kinds. It's not just different music, food, and culture; elves would be depressed living among people who lived short lives and had short memories. Living with dwarves would be boring if you weren't as interested in mining and craftsmanship.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesBut the important point is that this all seems to be by free choice. No one is discriminated against, and in the books there are plenty of cases where people welcome outsiders (especially if you read the Unifished Tales or the Silmarillion). At the end of Return of the King all the main characters are pretty much told "you'll always be welcome here." People are only a little wary of outsiders because of how well Sauron uses spies. Even so, the village of Bree is where humans and hobbits live together amiably without any appearance of prejudice. Dwarves have somewhat frequent dealings in the Shire. The men of Esgaroth welcome Thorin and the other dwarves, as do the elves of Rivendell.
As for technology, the trilogy happens around the time of the invention of gunpowder (in our world, roughly the 14th century), and it seems that the progression of natural sciences in Middle Earth more or less matches up with our own history, and there's no reason to believe they would not discover electricity and such at the same rate.
I don't see the "horrifying implication."
Well, there is the less than cordial relationship between dwarves and elves. But it doesn't seem to really inconvenience either party.
I would love to read the "Unifished Tales", where can I get a copy?
@billafu: It's called a typo you retard. Don't try to pretend you never made a mistake typing.
I always thought that the trilogy was meant to be set around 6000 years ago, given that the entire Tolkien mythology is a retelling of our own world, and that most of civilisation had been in decline since the fall of Numenor.
I'm like 90% sure Star Trek featured a synthesizer that basically makes whatever you want for free. I remember one episode, these wizards offer Captain Kirk diamonds because they think that's what humans want the most and Kirk says "But we can make these for free on our ship" or something like that. So I assume everyone got to use the synthesizer because why not? As well, wroking aboard the Enterprise is still a hell of a lot better than a s****y manual labour job here on Earth. Starfleet probably works a lot like the real army and there was never any mention of conscription, so you only joined if you wanted to. Otherwise, I figure there'd be a big tourist industry for some of the better known planets. So still pretty cool.
Reply/endnerdrant
In TNG, they do mention that every random citizen of earth has a replicator/upgraded synthesizer, so yeah, it was pretty sweet back on Earth, too.
Is poor medicare the only problem we can think of with the Star Wars galaxy? How about the huge wars constantly caused by religious strife between the Sith and the Jedi?
ReplyAnd of course the occasional exploding planet...
Vader was put through the surgery as part of his Sith trials. Pain leads to power, or something, I'm a little rusty on the details.
ReplyHa ha ha ha ha, no. Vader was put through the surgery as part of keeping him alive. The lack of painkillers, and semi-shoddy results were part of Palpatine's plan to push him further to the Dark Side by strengthening his rage and hatred, not through pain.
Well, #4 isn't actually THAT horrifying, at least the "If everyone has wound up perfectly segregated, how did it get that way?" part. I mean that's just what people DO. School Cafeterias and Prisons are the best examples: Nobody forces people to group segregated by race, and yet that happens in almost every School Cafeteria or Prison.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAnd those people aren't even different species! They just have the most minor of differences among being "Homo Sapien". Orcs, Elves, and Humans are all completely separate SPECIES of hominid, it's absolutely obvious they'd tribalize themselves.
People just love to throw the "segregation" argument for the funny or shock value. In reality, Integration is an incredibly unique concept shared by VERY few animals and only very recently became the "right" way for humans.
There was a lot of hand-wringing over this where I went to college (University of Virginia). Self-segregation got to be perceived as such of a problem (don't know if it was a "problem" per se, but it was BLATANTLY obvious that it did go on) that the administration eventually took away the option for incoming first years to list a preference as to which of the two first year dorm complexes they would rather live in. The incoming students would read up online and find out the reputations of the complexes (McCormick Dorms as more white and Greek-life oriented, and Alderman Road as more ethnically diverse and less about frats and partying). It got even worse for upperclassmen, but there wasn't really anything the university could do about it.
"Orcs, Elves, and Humans are all completely separate SPECIES of hominid, it's absolutely obvious they'd tribalize themselves."
Yeah, well, um, no. They can all interbreed, so they're not different species. You go screw now.
@TeaBagSmith: Donkeys and horses are different species. They're related and can breed together, but still different.
Racial segregation in prisons is actually enforced, simply because the guards know that criminals of different colours WILL f*****g kill each other if given the opportunity. I've been in prison, so I know this firsthand.
This article is missing "Gone with the Wind".
ReplyYes. I think we all know what was wrong with that one.
Was it just me, or was this article full of holes?
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies6. Nowhere is it said that all Disney movies take place in the same universe. And each universe has its own rules that everyone born in that universe grows up learning. And, to be fair, most of those examples you cited were kind of one-time things: Grandmother Willow is a special tree, the animate inanimate objects in Beast's castle are actually people under a spell, etc.
5. Okay, so it would suck to be a normal human living there. I'll give you that one.
4. Saying that all races were segregated in LotR is like saying all races are segregated in real life. You have areas that have higher ratios of one race, but that doesn't mean they're segregated. It just means that it's traditional that that race inhabits that piece of land. Humans were in Rivendell all the time -- heck, Aragorn grew up there. The town of Bree was about half-and-half humans and hobbits. Most of the other places were were admittedly a bit homogenous, but most of that was because they were either 1) out of the way, or 2) everyone else was rather happy where they were. Hobbits, especially, were portrayed as homebodies.
3. There is no money in Star Trek, but you do earn credit that you use to buy stuff with. And everybody is given very nice things to begin with. And I'm sure that flesh-eating gases getting loose and explosions ejecting crewmen into space are rare occasions -- they'd have to be, or the crew of every spaceship ever would be reduced to about a half-dozen in a matter of months. It's just that it would be really boring to watch the Enterprise work its way through space without being bothered, with everybody just going about their day-to-day routines.
2. I'm going to be a bit of a prude here, and say, if you live in a culture where sex=marriage, then don't have sex until you're ready to be married. Which probably won't be a problem for you, because you grew up with those values in that culture. Also, I'm pretty sure the communal hammock sleeping space was just for bachelors (as was actually very common in many native american tribes, which the Na'vi were famously based on).
1. You mentioned bad examples of health care; what about the Bacta tank? You know, those things where you'd put people with even serious wounds, and they'd come out a week later good as new? You mentioned also how advanced their synthetic limbs were -- you can't even tell Luke's hand isn't real after the doctors get through with it. As for Anakin/Vader after his dip in the lava fields ... I don't know, it's been awhile since I saw the prequels, and they were so awful I don't remember much from them. But at the time I got the impression that the droids were just beginning to work on him -- even the best anesthetics take time to take effect. As for Padme, I'm pretty sure the medal skirt was because of the huge viewing window in the birthing suite and Obi-wan hovering over her, not prudish droids. And it's well documented that people sometimes die simply because they don't want to live anymore. Especially during physically trying and dangerous situations, like GIVING BIRTH -- they simply stop fighting and welcome death. Cheesy, I know, but not without precedence. And no one ever said the Star Wars movies were known for not being cheesy.
To add to 1: Sidious was putting Vader through it purposefully, 'cause you know, f*****g evil.
There's also the fact that Synthehol does allow you to get drunk, but with focused effort you can shrug off the effects.
Damage Control Inc. That is all.
The LOTR entry totally ignored the fact that Bree exists. It's a town populated by Hobbits and Humans. Also Half-elves appear to be pretty common. Elrond was a half-elf back when Sauron had a body. The people that Aragorn's blood line comes from are part-elf. It is said that Arwen's blood will reinvigorate that line. And Bilbo goes to Live with the Elves when he grows old. The peoples who live separate from each other do not do so because they are not allowed but because they each prefer different environs. Should they wish to live amongst others nothing is truly stopping them. Remember that the Dwarves when driven from their mountain by Smaug lived and worked among men. And Trade between the races was common before the dragon. The Hobbits Founded the shire under the reign of a human king and counted the shire amongst the lands of his realm. Only the Dwarves and Elves show any real hostility toward each other, and even that is overcome soon enough and only kept 'for show'.
ReplyWith LOTR's elves and human interbreeding, it's kind of strange. Yes, Elrond was conceived from the union of a human and elf, but he is entirely elf. The distinction isn't biological rather than spiritual, as much as I hate saying that. The concept behind it is that the elves have an immortal spirit which is destined to return to the protection of the Valar, gods which came to Arda (the planet on which Middle-Earth is located) after its creation to oversee its protection. The reason why all the elves are leaving Middle-Earth at the end of the third age is because the Valar have called them back to the continent of Aman, where the Valar reside. Elf souls (and bodies, if they physically travel back) go back to the Valar, and nobody really knows what happens to human souls; if I remeber correctly, they sort of drift beyond known creation. I'm not sure what the determining factor is, but the union of an elf and a human results in either a human or and elf, not a hybrid. That being said, I agree with you 100% pantherwisdom 100%; intermixing and in some cases interbreeding were common in Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Thanks for giving me a chance to vent knowledge which I would almost never had a chance to share.