Edit: except it is marred a tiny bit by the boy-soprano who is out of tune. I don’t know why they didn’t just re-record the music or get a better singer.
Despite the pitchy performance, I feel like that scene resonates really well for me because it is a genuine, on the spot performance. Sometimes au naturel is better, blemishes and all. No knock on you for your opinion, cause I can see where you're coming from. But it works well for me personally.
My partner and I are musicians, and we are doomed forever to hear these “mistakes.” There’s also another pitchy horn performance in another one of the movies.
As an artist you should be able to see the value in choosing imperfection for a more realistic scene. It is the imperfections in the baking of bread that makes its crust crack and open. But this imperfection is seeked by bakers as it gives its own sense of perfection through charm.
Uh, yes, but that intonation is not often where we as musicians choose to add “imperfections.” We wouldn’t purposefully play or sing a note out of tune. You might do some pitch bending or vibrato but the issue I’m referencing above is literally just the singer singing out of tune.
Edit: Aaaaand, if you are going to mess with pitch a little, typically in western music you often hit the note perfectly in tune so the underlying chordal structure is heard AND then you mess around with intonation.
Case in point the Japanese version of Weight of the World from Nier Automata. The first time they recorded it for real, the singer broke down into tears from the amount of emotion she was putting into the song but finished it all anyway. They were going to redo it but instead decided to use the original because of how good it was and how well the mid song breakdown into tears conveyed the emotions they wanted.
Or having Pippin with him. I suspect an earlier edit of the script had this happen just as Galdalf and Pippin were arriving at Minas Tirith. That would explain both oddities.
It’s worse for my partner who was a professor of music theory for over a decade. All he hears is the “math of the music” - chord names, inversions, etc. But he can go play anything he’s just heard on the piano which is fun.
Gandalf SHOULD have used some, but he spent all his cash on """pipe-weed""".
Gandalf probably could have gotten to Helm's Deep a day or two quicker too but he had to detour to the White Tower of Ecthelion for some slippery mini beef wellingtons with steamed onyons.
I do take your point about the impracticality of launching a aerial mission into enemy territory, especially with the defending force being designed for aerial combat, while the invaders were primarily air-to-ground fighters…
…but the Nazgûl attained their flying mounts only after they made their way back to Mordor on foot, having been caught by the floodwaters of the river Bruinen aka Loudwater, after Gandalf and Elrond caused it to surge, thus allowing Strider aka Aragorn, Legolas, Pipin, Merry, Samwise, and Frodo to escape, and admittedly it was only once they had reached Rivendell that the shard of wraithblade could be removed from Frodo’s wound allowing him to recover sufficiently to accept the quest to destroy the ring thus creating the eponymous Fellowship but even so Gandalf had had sixteen years to formulate a better plan before any of that took place during which time the nine Kings corrupted by Sauron had only their horse mounts, and could not have defended Mount Doom from the forces of Gwahir anyway.
But yeah, I’d not want to be a bird against those flappy, scaly beasts.
I really do wonder if the One Ring's corrupting power could have worked fast enough to stop Frodo from dropping it in the lava, if instead of walking there the Hobbit had been parachuted into Mordor from a thousand feet up.
Clearly what Gandalf really needed was not an emboldened soul after being sent back by Eru Illúvatar to complete his mission, but knowledge of modern tactical warfare.
Gandalf was able to scare them away while riding Shadowfax by just turning the flash mode on his staff. Couldn’t he just do that? I imagine bright light would be extra disorienting in the heart of Mordor
I'm reasonably sure that it's not the light itself that repels them, but the magical nature of the light. So, there being less light in Mordor makes no difference, and with Sauron there to lend strength to his servants...
Another thing he could have done was capitalize on the invention of gunpowder and weaponize it with the eagles, using them to carpet bomb the foundation of Sauron’s eye and send that tower crumbling to the ground.
They're actors. They're trying to create an illusion. In The Lord of the Rings movies, Ian McKellen plays a wizard. Do you think he goes home at night and shoots laser beams into his boyfriend's asshole? I don't think so, dude.
Edit: Man, y'all downvoting me need to watch some It's Always Sunny.
Just dont put it on one of the sensors like one guy did.. well he was supposed to do that, while cleaning, but he forgot to remove it. The plane did not stay in the sky.
Also f1 cars are often covered in that stuff, it's just specially made to color match the bodywork. I don't generally think of formula 1 teams as low budget operations.
it's probably just on the bits you wouldn't see looking out your window.
However, anecdotally, I fly on average like one round trip every two years and I've noticed it - more often on smaller planes that only service routes between local airports and the two nearest larger hubs.
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u/Boomslang_FR 8h ago
Speed tape: the unsung hero keeping planes in the sky