StudioTriggerFan397

20s. A young tachrán who has dedicated his life to becoming a filmmaker and comic artist/writer. This website is a mystery to me...

[studiotriggerfan397]

Mythic stories fall into several categories. There are sagas, epics, and fantasy stories called "märchen." These stories depend on something difficult for us to conceive these days: Simplicity or the "Logic of the Fairy Tale." In other words: things are just what they are, because that’s just the way they are. These stories frequently examine or teach a moral lesson, exalting it or exposing a particular flaw. If the story is a parable or doctrinal (such as stories from The Bible), one of its goals is to delineate the characters as "types" in order to illustrate this basic lesson, characters which make the story whole and who are also contained by it. The lives of these "types" can and must have links with the past and the future but their role ends with the story.

In a magic story, the flow is more important than the logic. Man invented monsters to explain the entire universe (Norse and Greek mythology for example). Once man began to live in an organized way, with a "social contract," an abyss was opened up between his instincts and his thoughts, and monsters started to represent another universe altogether: man's inner universe. The pagan prefigures the social and offers us a glimpse of the deepest reaches of man’s soul, articulating a primordial, savage universe, populated by elves, fauns, trolls, ogres, faeries, and demons.

[studiotriggerfan397]

"Castle in the Sky", also known as "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" (Japanese:  天空の城ラピュタ).

In my opinion, one of the best fantasy films of all time.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Gulliver's Travels (or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships) by Jonathan Swift.

A vivid, poignant and brilliant piece of work. A profound book. Satirical, moving and magical. Every adventure sheds light on the human condition. It's one of "those books" you think you know even when you haven't read it. Quite unlike any adaptation of it.

The ending, however, is a bit sad. Gulliver becomes disillusioned with humanity and decides to live in a stable. Perhaps that might be the "condition". Director Hayao Miyazaki seems to have been quite fond of this book.

Travels in order: 1) Lilliput and Blefuscu. 2) Brobdingnag. 3) Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan. 4) The Land of the Houyhnhnms.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

The original Tarzan story was a BLOODY mess (in a good way)!

While the character of "the wild boy of the jungle" was popularized by Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli in "The Jungle Book", the character that actually went on to become the definitive staple of the genre was actually Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan.

Tarzan is one of the most adapted characters to date. He has been featured in serials, cartoons, comics, TV shows, one Academy Award-nominated film, and even an animated Disney movie featuring the music of Phil Collins. While the modern Tarzan films have done a great job of showing us Tarzan's origins, none of them have gone on to show us his further adventures which are chronicled in the 25 books that followed the original, which see Tarzan having amazing adventures through the African continent, Egypt, and even the lost city of Atlantis!

Also, if you watched Disney's "Tarzan" as a kid, I have no doubt the scene with Clayton's demise is burned into your memory. But the original Tarzan story is even more savage and there's no happy ending, besides for Clayton (ironically). Like, remember the sweet gorilla named Kala who adopts Tarzan? Well, in the book, she's killed by a tribe of cannibals. And after she's gone, the male gorillas who saw Tarzan as a threat attack him and drive him out of the community. It's at this point that Tarzan meets the human explorers, Jane Porter, her father, and William Cecil Clayton. It turns out that Clayton is Tarzan's cousin and when Tarzan's parents died, he inherited all of their riches. So when he and Jane escape Africa, he uses those riches to establish their life in the New World and leave Tarzan behind.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is one of Disney's darkest animated movies, but the story it was based on is straight up depressing.

For starters, we get more details about Quasimodo's condition and learn that he's blind in one eye due to a wart growing over it, has red sores all over his face, a hump growing out of his back and chest, and he's almost completely deaf from ringing the church bells.

Just like in the movie, he falls in love with a Romani girl named Esmeralda after she rescues him from a public beatdown. But her heart is also pursued by Quasimodo's caretaker Frollo and Captain Phoebus. This love triangle falls apart a bit differently in the book though. Out of jealousy, Frollo tries to murder Captain Phoebus and then frames Esmeralda for it. Phoebus survives, but Esmeralda is still sentenced to death. Which ultimately leads to her being hanged in front of the church to the horror of the hunchback. Heartbroken and enraged, Quasimodo throws Frollo off the church balcony and then disappears from the public eye forever. Then, years later, a gravedigger discovered his skeleton curled around Esmeralda's.

I wasn't lying to you...

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

The 1988 film "Lady in White" is a very American ghost story, however, it adapts a ghostly figure that is found in ghost stories around the world.

To give you an idea, Wikipedia lists 17 countries each with their own version of this ghostly tale.

The writer and director of the film, Frank LaLoggia, grew up in a small town near Rochester, so he would have heard of what is likely the area's most famous ghost story. That is the "lady in white" who is said to haunt the Durand-Eastman Park in Rochester, New York.

In this version, which dates back to the 19th century, a local woman's daughter disappeared one day...never to return. Believing a local farmer had murdered her daughter, the grief-stricken woman threw herself from a cliff into Lake Ontario and since then, has been sited rising from the small Durand Lake near Lake Ontario, sometimes with her two dogs.

Very much like the "Lady in White" movie in which Melissa's mother also throws herself from a cliff, only to return as a ghost in search of her daughter.

[studiotriggerfan397]

"Never tell a child, 'you have a soul'. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body." - George MacDonald Misattributed to C.S. Lewis. He much admired MacDonald.

[studiotriggerfan397]

"The Book of Job" translated by Stephen Mitchell.

God and Satan's Bet.

To me, it's the most compelling, affecting, and mysterious book in The Bible. And along with the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it's one of the stories that I ponder quite often. It's like the ultimate suffering story.

Mitchell makes it sublime.

[studiotriggerfan397]

The Tales of Beatrix Potter (US title: Peter Rabbit and Tales of Beatrix Potter) by Reginald Mills.

One of my all-time favorite ballets and, in my opinion, one of the best ballets that has ever been put to film (along with "Nutcracker: The Motion Picture").

[studiotriggerfan397]

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." - Mahatma Gandhi

[studiotriggerfan397]

Dragonslayer by Matthew Robbins.

One of the first dingy, non Monty Python or Paolo Pasolini depictions of Middle Age fantasy.

Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood offer some brutal and shocking sights in a Disney film. A fantasy film landmark.

Also, this film has one of the most MASTERFUL dragon designs. Best of all times. Along with Smaug, Maleficent's dragon form, and Elliott (from 1977's "Pete's Dragon"), the Vermithrax Pejorative is one of my favorite movie dragons.

This is a masterful, epic, glorious, existential, political, deconstructive fantasy tale! Matthew Robbins delivers one of the greatest dragon tales ever and THE greatest dragon design and animation ever to grace the screen!

[studiotriggerfan397]

"Speak what you think now, in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Self-Reliance")

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

The original Little Red Riding Hood story is darker than you could ever imagine.

Most people are familiar with the Grimm Brothers version where the Big Bad Wolf gobbles up Little Red and Grandma and is promptly sliced open by a huntsman who saves the day and gives us a happily ever after. Believe it or not though, for once, the Grimm Brothers version really toned the story down. In the French version by Charles Perrault, there is no rescuer. The wolf devours the grandma and then tricks Red into climbing into bed with him and devours her too...and the story simply ends there!!

The darkest variant has got to be the Italian version though, known as "The False Grandmother". In this variant, the wolf is replaced with an ogress who eats some delicious grandmother before saving what's left of her in the pantry. Then when Red gets there, the ogress actually tricks her into eating her own grandma's remains. She says the flesh is animal meat, the blood is wine and that her teeth were dried beans.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

In Disney's Hercules, Hades (Lord of the Underworld) has two minions who assist him with his evil schemes, Pain and Panic. But his Underworld entourage in Greek mythology is a lot more intimidating than those two imps.

For starters, there was Thanatos. He personifies death itself and according to some poets, grants a peaceful, painless transition from the mortal plane to the spiritual one.

The female death spirits, called "Keres", were not so kind. They were the goddesses of violent death, and they would watch over battles like vultures, waiting to sink their teeth and talons into the men fighting below.

The Keres are comparable to the Erinyes or Furies. But these three goddesses of retribution weren't so fixated on consuming human flesh as they were punishing those who went against the natural order by committing murder and offenses against the gods.

Charon and Cerberus deserve some spotlight as well. If it weren't for the boat man, deceased souls would have no way to cross the rivers Acheron and Styx to the Land of the Dead. And if it weren't for Cerberus, those lost souls may try to return to the Land of the Living.

[studiotriggerfan397]

We've all seen adaptations of fairy tales where "True Love's Kiss" is the key to conquering evil, but in the original tales...the solutions are far more random and usually pretty messed up.

For instance, in the story that inspired Sleeping Beauty called "Sun, Moon, and Talia", there's no heroic prince who slays a dragon and rescues the princess. Instead, there's a king who forces himself on Sleeping Beauty while she's unconscious, impregnates her, then after she gives birth in her sleep, one of the twins tries to nurse from her finger and sucks out the splinter from the cursed spinning wheel.

In the Grimm Brother's Snow White, the prince falls in love with her corpse and buys it off the dwarves. Then, a few weeks later, one of the prince's servants gets tired of hauling the glass coffin around. So he opens it up and takes out his frustration by smacking Snow White in the back, dislodging the poison apple that was stuck in her throat.

The best example might be The Frog Prince story though. In the original tale, the princess doesn't kiss the frog to break the spell. She actually throws him against the wall and in another version, she literally chops off his head.

What did I tell you?

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

Disney's Tangled is nowhere near as dark and twisted as the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale that inspired it, but you'd be shocked as to how much they have in common.

In Tangled, old Mother Gothel uses the Sundrop Flower's healing magic to keep herself young, until the flower is used by the royal family to heal the pregnant queen. In the original Rapunzel story, her mother wasn't a gravely ill queen. But she was having pregnancy cravings for a plant called a "rampion", which their next-door neighbor, the witch, had a garden full of. The witch caught the husband when he tried to steal the plant and made him swear to give her his baby as repayment. While in the movie, Gothel outright abducted Rapunzel because the healing powers had been transferred to her hair.

And ironically in the movie, Rapunzel's hair being cut leads to Gothel's demise. But in the fairy tale, Gothel cuts it herself as punishment for Rapunzel having a male visitor and then she abandons her in the wilderness to die alone and pregnant.

[studiotriggerfan397]

Fun Fact:

In Disney's Hercules, Philoctetes claims to be a great trainer of heroes, having brought up the best "yeuseus" to have ever lived. But in ancient Greek myth, this role actually belonged to Chiron.

Instead of being a satyr, Chiron was a centaur who mentored heroes like Odysseus, Perseus, and Theseus. He was also the one who taught Jason how to sail and he taught Asclepius everything he knew about medicine, which ultimately led to the boy being made the god of the healing arts. There's also his relationship with Achilles. After hosting the wedding of Achilles' parents, he received custody of him when the couple split up and he raised Achilles to be a master of medicine, music, archery, hunting, gymnastics, and prophecy.

So who's the real Philoctetes? Well, instead of being a trainer to heroes, HE was a hero himself. A highly skilled archer who fought in the Trojan War. And get this, his only connection to Hercules (or Heracles) is that he lit the funeral pyre that killed him when he was poisoned with the Hydra's blood.