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New Escapist Column! On “The Last Duel”, “Dune”, “The Green Knight”, and Being the Hero of One’s Own Story…

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Darren

I published a new column at The Escapist at the weekend. With the release of Dune and The Last Duel on home media, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the overlap between the two films, along with The Green Knight.

All three stories are recognisable as traditional epics, medieval or pseudo-medieval adventures featuring men who perceive themselves to be the heroes of their own narratives. However, all three films cleverly interrogate that idea of story and narrative, asking what it means to be the hero of one’s own story and who gets to control the narrative. It’s a fascinating and interesting trend, and it’s notable that all three films premiered within a few months of each other.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

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New Escapist Video! On How “The Green Knight” Deconstructs the Hero’s Journey…

Posted on August 31, 2021 by Darren

So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with every second Monday’s article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

With the release of The Green Knight on streaming, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at what makes the film so unique and so effective. In particular, how David Lowery uses the film to explore and interrogate the conventional hero’s journey – in particular, the idea that all it takes to make a hero great is an epic adventure.

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New Escapist Column! On How “The Green Knight” Deconstructs the Hero’s Journey…

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of David Lowery’s The Green Knight on streaming, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the director’s reimagining of classic Arthurian legend.

In particular, when is so fascinating about The Green Knight is the way that it takes a very classic and very conventional hero’s journey – the story of a character who embarks upon a quest that makes them better, stronger and wiser before returning home fundamentally changed by the experience – and gradually deconstructs it. Is a hero’s journey alone enough to make Gawain a great man? Can the adventure make him a different person? Is there a checklist of accomplishments that he must complete before he becomes a worthy knight? The Green Knight interrogates and explores these questions.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

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New Escapist Column! On the Return of the Hollywood Epic…

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of The Green Knight, and the upcoming releases of movies like Dune and The Last Duel, it seems like the old-fashioned Hollywood epic might be making a comeback.

This is interesting, as the genre has long been a Hollywood staple. Most people obviously think of the big biblical epics from the middle of the twentieth-century – Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Quo Vadis? However, there was an interesting revival at the turn of the millennium with the release of Gladiator and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Hollywood failed to really reignite the genre. However, that failure has not been for lack of trying.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

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