Zombies Ruin Everything

We’ll call this “The Lord of the Rings, Chapter VIII: The Last Ring-Bearer” and the following is written by the executive producer overseeing “quality control.”

Ping-Pong is a plucky little hobbit from the nether regions of Middle-earth. She doesn’t know who her parents are but she’s had enough spunk to make it to the sequel of the last Lord of the Rings movie that made nearly two billion dollars so we’ll keep following her.

This is the actress who plays Ping-Pong.

We open the scene with her longingly holding out the One Ring that Frodo inherited from his Uncle Bilbo. Frodo has exiled himself and seems to have been alone for a very long time. Ping-Pong slowly walks toward Frodo and practically places the Ring in his hand without saying a word because that’s not weird or anything. If Frodo were to have a mystery girl find him and hold out an object that has so much history to it, his instinct would naturally be “Do nothing.”

Frodo casually, and for laughs, tosses the Ring over his shoulder while scoffing. He walks past Ping-Pong. This will get a good chuckle from the audience who has been waiting for Frodo’s response for two years since we ended our last movie on a cliffhanger: The Lord of the Rings, Chapter VII: The Ring Awakens. One might think Frodo would have a hundred questions for who this female hobbit is and what she wants and why she’s there but…nah.

He used to be a good-hearted guy but now Frodo is cranky and acts like Scrooge. In the original trilogy, we had optimism and determination even when everything seemed impossible. Against all odds, Frodo and Sam pulled through to achieve their goals. Hope and the true meaning of all things that mattered were in the forefront.

Inexplicably, Frodo will have forgotten all of that in place of cynicism and regret. Hey kids, don’t ever meet your heroes, am I right?

I mean, c’mon- we can’t be expected to make the same movies over and over so kicking out foundational pillars of why people love the original characters is key here. A fair send-off of our old-ass characters like Frodo and Aragorn to make way for our new characters like Ping-Pong sounds boring. We’ve got to change things up and if that means making Frodo a miserable failure then audiences shouldn’t let their expectations and love of it all get in the way.

We don’t need to meet, exceed, or even subvert expectations here, we must attack expectations. You weren’t just wrong about all of this, you were stupid for thinking it mattered.

That should be the goal with this film and we will be called “bold.”

“Speaking of bold, I’m thinking of product placement for Chapter IX. Think we could have Ping-Pong find a bag? Maybe an ancient relic or something? Just a thought.”

[SIDE NOTE: Aragorn died in the last movie. It will be fitting for him to have died because offscreen, he’d had a son with Arwen but then relinquished his crown of Gondor to be a ranger again. He was doing the exact same things we saw him doing when we originally met him in ‘The Fellowship of the Rings’ so his death will be a nice little sacrifice for our story since, clearly, his character has nothing else to live for seeing as how we took it all away from him. Also, Viggo Mortensen hates playing this character anyway. Win/win.]

When Frodo is told his friends need him and Middle-earth is in danger and may be on the brink of destruction, Frodo scoffs and says “I’m not going back. I was a fool to ever be involved with the salvation of the world I live in.” He then milks some weird creature that has human-like breasts where a man’s testicles would be and it will be totally hilarious, I swear. The fast shifts in tonality due to the forced humor we insert shouldn’t be too jarring. This is all a joke when you really think about it anyway, right?

The reasoning behind Frodo’s contempt for everything Ping-Pong wants him to fight for (including his own family) is that the Undying Lands Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf and those sweet elves went to at the end of The Return of the King were a lie. Yep, that’s right- a lie. The Undying Lands died. The elves were cowards and all the things Frodo learned in his time carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom has made him bitter. He doesn’t look back at those times as knowing he was the only one who could have done what he did; he’s embittered that he had to do it at all.

So he didn’t spend his time studying and learning about the ways of the world, the magic contained in it, and how to better serve and guide future generations, no; he sits around drinking milk and waiting to die. He has ancient writings on the beginning of Middle-earth but he just sits around thinking about how he should destroy them.

See, Ping-Pong is there because she has all the abilities someone with the One Ring would have- but she’s never even put the Ring on and she feels no burden that a bearer of the One Ring would- there’s no temptation even though there’s never been any lessons taught to her about how powerful and potentially destructive the Ring is. She just goes invisible sometimes and goes to the shadow world while also being able to control all the other rings of Middle-earth.

This means little to Frodo, even with characters like Merry and Pippin there to help encourage him. They’ll just stay in the background though, this is Ping-Pong’s show.

Also, Frodo will have created the villain himself through a mistake that will not only vindicate the antagonist’s reason for being evil, but also let us see how faulty Frodo really is. I mean, did you expect Frodo to stay good forever just because he carried that little Ring all over the place? Stop holding onto your ideals, people, this is the sequel.

Even though Frodo would know all about the struggles a ring-bearer would face, Frodo still thought about killing his own nephew once for being tempted. It was a moment of weakness sure, but he’s not his own character anymore; he serves our new story where he doesn’t really matter. Remember how we made Aragorn regress so much so that killing his character stuck with the audience but didn’t affect the story? That’s what this is. Much of our audience might say some crap like “Wouldn’t Frodo have overcome certain struggles given his YEARS of knowledge and experience? Ping-Pong has it all figured out but Frodo’s actually gotten dumber than when we first met him?” but we’ve got a slew of names to call those fans in an effort to write them off so no worries there.

Eventually Ping-Pong beats up Frodo. Are we seeing the new generation versus old school here? I think so and to that I give my fellow kids a big HELL YEAH HOMEY, LOLZZZ!!! OLD PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT WE ABOUT!!! :)))

Sorry, I got a little carried away. This new emoji-speak just really takes over sometimes after going through my daughter’s texts. I’ve got to make sure she’s rebelling the proper way and all.

Anyway.

It seems drastic but Frodo is being a total tool to her and won’t help. So her, Merry and Pippin who are still there, leave. You didn’t forget they were there, did you? Doesn’t matter, they’re off.

Frodo is left to his miserable, crusty self. he decides to burn down some giant tree that’s now important and contains writings on the origins of Middle-earth. Remember, Frodo has been saying that everything he knew about love, responsibility, friendship, sacrifices, blah blah blah- they’re all lies and vanity. Nevermind that many of these things are necessary for any culture to thrive and that Frodo should be that much more learned in how to communicate these things to his fellow hobbit, because he’s actually spent the last twenty to thirty years forgetting it all to drink milk like a baby.

But before he can burn down this tree that symbolizes the old world, Gandalf appears and destroys the tree himself. Because if there’s one thing previous generations want for us, it’s to forget they ever even existed.

For some reason, Frodo will be shocked at this even though he was about to do it himself. He’ll express his shock to Gandalf who says three things in response:

1. “Frodo, you didn’t even read them.”
2.  “They were like, super boring anyway.”
3.  “Ping-Pong already knows everything you spent decades learning and unlearning.”

Gandalf will say it like Gandalf speaks though; all wizardly and stuff.

“Me doth thinks the herbit protests too much!’ Something like that.”

Frodo will then put on the ring to act as a diversion for characters you don’t care about using an ability you never knew Frodo even had- pretending he’s in a place when he isn’t there. He hasn’t properly meditated or become anymore intelligent than he was when we originally met him but he’s now going to pull a super power out of his butt that will take so much exertion, it will actually kill him.

Throw in a visual reference to the Shire or something to get the nostalgia juices flowing. Audiences can think of how far Frodo has come from when we first met him; from innocent youth without a care in the world to weary adventurer ready to sacrifice everything for what he believes…to dying on a rock by himself after forsaking everything good he used to love.

FINALLY, service has been done, the old characters are dead, and we can focus on all the new and beloved(?) characters everyone has come to know and love. Like Ping-Pong and Schmoody!

[Side note: We’ll work out who Schmoody is later. Perhaps an orc that now wants to be good? Would that sell? Wait, why am I asking anyone’s opinion? I’m in charge.]

This entry was posted on 01/04/2018 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Whatever with tags Star Wars Epidosde VIII: The Last Jedi sucks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.