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Tag Archives: Trolls

Trolling the Science

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Fantasy, Film, Just So Narratives, Movies, Skepticism, Stories, troll, Trolls, Voicing

The first scene in Troll opens with a father teaching his child to see trolls in the mountains. She is skeptical, but he urges her to make an effort. To see them, he reassures her, she must first believe.

And she does!

Thus, another just-so narrative is born!

Or at least, a rather common just-so cliche gets another go at audiences.

The thing is, I could almost have gone along with it, if the movie-makers in this instance had only had the confidence to invite us to live in a world where a troll can just come out of the mountains and make himself a menace to humanity. They could have simply asked us to run with that premise. That’s what Troll Hunter did, and it was brilliant. But Troll wants to talk to us about it. They want to argue with us about it.

Or at least the characters in the film want to argue about it.

I just can’t imagine why?

At least I can’t imagine a good reason.

The movie’s main character, Professor Nora Tidemann (played by Ine Marie Wilmann) spends much of the first act trash-talking science and scientists. That she is a scientist herself could be an interesting paradox, if only she and her antagonists had anything interesting to say about the matter. For their own part, Tidemann’s skeptics have little to offer but their own refusal to believe the obvious facts of the universe they live in, that is the one in which a troll really does walk out of a mountain and start killing people and breaking things. So, it’s left to Tidemann to tell them what they are seeing, and the resulting debate is a string of arguments we’ve seen in countless B-grade fantasy and horror films going as far back as I can remember.

This isn’t good story telling.

The troll himself is good storytelling. He is interesting. Hell, he was awesome! He looked cool enough, and his behavior invites us to consider a whole range of much more interesting questions. He was menacing enough, true, but the Troll also showed traces of compassion. As the storyline developed, we even began to get a sense for how he could be approached, for what might make the difference between a violent encounter and a peaceful one. What made the difference in this instance was almost interesting, and it almost mattered.

Almost.

In any event, the troll in this movie was actually pretty cool.

It was the people that sucked.

The people sucked because they were using the troll to rehash an old and entirely contrived debate about the limitations of science and rationalism. Because that debate was hardly compelling as a storyline, I have to believe it wasn’t really there in the service of the story. The debate was there because someone behind the making of this movie thinks they have a point to make about the limitations of science. Someone believes that message – that you must believe in order to see – is a point worth making. So, when Tidemann’s father tells his daughter to do that in the opening scene, and when she later repeats that message to the rest of the scientists throughout the rest of the movie, that is someone behind the making of this movie speaking to the rest of us, telling us that we must believe in order to see.

If only the people telling us this had the courage of their own convictions, the story might have worked. Had they been willing to show us a world full of trolls and let the characters (along with their audience) run with it, the whole story might have worked. But they had to argue with us. They did so through the voices of their less-than-compelling human characters. The argument was never more than a childish exercise in special pleading, all quite unnecessary, because the story presents the existence of trolls as a fact. Those still reluctant to acknowledge their existence well into the second act come across, not so much as scientists or skeptics as outright fools. They do so because they are denying obvious facts, and because their denial is clearly unreasonable at that point in the story. And so we are left with the notion that a kind of blind faith has proven itself out, that it is the characters who choose to believe in order to see the troll that understood the assignment, that such faith and such faith alone was the only hope for handling the troll in this story. Science and skepticism failed in this instance because they were simply written that way. And because the movie invests so much time in the arguments between the skeptics and the believers, I do not think it unreasonable to suppose the movie-makers wanted us to take their arguments seriously.

Only these just aren’t serious arguments.

They are tiresome cliches.

The troll deserved better!

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Great Movie Villains, Volume X: The Troll Hunter!

15 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movie Villainy, Movies

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Film, Irony, Movies, Norway, Story-Telling, Troll Hunter, Trolls, Villainy

We can breathe a little easier here in America, because you won’t find this filthy bastard on our shores. His name is Hans, and he was last seen haunting the frozen fjords of Norway. It’s a good thing too. Let the vikings have him! We don’t want that kind of trouble here.

Don’t be fooled by clever disguises. It ain’t bears this man is hunting (though that is what he would have us believe). No, it’s trolls. That’s, right. Hans hunts trolls.

Now you might have thought, as I did, that trolls don’t actually exist. And that is just what the documentary film crew that made this movie thought too. But they found out for themselves just how wrong they could be. These things actually do exist, and they live in the mountains and forests of Norway.

And this dirty son-of-a-bitch kills them.

Now you would think a species so rare as to be regarded by most folks as mythical would be something you’d want to preserve and protect, but no, not this man, nor the Norwegian Troll Security Service (TSS). It seems the government of Norway hires him to slay any trolls that venture near civilization. Sometimes they even send him into troll territory where Hans engages in murder on a scale worthy of a war crimes trial.

All of this is top secret of course.

So, how do we know about it? Hans lured a team of college film students into joining him on his quest to commit cryptocidal atrocities. Oh he pretended that he didn’t want them to follow him at first, but at a critical moment Hans shouted the word ‘troll’ and ran away.He then let the poor innocent babes wheedle the truth out of him. It isn’t often that such violent men resort to passive aggressive manipulation, but apparently Hans knows no shame, not even that of a serial murderer.

This is Hans

As with so many violent criminals, it seems that Hans longs to share the guilt of his awful deeds. Like a master assassin teaching his tricks to apprentice killers, Hans shows the college kids how to track trolls, find them in their lairs, and even kill them. Hans even takes care to introduce them to a scientist who explains in excruciating detail just how painful the troll hunter’s murderous methods really can be. Everyone knows that light kills trolls. What they don’t know is just how much the troll suffers when it hits him. At least until this terrible man, Hans, shares the insight with his chosen band of accomplices.

Of course there is flaw in Hans’ plan.

The government of Norway doesn’t want anyone filming trolls, much less its hired thug doing their dirty work for them. What exactly happened to the film crew, no-one will ever know. You see the video tape of their documentary just showed up, but no-one really knows what happened to the college kids who made it.

Nor does anyone really know the current whereabouts of Hans.

Now some might say that this film bears a striking resemblance to the Blair Witch Project, and some might even say that film was fake. But then again some people serve mild salsa to dinner guests or sell crack to innocent children. Remember that when some pimply faced snot-fer-brained kid tries to wax skeptical on you about this film. Some folks don’t even think jackalopes are real. Try telling that to any small game hunter in Wyoming!

Anyway, the point is that this isn’t just any movie. It’s just the tip of the mixed metaphor, and the truth is staring us all right in the face. It’s out there somewhere dammit.

…armed with UV rays.

So, I take back what I wrote earlier; we are not really all that safe here in America.  People everywhere should be afraid of this terrible bastard. Hans could be anywhere at this point, and who knows how many people he has with him now. I think everyone should watch this documentary and take good care to commit this man’s face to memory. Lean his tactics and his habits, and be on the look-out.

The fate of Chupacabra and the Jersey Devil may well depend on it.

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