#rott ending

[aupermittymeowmeow]

So I plan on re-writing the Rise of the Titans movie altogether and having a prequel later on. I don’t know how long it will be or take(giving how many chapters I want to put in). But for now I want to showcase Jim since he is our starring boy!

It kinda felt weird to me how Jim turned back into a human near the end of Wizards for some reason, and how Merlin said there was no way to turn him back. So I just redesigned his troll fit and added a few details from his ACTUAL troll form(such as his horns and tattooed lines). I also gave him longer hair and scruff since we never really see it(plus Its been like what a couple of years? man does NOT care about hair length). And where the amulet was? now a cool scar.

For character analyse I just wanted to use flat colors in case I wanted to do flashbacks or short comics/doodles. Over on the right I wanted to line out how differently each for was like body build and facial structures. 

And finally armor. Everything is overall the same except for the moonlight armor(which can be read in Angor Reborn) and the RoTT armor. I hated how it looked in the movie with the added Excalibur and Akaridian tech(sorry Krel love ya<3) and it just didn’t look right. So I took inspiration from King Arthurs armor and added a little bit of how his troll form looks(like horns and spikes. I also wanted him to have a cape since he deserves it<3

[madrone33]

RotT ranting ‘cause I need to express my unhappiness.

JIM YOU COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOT!

There is a whole ass 20 min long ep in Trollhunters called ‘Unbecoming’ exploring the question/insecurity of “What if Jim wasn’t the Trollhunter?” The answer clearly shown in the episode is “The whole world will go to shit, and in the end Jim is the Trollhunter, Amulet or not.”

Ya hear that Jim? AMULET or NOT.

So why is it that the 1st thing young Jimmy does when the Amulet breaks is go, “Oh no but can i be a hero without the Amulet?😱” Bitch EXCUSE ME??

Where did all that character development go huh? Up Gunmar’s ass? ‘Cause no way are the writers doing this arc again that they already did very well in a series explicitly dedicated to Jim alone, without the time limit of a movie and the need to include sixty million other main characters from the other shows and all their separate arcs.

But apparently, the writers collectively decided to have selective amnesia that day and completely forgot about the episode dedicated to Jim’s insecurities and doubts. Nice going writers.

And then. And THEN. They have the audacity to take Toby - ma boi TP - and make it so the only thing he can do to help is sacrifice himself for the cause, and then die. Yes, you heard that right. They kill off Toby for shock value.

What. The. Fuck.

Toby is so much more than just the support guy who dies to give the movie a dark edgy “deep” ending. He’s Jim’s best friend, the steady accepting rock that Jim is lost without. It’s not a happy ending if Toby’s not in it. Jim would be broken. But I guess that was probably the point, huh. “Oh no, one of the main chs died, this movie really does have consequences!”

Except it actually doesn’t, because they almost immediately scrap that. See, after Toby’s tragic death - which btw I legit didn’t see coming and was completely confused by. And this wasn’t shock or denial from grief, this was just plain scepticism and confusion. Huh? Ok so did Toby just… die? It’s not a fake-out for drama?

I just sat there for a few minutes waiting for the film to clarify. And then when I realised yes, they did actually kill Toby, I waited a bit more for the film to pull something out of its ass to retcon this. Which it did. And boy was it some retcon.

Time travel. Yep. You heard right, but I’m going to write it again anyway: They used time travel.

Now time travel on its own isn’t a show breaker. Hell, it’s used quite effectively in many stories and movies. Harry Potter PoA case in point. So time travel as a concept isn’t bad. It’s when the time travel breaks the timeline, already existing lore, character development, character integrity, stakes, suspension of disbelief, and makes you feel like nothing you watched mattered, that it becomes bad. Which RotT does. And it’s a dumpster fire.

Jim travels back in time, not to the moment before Toby’s sacrifice, which would have invalidated that sacrifice but might have been bearable. Not to the beginning of the movie, which would have been a bit weird but bearable. No. Go big or go home right? He goes all the way back to Trollhunters Season 1 Episode 1 ‘Becoming’. The beginning of the fucking series.

In case you don’t realise what a colossal screw up this is, let me lay out the situation for you.

So, y’know all those characters you know and love? Y’know how you love them because you’ve seen them grow from idealistic normal kids to responsible and dependable badasses? Y’know how you put your time into watching 88 episodes and 1 movie? Y’know how you witnessed 34 hours of these characters learning and growing and interacting together? Y’know all the highs and lows, the tears and the smiles, the laughs and the cringes, the heartbreak and wholesome? The journey these characters, and this world, has taken? The moments and episodes and people and places you know and have grown to care about?

Well. Take all that, wrap it up really nicely with a bow on top, sign ‘My Childhood’ on it, and then just kinda… throw it in the trash. And then crush it under a trash compactor. And then light the resulting piece of shit on fire.

According to the writers and world and lore and canon, those 88 episodes? They don’t exist. None of that has happened, except in Jim’s head. It’s kinda like the ‘it was all a dream’ stories, but almost worse because that dream is going to happen again.

We know what’s going to happen. Doing it again will feel cheap and boring and flat. Those characters we like ‘cause of character development? Not there anymore. We’re stuck with the simple boring normal versions of them again. And we’ll have to watch them go through the same things as if for the first time just to get to the characters we like. Only it won’t be for the first time. And we’ll know that.

Why would we want this? Writers? Hello? Someone answer me, because I don’t know the reason myself! Why in the everloving shit would we ever want to retcon 32 hours of viewing experience, just to do it all. Over. Again. There is no reason. Because we don’t want to.

Hell, even Jim probably doesn’t want to! The writers made it so he still remembers everything, so do you know how much trauma this guy probably has by now? Let’s see:

Bular trying to kill him, Draal trying to kill him, Goblins trying to kill him, Nomura trying to kill him, Gladys trying to kill him, the Stalkling trying to kill him, lightning trying to kill him, Strickler trying to kill him, lying to his Mom, Golems trying to kill him, Gato trying to kill him, Angor Rot trying to kill him, Pixies being pixies, his Mom almost being killed, Aaarrrgghh being killed.

The Darklands trying to kill him, Nyarlagroths trying to kill him, Gumm Gumms trying to kill him, Dictatious trying to kill him, Gunmar trying to kill him, the Gruesome trying to kill him, Usurna trying to kill him, the Deep trying to kill him, Vendal being killed, Otto trying to kill him, Trollmarket’s citizens being killed, Claire almost killing herself. Claire getting possessed and trying to kill him, Draal being killed, Merlin trying to kill him, Jim killing his humanity, the sun trying to kill him, Morgana trying to kill him.

The Green Knight trying to kill him, Arthur trying to kill him, Guards trying to kill him, Aaarrrgghh trying to kill him, the Arcane Order trying to kill him, Jim trying to kill his friends, Merlin being killed, Jim being killed. Nari trying to kill him, Numora being killed, Strickler being killed, Archie and Charlemagne being killed, the world being killed, Toby being killed.

Yeahhh. He’s got trauma. He’s got trauma for days. Hey, you know what’s great for someone who has trauma? Putting them back into the traumatic situation and doing it again! I’m sure their mental health won’t completely crumble under the stress. This is going to go great! Not.

And that’s not even the worst part. Haha ohhh no!

The worst part - by FAR - is that this stupid garbage excuse for a movie not only forgets about ‘Unbecoming’ once, but twice.

During the bulk of the movie, Jim struggles with feeling like he can’t be a hero without the Amulet. During the end of the movie though, after Jim’s successfully time travelled to the writers’ heart’s content, Jim forgets the other major lesson of Unbecoming, the part about what happens if Jim isn’t the Trollhunter. Don’t remember? Here’s a friendly reminder from before:

“The whole world will go to shit, and in the end Jim is the Trollhunter, Amulet or not.”

Did you catch that first part? Ahem.

“THE WHOLE WORLD WILL GO TO SHIT.”

If Jim is not the Trollhunter, if he does not pick up the Amulet and stop the Bridge from forming, and kill Bular and Gunmar and Angor Rot, the whole world goes to complete, absolute, no holds barred, shit. And what does Jim do at the end of the movie, having seen in terrifying detail exactly what that kind of future is? Why, he makes Toby the Trollhunter of course!

I- I can’t. I just can’t with this movie. How-? Why-? Just why. Why do this? Jim, you remember what happened last time you refused the call, right? You- you do remember, right??

Killahead opens. Bular is still alive. Gunmar and the whole Gumm Gumm army is free. Arcadia’s population of humans is eaten alive. Trollmarket is overrun. There are Changelings and Goblins and all kinds of Darklands creatures everywhere. No-one can kill Gunmar because the Amulet is broken, which means no Eclipse Armor.

Merlin’s staff is most likely taken by the bad guys, since the Amulet can’t lead any GGs to it first. Merlin is crushed to death without waking. Morgana is freed. The Eternal Night is upon us. Humanity is eaten. The Arcane Order turns everything back to the Stone Age with no one to stop them. The Arkiridians land on Earth and are probably killed. There goes Arkiridian-5’s royal family. General Morando becomes Gaylen and battles the Arcane Order for ultimate supremacy over the Universe.

This is the Bad Timeline. Everything sucks.

Jim. Jim buddy. Buddy ol’ pal. Jimbo. Why in the everloving fuck would you do this? It’s official, I think the writers have amnesia. They forgot that whole episode, apparently it wasn’t there.

And wait a minute- who ever said Jim could give the Amulet to Toby in the first place? It’s not, like, really his choice? Sure he rejected it in ‘Unbecoming,’ but that was mainly Merlin’s choice to make Draal the Trollhunter instead of Jim to teach Jim a lesson. Key word: Merlin’s choice. Because it’s Merlin’s Amulet, and he chooses who the next Trollhunter is.

Why would Merlin choose Toby just because he sacrificed himself in the future? Toby is, no offence Toby, not a logical choice to be Trollhunter. At this point in the story he’s not very fit, doesn’t seem to want the kind of adventure Jim does in the first episode, and he doesn’t have any fighting skills.

It’s only Jim’s expertise in cooking that lets him live in that first battle with Bular. Toby doesn’t have cooking skills. He will die on the first night, and then the Amulet will choose Jim again, but this time he’ll have even more added trauma.

And let's put aside the plot relevance of how much of a horrifying choice anyone who’s not Jim having the Amulet is for a sec. Plot aside, Jim as a character would never in his LIFE give Toby the Amulet. Because it’s not just a glowing amulet with cool armour and a sword for someone who’s worthy.

It’s a burden.

It’s a burden and a responsibility. It’s a lifelong commitment to putting others first. To making hard choices and having to live with the consequences of them in the aftermath. To giving every part of yourself, to sacrificing everything you are, so that someone else can be saved. Two worlds on the Trollhunter’s shoulders. Human and Troll.

That weight is something Jim has not wanted so many times. He’s admitted or complained or sighed or yelled that sometimes he wants to get to be a normal kid, live longer than high school, not worry about someone trying to kill him or someone else all the time.

The Trollhunter doesn’t get that luxury. Rule number one: Always be afraid. The Trollhunter can never stop being afraid. Their whole life from this point until DEATH is dedicated to this destiny of fear and hunting and protection.

Jim, who cares for and loves his best friend as a brother, would never ever push that kind of life and responsibility onto Toby and call it something good. The sole reason Jim went back in time at all was to save Toby. There is NO universe in which Jim willingly and happily then takes Toby’s life and shoves him into the path of Bular, and Strickler, and Angor Rot, and Gunmar.

And the icing on the fucked up cake is that the only way Jim managed to kill Gunmar was by turning into a troll. By giving up his life as a human teenager with a human family. By becoming a species with a lot of instincts and traits most others would label as monster. By giving up his life in the sun. By giving up part of his humanity.

Jim would NEVER force Toby into having to make that kind of choice. And I am ashamed of the writers who thought that he would.

.

[arcadiadaydreamer]

Ok, for some reason my brain has decided that Anton’s voice = human Jim and Emile’s voice = troll Jim, which means I’m always a little suprised when Jim turns back into a human in Wizards, because my subconcious has forgotten that Jim’s voice didn’t change when he turned into a troll. (It also makes me sad because I then remember the reason why). But you know, I get used to it pretty quickly, but in the lead up to ROTT, I was terrified they’d do a flashback (not archive footage) to before ‘Bad Coffee’ with Jim, because they smoothly handled the transition between actors and gave an in-world reason for it, and flashing back to before then would not only mess with canon, but would seriously break my suspension of disbelief.

But somehow they did something worse than that. They got rid of Anton’s performance from the timeline. When I first realised Jim wasn’t travelling to the start of the battle, or the film, that he was going to the start, I got mad. They had handled the tragic death of Anton Yelchin wonderfully, his performance was honoured throughout Trollhunters and Emile Hirsch did a fantastic job as Jim. I understand if for some reason this ending was ‘always the plan’ (which I doubt), but even if it was, they really should have reconsidered. It just feels disrespectful to Anton and all of us that loved his performance.

(I would like to point out that at no point do I mean any disrespect to Emile Hirsch. I’m very grateful he agreed to pick up the mantle of Jim and I think he did an amazing job throughout Tales of Arcadia, playing Jim in such a way that it still feels like the same character but not trying to do an impression of Anton.)

Before ROTT aired I made a list of ‘things that would make me go feral’ if they happened in the film. One of them was hearing Anton’s voice. I wondered if they’d repeat what they did at the end of Trollhunters, but honestly didn’t think they’d end another chapter in the series with the same speech. But they did, but it wasn’t Anton’s. I at least thought they’d do some kind of dedication to him, the one who started Jim’s journey. 

[green-star17]

Texted my friend after I finished Rise Of The Titans. He doesn’t keep up with the series anymore, and didn’t care about spoilers.

[sokoe]

i felt the need to write a bit more about the rott ending. as a disclaimer, i do not hate it, i just.. don’t really like it either. i do like bits of it though and i see the appeal of it. nonetheless i would like to focus on why it doesn’t feel completely right to me. a warning for spoilers and long text!

many people are saying that with ending like this, the entire franchise becomes an au or that its events don’t matter anymore. while the first is definitely true, i wouldn’t say everything that has happened to this point was for nothing. i think it’s still possible to enjoy the whole series as one of possible storylines in this universe, one that makes a doorway to another one.

i think the main problem for me is that.. we don’t really get to see the events afterwards rott. or rather, if we’re resetting everything, how does rott REALLY end? we’re led to believe that this time no one will die and that the arcane order will still be defeated. the problem is, we don’t get to see it. i’m not saying open endings are bad. i just personally believe that open endings work when we see some closure with the events or characters within the story we just watched or read, with open possibilities as for what happens next. but we don’t really get to experience this with rott. the new storyline with Toby as the trollhunter isn’t actually what happens next. it circles back to the past. and we don’t really know what will happen with the arcane order this time around. heck, nothing gets resolved this way! we don’t even know if toby manages to defeat bular, etc, etc. we just have to believe everything will be fine because Jim wants it to and will work towards it.

ok so here goes my biggest gripe with the ending i think.. personally i just don’t like the theme of going back in time to fix what was lost or failed. i mean, i do enjoy the drama of it, like when a character has lost their loved one and desperately wants to save them. but in rott it felt like a logical and thought-out decision, rather than a desperate attempt. the problem is, i don’t see it as a logical decision. there’s so many things that could go wrong this time. like, i feel most of the time we see this type of thing it fails.. we see characters struggling to save their loved ones only to realise it’s impossible to change what has already happened and them accepting the reality of it. or succeeding but altering the universe in some negative way.. alright i think i might getting too serious about it.. but i think many people like to see the reality reflected in fantasy or science fiction. the storylines and characters that feel real even if there are trolls and dragons. and the perfect world where nobody dies because you don’t want them to just feels.. fake. again, we don’t know what happens. maybe it won’t be perfect. but then we’re going back to this whole thing being illogical to begin with.

it also makes me think about Jim turning into a troll permanently at the end of Trollhunters. i think what many people found appealling about this was the gravity of the consequences. it was a decision the protagonist made and he had to deal with it. i remember writing about this when Wizards came out, but as much as i loved this story element of Trollhunters, i didn’t mind Jim turning back into human later on that much, and that’s because he didn’t actively seek to turn himself back. it felt to me more like a salvation, or being rewarded than erasing his sacrifice. still, i can totally see why people don’t like it anyway.

and it still doesn’t compare to the level rott went with. we had the price of being a troll erased and now we have.. everything erased, except Jim’s experience. and while the first can be argued to be a reward of some sort, the second is an active decision made by the protagonist. and the situation wasn’t even that serious, they did manage to save the world.. even if at the cost of lives of some of our beloved characters.

i suppose we could also question, why did Toby in particular became the trollhunter.. or rather, why did the amulet choose him this time? within the logic and lore explained in the show. honestly, i don’t know, but i might be missing something.

well, i think this is it. as i said at the beginning, i can totally see the appeal of this ending. still, it’s just not doing it for me. i don’t hate it, it doesn’t ruin my experience with the series overall, i just feel like it could’ve been better.

thank you for reading this far, and feel free to comment if i made some sort of mistake or if you feel like adding anything! as i write this i only watched the movie once so i could totally be missing something.