Hello,
I thought of this post after music4ever12 posted about how we were robbed when it came to frozen 2. Her post revealed that the people who created OFA wanted to use it as a set up for Frozen 2, so the actions they characters took in the short would show what we were going to expect to see in the sequel. This got be thinking about what those actions where.
Now, this is both me theorizing and also putting my own ideas in on what Frozen 2 could have been.
Now, OFA, came out in 2018, one year before Frozen 2 came out in 2019. So this really got me thinking on how much Frozen 2 might have changed between that time. They had been working on the script since 2015, and I remember in 2017 Jen Lee said the script was done. But then in early 2019, the teaser trailer was dropped and it was only filled with test animations. There was no story, so what happened? I used to be friends with someone who used to work at Disney and she still had friends in Disney when Frozen 2 was being made. She told me that Chris Buck did have a script, but then Jen Lee took it and butchered it. A lot of people think she did this to make Frozen 2 her own and show she was the right person to be the new head of Disney Animation after John Lasseter was kicked out.
This does beg the question on how much was changed from the original script. Was it a completely different story, or was just the messaging and end results changed? What about the idea of making Anna queen? Was that decided back in 2015, or suggested in 2019? The only things I remember being commented on about the film was that they went to Norway to see glaciers, and had asked the Sami for help on designing the Northuldra, although I don't remember when they did this.
Well, here is what I think was intended based off of OFA.
Kristoff not fitting in with royal life. Started off with him because his story is simple. OFA showed how uncomfortable he is with parties, and how he is not meant for royal life seeing how he likes the troll tradition. The deleted scenes of Frozen 2, showed this conflict, but I think there is a possibility that it could have centered around more of Anna trying to make her choice in where she wants to be in life, rather then Kristoff disliking royal life. See, when Kristoff shows his tradition in OFA, Anna is actually excited about it, and seems to enjoy it. She only rejects it when it becomes disgusting, but she is not as appalled as Elsa is. Kristoff does not belong in the palace, but so does Anna. She is a screw up princess, and that is why she loves Kristoff, because she can be herself around him. With her learning that Kristoff does not want a life in the palace, there could have been a big conflict for Anna. The number one thing she wants in life is to stay with Elsa, but she does not feel right in the palace, and now Kristoff is leaving. So Anna would feel pressured into deciding on weather she should go with Kristoff, or stay with Elsa. Staying with Elsa is obviously what she will do, but then it becomes the question on if and how Anna and Kristoff will manage to make their relationship work.
Anna and Elsa dealing with their childhood, and trying to find their place in Arendelle.
OFA, showed how much Anna and Elsa had lost their childhood. This is literally the first Christmas that Anna can remember, and we saw how Elsa's childhood was filled with gloves and her only friend being a stuffed penguin. FF showed Anna and Elsa finally celebrating a birthday together, and OFA is their first Christmas. So what can Frozen 2 talk about concerning their childhood?
Their parents. Frozen 2 was going to deal with how Anna and Elsa felt about their parents and the mistakes they made raising them. Now, Frozen 2 tried to paint the parents as perfect and loving, but I don't think this was what was originally going to be discussed. There is a deleted song called "I Seek the Truth", this is the only song that was not recorded by the voice actresses for Anna and Elsa, and so I always thought it was the earliest songs made.
In this song, Elsa is putting all her faith in her mother. She discovered her mother is Northuldra and might have the clue to why she was born with powers. Throughout the song Elsa is praising Iduna, how she was a great queen and mother, and how she always new what was right. However, Anna has a very different reaction. She is hateful towards her parents and comments on how many lies and secrets they kept.
One of the things I have noticed throughout the Frozen franchise, is how blinded Elsa's faith in her parents are. She followed Agnarr's advice of using gloves and saying "Conceal it, don't feel it, don't let it show", and in the Broadway musical in the song "Monster", Elsa says this "Father, you know what's best for me". There is also how she looks up at his picture during her coronation, viewing him as the perfect ruler she needs to imitate.
But we all know that Agnarr was wrong. Conceal don't feel, was bad for Elsa and her bottling everything up only made it all worse, and of course locking Anna out from her life as well. But, she still trusted him, and now Frozen 2 is about her trusting her mother.
I think Elsa was going to learn that, even though her parents loved her, they were not perfect as she perceives them as. I think this was going to be done through her learning Iduna's past. Elsa would realize that her mother was in fact just like her. A scared lonely girl who hid who she really was, and whose lie ended up bringing herself and her husband to ruin.
As for Anna. Her frustrations of being kept in the dark and having no one trust her would be brought to light. I think it would be also pointed at Elsa, especially if Elsa once again started to try and do everything by herself again. Anna would feel that after all this time, no one believed in her. This would have been a great character development for both sisters, especially for Elsa as she has to realize how much she is hurting Anna by pushing her away. It would probably end with Anna learning to forgive her parents, and realizing that they did love her.
As for Anna and Elsa trying to find their place in Arendelle.
OFA, showed how much Anna and Elsa wanted to connect with their people. Hosting a party for them at the beginning, and feeling sad when they all left, especially Elsa, as Anna took one look at Elsa's crest fallen face and immediately jumped into action and tried to get people to stay. And then at the end, how happy they were when all of Arendelle helped them to find Olaf and then they all had a party at night, with Elsa using her magic to create a Christmas tree and decorations, as well as tables for the food. Not only were Anna and Elsa closer with each other at the end of OFA, but they also were closer with their people as well, with Elsa saying that Arendelle now had a new tradition, with ringing of the bell being the first. OFA also really highlighted the people of Arendelle. Showing different kinds of families and people that lived in this kingdom, and how different their traditions are.
Frozen 2 was going to show more of this.
First Anna. All Anna wants in life is to be of service. She wants to find her place in how to help Arendelle. This of course is geared to her finding out how she can help Elsa. Elsa is the queen and Anna's sister. Of course Anna would want to help Elsa, and in doing so help Arendelle. But I doubt she would just want to be just someone Elsa gave random jobs to. Anna would want to have specific tasks that are all handed to her. Should she take full control of charity events? Or perhaps she wants to work with Kristoff in the trading business. But it has to be a job that keeps her from a desk, and one where she can go out and interact with people, helping them as they help her.
As for Elsa. Going back to the song "I seek the truth", Elsa says this "How do I be you, how do I be good, how do I be me in Arendelle". Elsa is aware that she is different and feels like she does not belong in Arendelle, but she still wants to be. The reason she is trying to find out who Iduna is, as well as learn why she was born with powers, is so that she can finally feel at peace in Arendelle.
I think Elsa was simply going to learn that she was blessed with magic because of how her parents saved each other when the forest was attacked. She was given ice powers simply so she could find the truth in Ahtohallan. however, I don't think she was going to be revealed as the Fifth Spirit. I think the whole Fifth Spirit idea was added in later, because think about it, it is so random and not thought out, and even the whole voice calling to Elsa was not part of the original plot and who the voice was was changed at the last second as well.
Elsa would have finally found solace in knowing she was not born a curse, and that the reason she had powers as well, was for Arendelle's betterment. To have them face their terrible past so that they could learn and grow. And that is how Elsa will find her place in Arendelle. Finally realizing her parents were not perfect, so she should not beat her self up for thinking she is not as good as a ruler as them. And having powers that help bring to light Arendelle's mistake, so that she can help them move forward.
Now, for the ending.
I think Elsa will freeze in Arendelle like in the movie, however I don't think this will be considered a noble sacrifice. Elsa was constantly warned about going to far, and trying to do it alone. There is even the line grand Pabbie says to Anna in the trailer "magic is alluring, without you, she may lose herself to it". Elsa will make the mistake. She will push Anna away again, and go to far. She messed up, but it finally gives Anna a chance to prove herself, and show Elsa that she is someone to be depended on.
One of the things that Frozen and OFA highlights greatly is how much Anna never gives up on Elsa, and I think Frozen 2 was also going to highlight this.
When Elsa freezes, and after Anna breaks the dam and destroys Arendelle, Elsa would not unfreeze. Anna would become queen, but she would not give up hope in believing that Elsa will return one day. She knows Elsa is not lost, because she believes in her sister. Anna would rebuild Arendelle, and would search for the scattered Northuldra (Originally only Mattias was alive in the forest), and she would help the two people mend their relationship. She does this because it is right, but also so that everything is in order for when Elsa returns.
Anna, even though is called queen, she would not feel like one. She would feel more like she is simply taking care of Arendelle in Elsa's absence. If Anna was queen, then she would feel like she is replacing Elsa, and as Elsa's spare, that would imply Elsa is gone, and that is something Anna would never except.
This is also where Kristoff finally proves himself. Even though he dislikes royal life, he loves Anna more, and he sticks with her even when she becomes queen. He helps her in finding the lost Northuldra and helps represent them as well.
Through Anna's hard work of rebuilding Arendelle and bringing both of her parents people together, but most importantly, her love and faith in Elsa. That is what finally freeze Elsa, both literally and figuratively. Elsa is no longer frozen in the past at the bottom of Ahtohallan, but she also can finally move on from her childhood as well and feeling like she does not belong anywhere.
I am imagining two ways this will be shown.

1. Anna is on the balcony looking down at Arendelle as it is complete and her people are happy. She looks to the North and says "Come home soon Elsa". We then travel to the forest and we see Olaf wondering around confused, calling out for Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Sven. The movie will end there. By showing Olaf is alive it means Elsa is back as well and that she will return to Arendelle.
   
2. Anna is on the balcony and once again says "Come home soon Elsa". Suddenly a wind blows and Anna sees Elsa's signature snowflake. Anna then looks out over the fjord and sees Elsa riding Nokk toward Arendelle. Anna runs through the castle with everyone wondering why, and she bursts out the gates and runs to the water where Elsa and her hug and everyone celebrates.
   

And lastly, Elsa's dress.
Instead of her dress making her about how she is the Fifth Spirit and belongs with the Northuldra in the forest. I think the dress was originally supposed to represent the two people coming together. Elsa's final dress looked like a recolor of her ice dress, but made to try and fit in with the Northuldra, and I think that was the point. Arendelle was meant to be rebuilt representing both the Northuldra and Arendelle cultures, and that is what Elsa's dress is. The part that is similar to her iconic ice dress, was meant to represent Arendelle, while the changes were to represent Northuldra. Both cultures, now all together in Arendelle, where Elsa can finally be herself. The part of her that is Arendelle, a regel queen, and the part of her that is Northuldra, a person that is attached to nature and magic.
Anna's queen dress would have been a combination of her style and Iduna's queen dress, as well as Elsa. This will show that Anna has forgiven her parents, and is looking to her mother and Elsa for inspiration on being a queen.
And finally.
OFA, said that Anna and Elsa are both in blue to show that they have grown closer as sisters. I think this was going to continue in Frozen 2, with Anna and Elsa being in the same dress and color, but with different styles.
Like this concept art.
https://preview.redd.it/glrnoeelcx0d1.png?width=236&format=png&auto=webp&s=24f0cc1c67c9868af135c582d7b4628208ca817b
And maybe even like this one as well.
Concept art by Jean Gilmore
Well, those are all my ideas. What do you think? And what do you think Olaf should have been like in frozen 2 as well?

I still sit sometimes and chuckle, thinking "When Ralph Bakshi started animating The Lord of the Rings in 1976, did he know what he was going to unleash on the world?" There was also the Rankin/Bass TV special, being developed concurrently, but its the Bakshi film that, in 1979, Peter Jackson saw, and this young Photoengraver would later direct six (!) live-action Tolkien films and, between himself and co-producer Philippa Boyens, are hard to work producing three more such films. Other adaptations since - namely, The Rings of Power (especially Season One) but also games from The Shadow of Mordor to Return to Moria - have at the very least taken cues from Jackson's films. All because a Kiwi photoengraver saw a cartoon....
But the relationship between these properties is not so clear-cut as it may seem. I ednumbered the similarities and dissimilarities between Jacksons' films and The Rings of Power elsewhere. Now I want to delve deeper into the similarities and dissimilarities between Jackson and previous adaptations of Tolkien.

The Rankin/Bass TV Specials

Side-by-side video comparisons between Jackson's films and the two Rankin/Bass TV Specials do not reveal any similarities that don't come from the fact that they're adapting the same books. This is an important point: Jackson is NOT trying to make some post-modern "collage" Hollywood film. He's only tipping his hat to those adaptations of Tolkien that he had seen growing up and that influenced him personally.¹
Due to copyright, the Rankin/Bass specials probably didn't air in New Zealand at all, and although it seems Jackson got a hold of the Rankin/Bass The Hobbit before embarking on The Lord of the Rings, he had not seen their Return of the King, certainly before 1999, and neither he nor his close collaborators have made comments about either of the two Specials. By contrast, the (American!) showrunners of The Rings of Power had referenced the Rankin/Bass Specials, and seemingly tipped their hat to it in a set design for season two.²

The Ralph Bakshi film

As I said, Jackson went to see the Bakshi film. He had enjoyed some of Bakshi's previous film, including the Tolkien-esque Wizards, released the previous year, and went to see his latest. At the time he hadn't read the books, making Bakshi's film his first exposure to Tolkien, but he does admit he "heard the name" of the book beforehand. His biography suggests he saw it in late 1978, when it first premiered, but surely it would have arrived at New Zealand in early 1979. Jackson does acknowledge that he may well have never made his films had he not seen Bakshi's.³
The connection between the two films had been played up, unsurprisingly, by Ralph Bakshi himself. A leonine, grandiose man, Bakshi is anything but a reliable narrator. His own suggestion that he hadn't actually seen the films - only trailers, he claims - sounds believable enough and certainy understandable.⁴ But, then, if he didn't watch them, it makes his critique of them as deriviative of his films all the more dubious, even without actually looking at the specifics of what he said:

Look at his Lothlorien. Look at my backgrounds of Lothlorien. Take a look! He had much more to see than I did, and if you don't think he lifted it over and over again, you're wrong. I mean, how did he design a knife in Lord of the Rings? How did he design a sword? How did he design the dwarf with his axe? How did he design the fur around him? Why did Peter Jackson put fur around the dwarf? Because I put fur around the dwarf! Why would the dwarf have fur naturally? You see, I could give you a billion little things. I wish I had a movie to look at.⁵

These are truly some confused claims, for the most part. The most credible part here is the Hobbits hiding under the branch from the Ringwraiths, a shot composition later to also be replicated in season one of the Rings of Power, and which we'll get to later.
Another claim of Bakshi's that cannot be dismissed out of hand is that, however big or small a debt Jackson owes to his film, he said that Jackson didn't publically acknowledge the influence and felt that it was only appropriate to have welcomed him to visit the set or something: by comparison, Jackson invited Rick Baker, who played King Kong in the 1978 version, to cameo in his King Kong.⁶
Jackson actually did mention the Bakshi filming in passing in the making-ofs. Then again, he entirely fails to mention the radio serial, either. Ultimately, Jackson possibly in cahoots with New Line Cinema, must have felt it unwise to point to a previous adaptation that had only achieved mixed success, at the outset of his own enterprise. He did talk more about the Bakshi film, and more fondly, in the director's commentary to The Fellowship of the Ring and in a couple of later interviews, which are significant gestures, but he clearly wasn't going to trumpet the influence Bakshi's film had on him off of every rooftop.⁷
In his 2006 biography, Jackson actually briefly reviews the Bakshi film:

I liked the early part – it had some quaint sequences in Hobbiton, a creepy encounter with the Black Rider on the road, and a few quite good battle scenes – but then, about half way through, the storytelling became very disjointed and disorientating and I really didn’t understand what was going on. However, what it did do was to make me want to read the book – if only to find out what happened!⁸

This is a complementary but admittedly mixed review, and Jackson had made similar comments since, calling it "brave and ambitious" but consistently decrying the hokum of the film's second half.⁹ Now, it is true that artists can be influenced by a work of art in spite of themselves, but lets see if we can try and quantify the influence.
From the outset, in the audio commentary, Jackson remarks that "our film stylistically is very different and the design is different," which is apposite: Bakshi swore a debt to Howard Pyle, which certainly leaves its mark of the gorgeous natural bakcdrops, but a source closer at hand (especially considering his follow-up fantasy film, Fire and Ice) is the most popular fantasy illustrator of his day, Frank Frazetta: Bakshi's Witch King is practically ripped from Frazetta's famous "Dark Rider" illustration.¹⁰
Jackson's approach, however, was steeped in a kind of romantic realism that by and large eschewed the heightened work of Frazetta, opening a yawning stylistic gulf between his film and Bakshi's on a general level. Bakshi's Hobbit-holes have overhanging roofs that give the impression of fairies living under mushrooms (which they in fact had in his previous film, Wizards) and the interiors of Bag End are earthen, more of a rabbit-hole than Jackson's English countryside villa. There are some similarities, like the Hobbits having similarly-clipped pants, but its hard to say costume designer Ngilla Dickson had Bakshi in mind for that look.
There's the basic structure of the narrative: both films leave some of the same plot beats out - Tom Bombadil, most notably - both intercut the Frodo and Aragorn storylines throughout (as per the appendices rather than the body of the text), and both open with a prologue. However, many of these are common-sense approaches that, if one were to put 100 screenwriters in a room, a good 90 of which would choose to pursue: in fact, Sir John Boorman's earlier Lord of the Rings script had likewise intercut the stories and redacted many of the same episodes as both Bakshi and Jackson, and similar approaches were taken in the 1958 Morton Zimmerman treatment. Certainly, in the case of the choice to pursue a prologue, a precedent closer at hand exists in the form in the 1981 radio serial, a point made all the stronger by the fact that when Jackson first concieved of and sketched the prologue, he hadn't seen Bakshi's film in 20 years.¹¹
Bakshi did claim that New Line were screening his film repeatedly, but author Ian Nathan says that was never the case. Miramax did screen the film for Jackson in 1997, after he'd written the treatment. Jackson's treatment included Glorfindel and Erkenbrand, who in subsequent drafts are replaced by Arwen (Legolas in Bakshi's film) and Eomer, but still I find that it falls more into the realm of common-sense screenwriting decisions than anything that could be tied to Bakshi in a clear way, especially the latter which happens at the end of Bakshi film, a part of the film Jackson admits to have found incoherent.¹²
Rather, the place to look for similarities between the two projects is in the opening leg of The Fellowship of the Ring. Jackson actually, in the director's commentary, points out the shot of Odo Proudfoot calling "Proudfeet!" as a deliberate homage to Bakshi's shot, "which I thought was great." He doesn't acknowledge a couple - only a couple - of other shots that are quite similar: one is the evocative shot of the Ring tumbling over the rocks in Gollum's cave just before Bilbo finds it. Another still is an entire sequence of shots which misdirect us into thinking the Ringwraiths killed the Hobbits in their beds. Both are a little TOO similar to be waved away as coincidental.¹³
The Ringwraith shot is a more special case: It was nominally based off of a John Howe illustration, ostensibly of the Bakshi scene. But Jackson - who's quoted review of the Bakshi film mentions this scene - could hardly not notice the similarity to the Bakshi scene, especially since the scene doesn't at all play like this in the novel. What's more, the scene was first storyboared only shortly after Jackson say Bakshi's film for the second time, and shot not too long after that being that it was the first scene filmed. So its only fair to cite Bakshi as an influence on that shot.¹⁴
https://preview.redd.it/9mbqqm4zul0d1.png?width=550&format=png&auto=webp&s=a45cdd06543d70200e3eacf150f14d03d222203b
There are other bits and pieces: did Jackson have Bakshi in mind when he added a scene of Saruman rallying up the Uruk-hai before the siege of Helm's Deep? Its hard to say. An even more elusive case is made by Bakshi: "I'm glad Peter Jackson had a movie to look at—I never did. And certainly there's a lot to learn from watching any movie, both its mistakes and when it works." In other words, Bakshi here suggests his film influenced Jackson in terms of what NOT to do. To his credit, Jackson does remember that the design process for Treebeard was in part motivated by trying to divorce him from the Bakshi version, which both him and Dame Fran Walsh remember as being "like a walking carrot." But when we start getting into that level, it all becomes very tenuous. There were a lot of things about the fantasy genre in general - Conan the Barbarian and Willow are oft-cited by Jackson - that he tried to avoid.¹⁵
Ultimately, I have to judge that the similarities between the two versions amount to a handful of rather insignificant beats, all in the first hour of Fellowship of the Ring. To hyperbolically play up the similarities between the two projects is to give in to Bakshi's hyperbolic rhetoric.

Tolkien illustrations

Jackson's first and, at the time, only copy of The Lord of the Rings was a tie-in to the Bakshi film. This would mean he hadn't gotten into the world of Tolkien illustrations until developing his own films, when he suggests he went on a detail-exhaustive search for Tolkien art. He had seen Tolkien's own illustrations, but decided that they're "not very helpful in terms of the lighting and the mood."¹⁶
The most acclaimed illustrators of the previous era of Tolkien were Pauline Bayens (whose Minas Tirith is reproduced in the Rankin/Bass Return of the King) and the Brothers Hildebrandt, whose bestial Balrog presents a precursor both to Bakshi's but also to the Minotaur-like Balrog of John Howe.¹⁷
Howe was one of a trifecta of Tolkien illustrators, along with Ted Nasmith and Alan Lee, to enjoy great vogue at the time when Jackson was developing his films. Of the three, Lee is often deemed the most celebrated and certainly made the biggest impact on Jackson, whose next copy of the book was to be an Alan Lee illustrated edition. But he also noticed Howe through is work on Tolkien calendars, and later also purchased some originals of Ted Nasmith. All three were approached to participate in concept design for the films, although Nasmith sadly had to decline.¹⁸
In many places, Jackson precisely copied designs of Lee's and Howe's existing paintings, and in some places carbon copied their lighting and composition for shots, as well as grading the films (before the advent of the latest remaster) somewhat along the lines established in their paintings. But the majority of Lee and Howe's work for Jackson was in producing NEW concept art to his specifications, and so its wrong to look at Jackson's films as being a part of the Lee-Howe ouevure, as such.

The 1981 Radio Serial

A less touted influence on Jackson's film is the superlative 1981 BBC radio serial. Where Jackson hadn't reread the book nor revisited Bakshi's film between 1979 and 1997, he had spent much of the that time listening on-and-off to a tape of the radio serial, usually while working in his garage on special effects.¹⁹
The most obvious similarity is the casting of Sir Ian Holm, who had voiced Frodo in the radio serial, as Bilbo. Holm was apparently at the top of Jackson's casting wishlist, partially for this reason. A particularly striking moment occurs when Holm's Frodo quotes Bilbo's "Its a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door: you step on to the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to", a line again given to Holm - now as Bilbo - in voiceover at the same spot in Jackson's film.²⁰
Again, many of the similar structural choices here are similar to Jackson, adding a prologue, contracting the early stages of Frodo's quest and intercutting the Aragorn and Frodo's stories throughout. Brian Sibley admits to have modelled his prologue on Bakshi's own, but Jackson is unlikely to have known it at the time, and when we start thinking in terms of second-hand influences we're again into very tenuous territory. Otherwise, the influence doesn't seem all too great, although Sibley remembers that Walsh, perhaps half-jokingly, told him "we stole your ending" in the way that they did the Grey Havens and then a quick segue to Sam's return home, basically along the lines of the book.²¹
A young, and already Tolkien-devotee, Sir Ian Holm recording Bilbo
Sibley had recruited his cast from the BBC's company of actors, which is also the troupe Bakshi turned to, meaning that Sibley ended-up with Bakshi's Boromir (Michael Graham Cox) and, notably, his Gollum (Peter Woodthorpe). In spite of Woodthorpe's evocative performance of Gollum's voice in both the Bakshi and Sibley versions, its influence on Andrew Serkis' performance of Gollum is nonexistent, as Serkis had developed the voice before having heard Woodthorpe rendition, having only read The Hobbit prior to being cast.²²

Other fantasy films

Jackson had seen pretty much all the fantasy films of the 1980s, and while they were important in terms of establishing the genre, they hadn't left much of an impression on Jackson. The most succesful - George Lucas' Star Wars - was more space-fantasy, undoubtedly impressed Jackson but didn't much influence his films: to this day, he professes to not be a huge Star Wars fan, in spite of the amiacable manner he and Lucas took with each other in later years, and admits that he sees the influence of Lucas more "in what he did for the industry, not in terms of the actual films that he made."²³
The first major high-fantasy film, Sir John Boorman's Excalibur, was a little closer to Jackson's heart, but isn't much of an influence on his films either. Its true that Jackson's films feature a lot of plate armour, but that's indebted primarily to John Howe's abiding love of late Medieval armour, and at any rate is quite different to the Enlightement-era suits of armour one finds in Boorman's film. Willow, produced by George Lucas, was a big shot to the arm of New Zealand's fledgling film industry, and like Star Wars is much indebted to The Hobbit, but left a bad impression on Jackson.²⁴
The Clockmaker's Cottage in Sir Ridley Scott's Legend
Two exceptions are to be cited; Ray Harryhousen's stop-motion fantasy films from the 1950s were huge favourites of Jackson's, although their more Graeco-Roman subject matters were a genre apart from Jackson's films. He is also a big fan of Sir Ridley Scott, and while he joins the consensus of deriding William Hjortsberg notorious screenplay, had taken some cues from his Legend (1986): there's something of the Clockmaker's cottage in Rhosgobel, and Jackson referenced some of the features of Tim Curry's devilish "Lord of Darkness" for the Wargs sinewy faces.²⁵

Other films

Jackson took influence from paintings of old battles and landscapes, but surely his biggest influences are other films: Zulu and Saving Private Ryan had been referenced for Helm's Deep, and there's a touch of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which Jackson had watched before principal photography, to the atmospheric shots that close the Fellowship prologue. Jackson admitted to rewatching mostly Scorsese films while shooting, and certainly the energy of his moving cameras find a closer kin in Scorsese's films than in anyone else's. There's something of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia to Jackson's intention to make living, breathing people out of his fantasy characters.²⁶
Surely the inspiration for the shot of Aragorn arriving at Helm's Deep
But there's one film that looms largest in Jackson's films, overshadowing any influence we're looked at so far: Mel Gibson's latest spectacular, Braveheart. Along with other films of this kind like Dances with Wolves and Rob Roy (Gladiator came too late to much influence Jackson's films) it is of crucial importance to the overall cinematic style of Jackson's films, having come out just as Jackson first started thinking of making an original fantasy film, and winning the academy award for Best Picture before any sustained work was done to develop The Lord of the Rings.²⁷

Footnotes

1. Matt Skuta, "The Hobbit Side-by-Side: Rankin/Bass ('77) & Peter Jackson ('12-'14)" and "Return of the King Side-by-Side: Rankin/Bass ('80) & Peter Jackson ('03)," YouTube, 15 February 2018.
2. The Rankin/Bass Specials were only made exploiting a loophole in the publication of Tolkien's books that temporarily made them public domain States-side, but meant that their airing was limited to the US, and subsequent a legal agreement with the Tolkien Estate, Canada. Jackson says he hadn't seen their Return of the King in an interview from late 1998. Eric Vespe, “ 20 QUESTIONS WITH PETER JACKSON – PART 2 Ain’t It Cool News,” , 30 December 1998.
3. Brian Sibley, Peter Jackson: A Filmmaker's Journey (London: Harper Collins, 2006), pp. 107-111.
4. Kyle, ""Legends of Film: Ralph Bakshi," Nashville Public Library, 29 April 2013.
5. Emru Townsend, "INTERVIEW: Ralph Bakshi", Frames Per Second, 2 July 2004.
6. Ken P., "Interview with Ralph Bakshi," IGN, May 25, 2004. Broadway, Clifford Q., "The Bakshi Interview: Uncloaking a Legacy". The One Ring, 20 April 2015.
7. Anonymous, "From Book to Script," and Peter Jackson et al, "Director's Commentary," both in Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line: 2002). Also Anonymous, "Peter Jackson interview". Explorations (Barnes & Noble, November 2001). Peter Jackson interview at the Egyptian Theater, 6 February 2004.
8. Sibley, pp. 109 ff.
9. Director's Commentary.
10. Ned Raggett, "The Trouble With Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord Of The Rings & Other Tolkien Misadventures", The Quietus, 19 November 2018
11. Ian Nathan, Everything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth (London: HarperCollins, 2017), p. 138.
12. Peter Jackson et al, The Lord of the Rings, quoted in Sibley, pp. 109, 704, 751.
13. Director's Commentary.
14. Celedor, "10 Things You Know About The LOTR Movies (That Aren’t True)," TheOneRing, 11 June 2013.
15. "Interview with Ralph Bakshi."
16. Sibley, p. 738-744. Exeter College, Oxford, "Sir Peter Jackson in conversation: Exeter College Oxford Eighth Century Lecture Series", YouTube, 30 July 2015.
17. Howe admits to the influence of the Hildebrandts, and in turn his own bestial Balrog would influence those of Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith. This would be popularised by Jackson, and finally emulated by Rings of Power. John Howe, "First Thing's First," John-Howe, 6 January 2012.
18. "Sir Peter Jackson in conversation", Sibley, 738-744. The One Ring, "Peter Jackson MISSED OUT! Talking Tolkien with Renowned Artist Ted Nasmith," YouTube, 11 July 2023.
19. Nathan, p. 123, NB 1008.
20. Nathan, p. 258.
21. Nerd of the Rings, "Brian Sibley, writer, BBC's The Lord of the Rings (1981) - Interview," YouTube, 20 April 2021.
22. Nathan, pp. 621 ff
23. "Sir Peter Jackson in conversation"
24. “20 QUESTIONS WITH PETER JACKSON – PART 2"
25. Ibid.
26. Nathan, pp. 158, 393, 645.
27. u/Chen_Geller, "How Masterpieces beget Masterpieces: Braveheart and The Lord of the Rings," Reddit, 23 June 2021.

Conclusions

Any notion that Jackson's films are derivative of previous Tolkien adaptations - namely, Bakshi's - are very much hyperbolic, and stem more from adopting an inflated rhetoric taken by the likes of Bakshi. As an adaptation, Jackson's works are based soley on Tolkien's books, and merely tip their hat occasionally to previous adaptations - and not all previous adaptations, either. Cinematically, they draw rather from other sources: less from other adaptations of Tolkien or other fantasy film (Tolkien-esque or not) and more from historical epics, both from the 1960s but also and especially from the time in which Jackson first started developing his films.

Another copied article to keep in reserve. It's an odd article from the pandemic, recounting the boom in rescue adoptions. It is a fairly pointless article in that it uses some really shifty rescuers, including Pixies and Paws, as sources, brightly highlights a bioethicist who uses her own foolish adoption of two pit bull mixes as evidence that most people shouldn't own dogs, and chronicles but fails to understand the loathing rescuers have for adopters. It does, however, wonderfully illustrate how rapidly the good times ended in rescue. Anyone reading the the current "we've never been so overwhelmed with dogs" rescue laments should know that there's a link between today's problems and yesterday's reckless opportunism.
The "bioethicist"
“I think it’s probably true that the majority of people who want to adopt a dog should not,” Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist who studies human-animal relationships, tells me. “They don’t have the wherewithal and don’t have what they need to give the animal a good life.” She herself ended up with two pets that didn’t get along at all — a herding mix and a pointer mix whose constant fighting made the idea of hosting a dinner party both perhaps “bloody” and definitely “scary and miserable.” She says shelters shouldn’t “drive away potentially loving and appropriate adopters because they don’t meet predetermined criteria,” but she also sees the importance of a thorough application process that prepares humans for the pitfalls of pet parenthood. “You need to be ready to have a dog who doesn’t like people very much,” says Pierce. When Bella, the 11-year-old she got from the Humane Society, dies, she’s not sure she will get a replacement, noting that the pandemic puppy boom is “driven by a reflection of human narcissism and neurosis.”
However, this is a fantastic truth long overdue for the telling.
“I started to talk to shelter leaders across the country,” Cushing says. “And one by one, they said any adoptable dog without a medical issue is gone by noon on Saturday. But the public didn’t know that. Only the dog seekers and the experts did.”
https://preview.redd.it/v2owlquz230d1.png?width=1139&format=png&auto=webp&s=a95a7983b4f018f043125a0819a16941cec1e6aa
Jack, adopted by Tori and Paris through In Our Hands Rescue.
It was a rainy Sunday in June, and Danielle had fallen in love.
The 23-year-old paralegal spent the first part of her afternoon in McCarren Park, envying the happy dog owners with their furry companions. Then she stumbled upon an adoption event in a North Brooklyn beer garden, where a beagle mix being paraded out of the rescue van reminded her of the dog she grew up with, Snickers. It all felt like fate, so she filled out an application on the spot. She was then joined by her best friend and roommate, Alexa, in sitting across from a serious-looking young woman with a ponytail who was searching for a reason to break her heart.
Danielle and Alexa were confident they would be leaving with Millie that day: After all, they had a 1,000-square-foot apartment within blocks of McCarren and full-time employment with the ability to work from home for the foreseeable future. But the volunteer kept posing questions that they hadn’t prepared for. What if they stopped living together? What if Danielle’s girlfriend’s collie mix didn’t get along with her new family member? What would be the solution if the dog needed expensive training for behavioral issues? Which vet were they planning to use?
All of which, upon reflection, were reasonable questions. But when it came to the diet they planned for the dog, they realized they were out of their depth. Danielle recalled that Snickers had lived to 16 and a half on a diet of Blue Buffalo Wilderness, the most expensive stuff that was available at her parents’ Bay Area pet store. “Would you want to live on the best version of Lean Cuisine for the rest of your life?” sniffed the volunteer with a frown. She would instead recommend a small-batch, raw-food brand that cost, when they looked it up later, up to $240 a bag. “If you were approved, you’d need to get the necessary supplies and take time off from work starting now,” the dog gatekeeper said. “And the first 120 days would be considered a trial period, meaning we would reserve the right to take your dog back at any time.” The would-be adopters nodded solemnly.
The friends rose from the bench and thanked the volunteer for her time. Believing they were out of earshot, the volunteer summed up the interview to a colleague: “You just walked by, and you’re fixated on this one dog, and it’s because you had a beagle growing up, but you want to make your roommate the legal adopter?”
When Danielle and Alexa were young, one could still show up at a shelter, pick out an unhoused dog that just wanted to have someone to love, and take it home that same day. Today, much of the process has moved online — to Petfinder, a.k.a. Tinder for dogs, and various animal-shelter Instagram accounts that send cute puppy pics with heartrending stories of need into your feed and compel you to fill out an adoption application as you sit on the toilet. Posts describing the dogs drip with euphemisms: A dog that might freak out and tear your house up if left alone is a “Velcro dog”; one that might knock down your children is “overly exuberant”; a skittish, neglected dog with trust issues is just a “shy party girl.” Certain shelters have become influencers in their own right, like the L.A.-based Labelle Foundation, which has almost 250,000 Instagram followers and counts Dua Lipa and Cara Delevingne among its A-list clients. Rescue agencies abound, many with missions so specific that you could theoretically find one that deals in any niche breed you desire, from affenpinschers to Yorkshire terriers.
This deluge of rescue-puppy content has arrived, not coincidentally, during a time of growing awareness of puppy mills as so morally indefensible that even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could draw fire for seemingly buying a purebred French bulldog in early 2020. Then came the pandemic puppy boom, a lonely, claustrophobic year in which thousands of white-collar workers, sitting at home scrolling through their phones, seemed simultaneously to decide they were finally ready to adopt a dog. The corresponding demand spike in certain markets has simply overwhelmed the agencies: New York shelters that were used to receiving 20 applications a week were now receiving hundreds, with as many as 50 people vying for a single pup.
The rescue dog is now, indisputably, a luxury good, without a market pricing system at work to manage demand. A better analogy might be an Ivy League admissions office. But even Harvard isn’t forced to be as picky as, say, Korean K9 Rescue, whose average monthly applications tripled in 2020.
And yet someone has to pick the winners — often an unpaid millennial Miss Hannigan doling out a precious number of wet-nosed Orphan Annies to wannabe Daddy Warbuckses and thus empowered to judge the intentions and poop-scooping abilities of otherwise accomplished urban professionals, some of whom actually did go to Harvard.
This has led to some hard feelings. Every once in a while, someone will complain on Twitter about being rejected by a rescue agency, and it will reliably set off a cascade of attacks on “entitled rich white millennials assuming they can have whatever they want,” followed by counter-attacks on those who “appoint themselves the holy sainted guardian of all animals.” Danielle was ultimately deemed unworthy, not even receiving a generic rejection letter over email. After all, there isn’t really that much incentive for the rescue agencies to be polite these days.
The modern animal-rescue movement grew alongside the child-welfare movement in the mid-19th century. It got another boost in the years following World War II, when Americans were moving out to the suburbs in droves, according to Stephen Zawistowski, a professor of animal behavior at Hunter College. Suddenly, there were highways, yards, and space. Walt Disney was making movies about children and dogs that promoted the idea that no new home was complete without a loyal animal companion. (Zawistowski said that one might call this the Old Yeller Effect, but there were various riffs on the same theme over the ensuing decades. Essentially, Flipper was “Let’s put Lassie in the water.”)
In the early ’80s, University of Pennsylvania researchers confirmed the effects that animal companionship has on everything from blood pressure to heart conditions to anxiety. Pets were no longer just how you taught Junior to be responsible; they might be critical to maintaining adults’ physical and mental health. The way people spoke about animals started changing. The idea that “homeless” dogs were sent to the “pound” because they were “bad” went out of fashion. “Suddenly, you had ‘rescue’ dogs brightly lit in the mall,” says Ed Sayres, a former president of the ASPCA who now works as a pet-industry consultant. “Basically, we gave animals a promotion.” Meanwhile, in the late ’80s, spay and neuter procedures had been streamlined and were being recommended by vets as well as by Bob Barker on The Price Is Right.
Then came The Ad. Released in 2007, it featured close-ups of three-legged dogs and one-eyed cats rescued by the ASPCA over a wrenching rendition of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.” The commercial warned that “for hundreds of others, help came too late.” In just a year, the ad raised 60 percent of the ASPCA’s annual $50 million budget. The organization was reportedly able to increase the grant money it gave to other animal-welfare organizations by 900 percent in ten years. It is difficult to overstate the emotional hangover The Ad inflicted on millennials and members of Gen Z. Janet M. Davis is a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, where she lectures on animal rights to a demographically diverse body of students — everyone from cattle ranchers to vegan punks — most of whom cry when she shows The Ad in class. “It absolutely brings down the house,” she says. “Every time.”
Theoretically, the point of dog adoption is that there are more dogs born into the world than there are humans lined up to care for them. But as interest grew, the supply problem became less acute. Thanks to widespread spay and neuter policies, there are simply too few unwanted litters for what the adoption market wants.
National chains like PetSmart partnered with local shelters to supply its animals for sale. Savvy rescues in dog deserts like New York hooked up with shelters in the Deep South, where cultural attitudes toward spaying and neutering pets are much more lax. While there is no official registry of how many shelter dogs are available in the U.S., in 2017, researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine for Mississippi State University published a study reporting that the availability of dogs in animal shelters was at an all-time low. “That is,” says Sayres, “an environment that leads to a kind of irrational, competitive behavior.” The rescue mutt had become not just a virtue signal but a virtue test. Who was a good enough human being to deserve a dog in need of rescuing?
Heather remembers the old easy days. “I went on Craigslist and an hour later, I had a puggle,” she says of her first dog-getting experience with her boyfriend in college. George the puggle humped everything in sight, shed everywhere, and chewed through furniture until the end of his life, but she loved him all the same.
Flash-forward 16 years: She and that boyfriend are married, have two kids, and can’t seem to get a new dog no matter what they try. Yes, she could find a breeder easily online (currently for sale on Craigslist: a Yorkie-poo puppy from a breeder asking $350 and just a few screening questions). But instead, in the middle of the pandemic, “I was sending ten to 12 emails a night and willing to travel anywhere, and no one would give us any sort of animal,” she remembers. Shelters would send snappy emails about how her family wasn’t suited for a puppy, even though they made good money and had clearly cared for their dearly departed George — they once drove three hours to get the dog a specially made knee brace. “I was trying to be really up front with people and would say that my daughter has autism and that I have a 3-year-old, and they would say no. It felt like they were saying, ‘We don’t give dogs to people who have disabilities.’ ”
It didn’t matter what kind of dog she applied for — older, younger, bigger, smaller — there was always an official-sounding excuse as to why her family wasn’t suitable. (“Pups this age bite and jump and scratch and while they are cute to look at, they are worse than a bratty ADHD toddler, without diapers,” one rescue wrote. “Sorry.”) She considered looking at emotional-support animals that work specifically with autistic youth but found out they could cost 18 grand and require a two-year waiting period. She couldn’t stomach the idea of setting up a GoFundMe, as other people in the community had. “It got to the point of me wondering, Okay, so what dogs do children get?” she recalls. “I always thought that dogs and children go together.” By the fall of 2020, Heather had turned back to breeders. “People get a little spicy when you say you paid for a dog. You want to scream that you tried your hardest, but it wasn’t possible,” she says.
Others, like Zainab, figured out ways to work the system. She blanketed agencies with applications in the early months of the pandemic, applying for 60 dogs. (The ease of applying online might also explain the statistics.) She thought the fact that she had a leadership role in public education would demonstrate that she was both successful and nurturing. “I’m a professional, I make good money, and I have a master’s degree,” she tells me. She was rejected all the same. Finally, a co-worker suggested Zainab make a résumé in order to stand out. The multipage document — which features testimonials from high-powered friends, including local elected officials — is what got her an exclusive meeting with Penny the pug in a parking lot. She was handed over with a leash tied around her neck and vomited in the front seat of Zainab’s car about three blocks later. Success!
Or take Lauren, who’d had dogs all her life and found living solo during COVID lonely. “You can’t be without an animal at this particular time,” she told herself. So she started applying for dogs on Petfinder and boutique-rescue websites. “I would look up at my clock, and it would be two in the morning,” she says. Her hopes were high when she got a meeting with a Chihuahua mix in the suburbs named Mary Shelley. Lauren thought the meeting went well, but it ultimately didn’t result in the interviewer granting the adoption. “Then I was in conspiracy-theory mode, thinking she doesn’t like gay people, or single people, or people who live in the city,” she says. “It was a crazy-making experience. It’s a pandemic, so your world is already turned upside down, but I became psychotic.
“The people who run rescue organizations — this was their moment to shine,” she adds. “Even though they were totally bogged down with requests, they got to feel the power. They got to make someone’s dreams come true or smash them to the ground.”
The inquiries can get extremely personal. “I found the questions very offensive,” says Joanna, a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center nurse who tried to adopt last year with her architect husband. “I was like, ‘What does this have to do with getting a dog?’ ” Her husband didn’t even want to put the thought out into the universe, but he was forced to admit that he’d probably be the one to take a shared pet in the event of a divorce. The two also had to grapple with what would happen if one or both of them died of COVID during the pandemic. And would both of them be able to take three days off at a moment’s notice to help the dog acclimate to its new home? “I was frank with her and said, ‘I take care of cancer patients,’ ” says Joanna. “She was very unsatisfied with our answer.”
“The more popular the rescue is on the internet, the more clout they have,” says Molly, a writer in New York. “If you have a really good social-media presence, you can throw your weight around.” (The clout goes both ways: Posting about your rescue dog on Instagram is an indirect way of broadcasting that someone out there deemed you morally worthy enough to be chosen.) She inquired about eight dogs in six weeks from about five different rescues, only to be continually rejected. She finally got an interview with a rescue agency whose cute dogs she had seen on social media. They asked to tour her apartment over Zoom. Fine. They asked for her references. Great. But then they asked if she would pay for an expensive trainer. She asked if she could wait — not only was it during the height of COVID, but the cost of the sessions with the trainer could be close to $1,000. The person she was dealing with said over email that dogs were investments and suggested she look elsewhere. “I was like, This is so Brooklyn,” she says.
Still, others wished the warning about trainers had been more explicit. At the height of the pandemic, Steven remembers scrolling through social-media post after social-media post saying things like “URGENT: NEED TO FIND THIS GUY A HOME” while “picturing this dog on a conveyor belt going toward this whirring saw. And meanwhile I am screaming at my phone, ‘I applied and you turned me down!’ ”
But after securing a dog, he came to believe the process, while tough on the human applicants, wasn’t tough enough when it came to the dog’s needs. Right off the bat, Cooper was very hyper and mouthy when playing. “We were doing the thing that everyone does, like, posting pics: ‘We’re at the park, isn’t this fun, hahaha,’ ” he says. But the reality was much less Instagram-worthy. Cooper became difficult to handle, especially in a small New York apartment; mouthiness escalated to gnashing his teeth and guarding food. “It’s embarrassing, and I hate having to tell people we had to give the dog back,” he says. (So much so that Steven requested a pseudonym for himself and for Cooper.) “To be frank, the experience we had with the dog was pretty traumatic. If this volunteer had felt so powerful, I wish that they had said we wouldn’t be able to handle this dog.” Although Steven’sInstagram is replete with photos of other friends’ dogs, evidence of Cooper’s existence has disappeared from the account.
The rescue-dog demand has also been stressful for the overwhelmed (and overwhelmingly volunteer) workforce that keeps the supply chain running. On a recent Saturday, Jason was speeding toward JFK airport in a windowless white van covered in graffiti. Though he was on his way to help rescue dogs, he is the first to admit he’s not the biggest fan of the animals. “I just need something to do,” he says. “I was going crazy sitting around the house.” His friend, who was employed at a rescue, recommended him for an unpaid gig. Prior to the pandemic, he managed an Off Broadway play in the city. The 34-year-old, who is athletically built with a shaved head, has a compulsive need to be coordinating a production, and getting dogs to New York City from a different continent is definitely that.
Many of the city’s rescue dogs come from other parts of the world these days, brought over by volunteers who take them through a complicated Customs process. This is part of what Pet Nation author Mark Cushing calls the “canine freedom train.” A former corporate trial attorney, Cushing had thought that American shelters were filled with dogs with a figurative hatchet outside their kennel; that was until his daughter, a shelter volunteer, said that, in fact, scores of people were lined up around the block every weekend in hopes of adopting a handful of dogs. “I started to talk to shelter leaders across the country,” Cushing says. “And one by one, they said any adoptable dog without a medical issue is gone by noon on Saturday. But the public didn’t know that. Only the dog seekers and the experts did.”
Jason waited in arrivals, ready to stop anyone who walked by with dog crates. When he saw some, he swooped in. It turned out that he had ended up with an extra animal — one that was yowling like it needed to get out and pee. He couldn’t figure out to whom it belonged, and after about 40 minutes of drama in the pickup area, two large men jumped out of a truck with out-of-state plates. They handed Jason $20 before he knew what was happening, loaded the dog into their Silverado, and sped off toward North Carolina. It was unclear if they were adopters themselves or worked for a shelter.
With that out of the way, Jason tried to carefully maneuver a luggage cart full of the remaining dog crates to the lot where he was parked. When one fell, the animal inside didn’t make a sound, presumably zonked from its long journey across the ocean. More volunteers were waiting at the shelter with food, water, and an enormous number of puppy pads when he arrived. After the animals decompressed from their long flight, they would be taken to an adoption event, where they would hopefully meet their new humans.
Emily Wells hasn’t taken a vacation in years. She works full time on Wall Street but is also the coordinator for Pixies & Paws Rescue — a job that she does in between calls and meetings and emails. That means responding to DMs on Instagram about available dogs, attending adoption events on weekends, and getting on the phone with a vet at 10 p.m. because one of her fosters got sick. That also means screening applications, which more than doubled during the height of the pandemic. Typically, she denies about one-third. This part of her job might not be the most physically demanding, but it does take a psychic toll.
“What I’ve found is a lot of people are very entitled,” she says. “They send nasty emails. I’ve been called every name in the book. But there are reasons we deny. We are entrusted with placing a living, breathing thing in someone’s home for the rest of its life.” She wishes people would understand that the rescue is just her and one other person trying their best to deal with off-the-charts levels of demand. “I know rescues that don’t even reply,” she says. “So the fact that we do and still get shit for that is annoying.” And explaining why someone was rejected can create its own problems: What if they use that information to fib on their next application?
Rescues like Wells’s are largely dependent on foster parents to house the dogs they import. Foster-to-adopt is one way that people adopt pets, a means of testing out compatibility and increasing one’s chances of adopting in a hypercompetitive city. But demand for dogs was so high last year that even proven volunteers couldn’t get their hands on a foster. Take Suchita, an animal lover who moved from India to New Jersey for her husband’s VP job with a big bank in 2019. Unable to work owing to visa issues, she became a prolific dog fosterer for a rescue in Queens. She also worked with a program that pairs volunteers with elderly animal owners who need help taking their pets out on walks. That program was suspended during COVID, which left Suchita desperate for more dog time.
Figuring that online volunteer work might fill the void, she started helping another organization wade through its massive backlog of applications by calling references. She offered to foster more dogs but didn’t hear back, nor did her attempts to adopt pan out. When she went ahead and adopted Sasha, a Pomeranian, through another rescue agency, the first organization was not happy. “After I posted Sasha on Instagram, they called me saying it was a conflict of interest to have worked with another agency,” Suchita says. “I was not at all prepared for that. Then they unfollowed me. It really hurt, but no hard feelings.” She is humbly aware of the fact that in New York, there is always someone who has a nicer apartment, a better job, and more experience than you. If everything else is equal, why shouldn’t a shelter try to give a dog to someone who can afford to give it the best life possible?
“They don’t treat humans nicely, but at least they treat dogs nicely,” she says.
In some corners of the rescue world, a reckoning is taking place. Rachael Ziering, the executive director of Muddy Paws Rescue, which found homes for around 1,000 dogs last year, got her start volunteering at other nonprofits whose adoption processes she found abhorrent. She saw, for instance, people look at adoption applications and say, “Oh, that’s a terrible Zip Code. I’m not adopting to them.” Or they would judge people based on their appearance. “I know a lot of groups that will ask for your firstborn along with your application,” she says. “I think it’s well intentioned, but I think it just took a turn at some point. It’s morphed into sort of an unhealthy view that no one’s ever gonna be good enough. Nobody’s ever perfect — the dog or the person.” Muddy Paws is instead embracing what is known as “open adoption,” a philosophy that allows for rescue volunteers to be more open-minded about what a good dog home might look like. It has started gaining traction among groups like the ASPCA in recent years, in part because the organization’s current president was denied a dog — twice. Instead of rejecting applicants outright based on their giving the “wrong” answers, Ziering’s team speaks with hopeful dog owners at length, learning about their lifestyles and histories to match them with the pet best for their family. Still, even a more inclusive philosophy toward profiling adoption applicants comes up against the intractable math: There are only so many dogs that need homes. Though Muddy Paws rejects less than one percent of applicants, some decide to adopt elsewhere if it means getting a dog faster.
Is any of this good for the dogs? Depends on whom you ask. If the intense questions involved in securing the dog cause someone to reflect before making a decision they’ll regret — sure. Others note that the average dog’s life span has hovered around 11 years for decades. “I think it’s probably true that the majority of people who want to adopt a dog should not,” Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist who studies human-animal relationships, tells me. “They don’t have the wherewithal and don’t have what they need to give the animal a good life.” She herself ended up with two pets that didn’t get along at all — a herding mix and a pointer mix whose constant fighting made the idea of hosting a dinner party both perhaps “bloody” and definitely “scary and miserable.” She says shelters shouldn’t “drive away potentially loving and appropriate adopters because they don’t meet predetermined criteria,” but she also sees the importance of a thorough application process that prepares humans for the pitfalls of pet parenthood. “You need to be ready to have a dog who doesn’t like people very much,” says Pierce. When Bella, the 11-year-old she got from the Humane Society, dies, she’s not sure she will get a replacement, noting that the pandemic puppy boom is “driven by a reflection of human narcissism and neurosis.”
“A lot of this is driven by Instagram,” she says. “We have this expectation that dogs are not really dogs; they’re toys or fashion accessories.”
I’m not pushing you, but it seems like you want to bring him home,” the Badass Animal Rescue volunteer said with the controlled energy of a used-car salesperson. Bill and Sherrie, a middle-aged couple who had lost their English bulldog three years ago, were looking for a replacement. The dog with a bright-red boner jumped on Bill, and everyone pretended not to notice. “He definitely has energy,” Bill said brightly. The couple were on the fence, and the volunteer could sense the close slipping away.
Although this organization saw applications rise 200 percent during the pandemic, things are now recalibrating back to normalcy. We are, it seems, witnessing the cooling of the puppy boom. The unbearable loneliness of the pandemic has abated, replaced with anxiety about how to possibly do all the things all of us used to do every day. New Yorkers are being summoned back to the office or planning vacations. Many young professionals are finding that, when given the option between scrolling through rescue websites until 2 a.m. or doing drunken karaoke in a room full of friends, Dog Tinder is losing its appeal. Local shelters are seeing application numbers slip — many say they have returned to pre-COVID levels — which, in turn, has made it slightly more of an adopter’s market.
Bill and Sherrie went to the hallway to talk it over. He was definitely a puller like their old dog, Xena. And he was also a hell of a shedder. The volunteer kept talking about something called a “love match,” but was this really one? “We’re just gonna need a little more time,” Sherrie confessed when they came back inside. No one was making eye contact. As they prepared to leave, the dog jumped up on Bill again, his tongue flopping sideways and his wagging tail spraying white fur. He was clearly not aware that the tenor of the room had shifted. “We might be back,” Bill said with an obvious twinge of guilt. “Don’t worry!”
We will probably look back on the class of pandemic dogs adopted in 2020 as the most desirable unwanted dogs of all time — the ultimate market-scarcity score for a slice of virtuous, privileged New York City. People like Danielle will see them paraded around places like McCarren Park, the living, breathing trophies for self-satisfied owners who made it through the gauntlet. At least for the next 11 years or so.

CULVER CITY, California—May 9, 2024— Today, ahead of its inaugural upfront presentation on May 14, Prime Video announced that the highly anticipated new animated series from Warner Bros. Animation, Bad Robot Productions, and 6th & Idaho, Batman: Caped Crusader, will premiere all ten episodes Thursday, August 1, along with the official first-look images of this thrilling new show. The first-look images give audiences a special peek into the world of Gotham City, and some of the iconic fan favorite characters that will be featured in the upcoming season. The character reveals, with descriptions below include Bruce Wayne/Batman, Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Dr. Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn, Commissioner Jim Gordon and Clayface.
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• BATMAN - A cold, remorseless avenger of evil, seemingly more machine than man. Forged in the fire of tragedy, every fiber of his being is dedicated to the eradication of crime.
• BRUCE WAYNE - To the public at large, Bruce Wayne is a shallow dilettante, apparently wasting his parents’ vast fortune on frivolous pursuits and hedonistic pleasures. In fact, he’s an elaborate facade, carefully constructed to divert attention from his activities as Batman.
• SELINA KYLE / “CATWOMAN” - Selena Kyle is a blithe and pampered heiress whose family lost their fortune after her father was imprisoned for embezzlement. Despite having the silver spoon yanked from her mouth, Selina refuses to quit living in the lap of luxury and becomes Catwoman as a “fun” way to maintain her lavish lifestyle.
• DR. HARLEEN QUINZEL / “HARLEY QUINN” - Despite a personable and bubbly demeanor, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is a brilliant psychiatrist who treats some of Gotham’s elite. However, as Harley Quinn, she is a different person, entirely. A creepy, quiet, calculating menace who secretly dispenses her twisted justice to the truly despicable among her elite clientele.
• COMMISSIONER JIM GORDON - Former beat cop close to retirement, Gordon was hired to play along with the corrupt system and run out the clock till he can draw a pension. But they’ve sorely underestimated Jim Gordon. His unassailable character brings him into conflict with dirty cops and crooked politicians, alike. Not to mention, he has to reckon with a deranged vigilante beating up Gotham’s criminals.
• CLAYFACE - Thanks to his “unique” facial features, screen actor Basil Karlo has been forever typecast as a B-movie heavy. Frustrated by the limitations his appearance put on both his career and personal life (he fell hopelessly in love with his co-star), Karlo turned to an experimental serum that promised to change his face. However, not only does this serum ultimately disfigure his face, but it ruptures the last of his sanity -- creating the tragic, vengeance seeking villain, Clayface.

Batman: Caped Crusader will be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide beginning on Thursday, August 1.
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About Batman: Caped Crusader
Welcome to Gotham City, where the corrupt outnumber the good, criminals run rampant and law-abiding citizens live in a constant state of fear. Forged in the fire of tragedy, wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne becomes something both more and less than human—the BATMAN. His one-man crusade for justice attracts unexpected allies within the GCPD and City Hall, but his heroic actions spawn deadly, unforeseen ramifications.
The series is a reimagining of the Batman mythology through the visionary lens of executive producers J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves and Bruce Timm. Based on DC characters, Batman: Caped Crusader hails from Warner Bros. Animation, Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions and Reeves’ 6th & Idaho. Along with Abrams, Reeves and Timm, Batman: Caped Crusader executive producers include Ed Brubaker, James Tucker, Daniel Pipski, Rachel Rusch Rich, and Sam Register.
About Prime Video
Prime Video is a one-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one application available across thousands of devices. On Prime Video, customers can find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies Saltburn, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Reacher, The Boys, and AIR; licensed fan favorites Dawson’s Creek and M3GAN; exclusive entertainment such as Thursday Night Football in the U.S.; and programming from partners such as Max and Starz via Prime Video Channels add-on subscriptions, as well as more than 600 free ad-supported (FAST) Channels globally. Prime Video is one benefit among many that provides savings, convenience, and entertainment as part of the Prime membership. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles, including blockbusters such as Barbie and Oppenheimer, via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy content such as Jury Duty and Bosch: Legacy free with ads on Freevee. Customers can also go behind the scenes of their favorite movies and series with exclusive X-Ray access. For more info visit www.amazon.com/primevideo.
About Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation (WBA) is one of the leading producers of animation in the entertainment industry, producing and developing projects for multiple platforms, both domestically and internationally. WBA’s current series include Batman: Caped Crusader, Bat- Family, Batwheels, Bugs Bunny Builders, Creature Commandos, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Harley Quinn,Jellystone!, Kite-Man: Hell Yeah!, Looney Tunes Cartoons, Merry Little Batman, My Adventures with Superman, Teen Titans Go!, Tiny Toons Looniversity, and Velma. The studio is currently in production on two feature films – The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie and the upcoming original anime feature film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim with New Line Cinema. WBA’s full-length theatrical film, Teen Titans GO! to the Movies, was released in summer 2018. As home to the iconic animated characters from the DC, Hanna-Barbera, MGM and Looney Tunes libraries, WBA also produces highly successful animated films — including the DC Universe Movies — for DVD, Blu-ray® and digital media. One of the most-honored animation studios in history, WBA has won six Academy Awards®, 40 Emmy® Awards, the George Foster Peabody Award, a BAFTA Children’s Award, an Environmental Media Award, a Parents’ Choice Award, the HUMANITAS Prize, two Prism Awards and 21 Annie Awards (honoring excellence in animation).
About Bad Robot
Bad Robot was formed by filmmaker J.J. Abrams in 2001. The company has produced television series including Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Westworld, Castle Rock, Lovecraft Country, and Lisey’s Story, as well as the upcoming Presumed Innocent for Apple TV+ and Duster for MAX. The company has produced such features as SUPER 8, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS and THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, and the STAR TREK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, and CLOVERFIELD franchises. Via its overall deal with Oscar®-winning documentarian Glen Zipper, Bad Robot has also produced several documentaries, including Showtime’s UFO, Netflix’s Challenger: The Final Flight, the upcoming THE BLUE ANGELS for IMAX and Amazon, and Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes for Max. In addition to its live-action film and television slate, Bad Robot produced the Oscar-winning animated adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s beloved illustrated book “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse” and has a number of animated projects underway, including a reimagining of Dr. Seuss’s iconic “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” and the upcoming series Batman: Caped Crusader. In 2018, the company launched Bad Robot Games, a new entity dedicated to developing large and indie-scale original games for mobile, PC, and console. The company also recently launched both an audio division, Bad Robot Audio, in partnership with Spotify to develop and produce original scripted and non-scripted audio content, and a theater division, Bad Robot Live, which has an exclusive three-year partnership with Ambassador Theatre Group. Bad Robot Live has recently produced such hits as Appropriate, Gutenberg! The Musical!, One Woman Show, and Oh God, A Show About Abortion. Bad Robot is based in Santa Monica and can be followed at twitter.com/bad_robot and instagram.com/bad_robot.
About 6th & Idaho
6th & Idaho produced the Robert Pattinson starrer The Batman, co-written and directed for Warner Bros. by Reeves, which grossed over $770MM worldwide and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Reeves is currently writing The Batman — Part II for release in 2026; his 6th & Idaho banner recently wrapped production on its Batman spinoff series The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell, for Max. Other notable projects from the company include the sci-fi thriller MotheAndroid for Hulu, Ordinary Joe for NBC, Tales from the Loop for Prime Video and Lift for Netflix.

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Trasmesso il 07/05/2024 alle 21:25 su NOVE HD
FILM AVVENTURA (130' ) USA, 2004. Regia di Martin Campbell. Con: Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Giovanna Zacarias, Raul Mendez - Nella California del 1850, Don Alejandro De La Vega (Antonio Banderas) è sposato con Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) e hanno un bambino di 10 anni al quale non hanno mai rivelato l'identità segreta del padre, Zorro. Costretto il più delle volte lontano da casa per i molti impegni, l'eroe mascherato deve pure affrontare le lamentele della moglie che lo vorrebbe più vicino alla famiglia. E a complicare le cose interviene il conte Armand (Rufus Sewell) determinato a distruggere il progetto di annessione della California agli Stati Uniti… CURIOSITA': numero 2 delle gesta di Zorro-Banderas con Catherine Zeta-Jones. Il film doveva intitolarsi in diversi modi: dapprima doveva essere "The Mask Of Zorro 2" poi "Zorro Unmasked", così come lo script originale di Ted Elliot e Terry Rossio. Poi lo script non fu usato e divenne "Zorro 2", poi "The Return Of Zorro" e infine "The Legend Of Zorro". Un errore: la mappa degli Stati Uniti che si vede nel film mostra 48 stati anche se in quel periodo, il 1850, gli stati erano meno.
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