Regular commenters on this blog are global society's true intellectual elite, and their opinions can therefore be treated as being as near as it is possible to get to objective truth. Let us, then, pay careful heed to their answers to yesterday's questions:
1. The Best Star Wars prequel (and no, Rogue One doesn't count - you knew I meant the real ones): Revenge of the Sith. (I was shocked that Attack of the Clones gave it a run for its money. Don't make me reconsider that "intellectual elite" comment.)
2. The Best Fellowship of the Ring Member: Sam. God damn it, but Frodo almost didn't get any votes at all until right at the last second. Without JB's kids, Legolas wouldn't have had any either - I can't help but feel that this was the films' fault. Book Legolas seems like a decent sort. Film Legolas is a tit.
3. The Best Type of Giant: Hill, pipping Stone and Fire to the post.
4. The Best Type of Dragon: Red. No alarms and no surprises. Somebody pointed out that green dragons' lairs probably smell like swimming pools, and this observation made the whole exercise worthwhile.
5. The Best Type of Undead: Lich. The spread of votes was wide here, but it was always between vampires and liches. No love for heucuvas, crypt things or, surprisingly, zombies (except the juju version).
What does this teach us? I think the main takeaway is that the results of polls often default to the mean. For what it's worth, my own answers were The Phantom Menace, Gandalf, Storm, Green and Ghoul.
Miss checking the blog for one day, and miss a chance to voice my opinions. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteInteresting. You and I intersected on none of them. I was:
ReplyDelete1. Haven't seen them all.
2. Sam
3. Storm
4. Red
5. Skeleton
You know, I completely forgot about ghouls or I might have answered that (that was one of the tougher questions actually as I like ALL the undead to one degree or another). Green would have been my second choice for dragon.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, you asked which prequel film was our FAVORITE (or, rather, "favourite"), not which prequel film was the BEST. Otherwise my answer would have been Sith. But Dooku and Jango beat out Sidious and Grievous for villains, and despite Mustafar being a boss setting, Kamino is even better.
[I could wax on at length about the differences but the point is that in this case, preference and quality don't really match]
My kids, I'm certain, were basing their Fellowship choice off the film (since neither has read the book). Serves you right for asking the question right after one about a film.
; )
True - favourite and best do not absolutely overlap. That's probably why I like Phantom Menace best. The idea of having to sit down to watch Revenge of the Sith is torture, but I could readily rewatch TPM.
DeleteI do like Qui Gon. And Jar Jar doesn't bug me as much as he does some.
DeleteStill gutted Bill the Pony didn't make the Fellowship top spot!
ReplyDeleteAh, the oft-forgotten tenth member of the Fellowship. I'm still going with Merry ("I used to be the Witch King of Angmar until a hobbit stabbed me in the knee!") but I can see the argument for Bill. At least Games Workshop made a mini for him and gave him his own showcase scenario in White Dwarf - and unlike the earlier movie, Jackson didn't have him eaten by a damn squid. :)
DeleteNot that you have a way to know (barring responses here) but I wonder how many people took their Fellowship choice from the books and how many were influenced by the films? I'm solidly in the "books only" camp owing to an intense dislike for the various adaptations but I suspect I'm in a very small minority these days.
ReplyDeleteFor me yes, books only. As time goes by I like the film adaptations less and less.
DeleteJackson's were the worst for me from first viewing.
DeleteEpisode III is obviously the "best" in terms of, like, "objective" cinematic quality but I'm an absolute sucker for swarms of CGI bug people with rayguns.
ReplyDeleteDamn, missed it. Wights are way cooler comon'. As for the rest, spot on.
ReplyDeleteHa! Obviously I missed the boat but FWIW, my suitably pretentious answers below.
ReplyDelete(related: Pretentiousness, Why It Matters by Dan Fox; now that *is* a good book, although - as with quite a few types of non-fiction - once you’ve read the back cover then you’ve read 90% of the book).
1. Ewwwwwww. OK, I saw the "first" 3, my excuse is I have kids. First of those - The Phantom Menace - was actually pretty decent. No problem with Jar Jar Binks either - it’s a fucking kids’ film! The two after that (don’t know their names) got increasingly poor - the third one being a hideous clusterfuck.
2. Ew. Strider, obvs. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or wrong.
3. God, it’s so long since I read any D&D books, I haven’t a clue.
4. Same as 3. Chromatic is pretty cool though, right?
5. Same as 3. Those wights in LotR weren’t half scary though. Just a shame they cut them out of both the Radio 4 adaptation and the (far inferior) films.
Gosh, seems I really have had a lot of fun releasing my inner old man with these last few comments I’ve posted (as opposed to my outer old man which roams free all the time) 👴