Ethan Parke Author Blog

  All Lord of the Rings fans have a different opinion on their favorite entry in the saga, and mine is The Two Towers. There is a fair share of people who say that because of Gollum, but for me, it is Helm's Deep. I also like the way it helped us get to know the characters we met halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring better. It got to be where they were easier to distinguish, because it annoyed me when I was at the Tennessee Rehabilitation Center and had to repeatedly explain how Aragorn lived and Boromir died.  Nobody would forgive me if I don't mention Andy Serkis's performance as Gollum, because it was outstanding. I agree that it really should have been nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor. The only reason was they couldn't see Serkis act, but he was technically there with the animation over his performance. When I heard Lord of the Rings was being made into a movie, I thought Gollum would be a puppet/costume, and that Serkis would just prov...

  I have written many times, that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy is my favorite story ever written. When I heard it was finally going to be a movie, after decades of being deemed unfilmable, I was ecstatic. The instant I got my driver's license back my senior year in high school, I started going to movies practically every weekend, mainly to see the trailers. And because I am going through another marathon this week, I will give a short review of each movie.  The Fellowship of the Ring was the most appropriate named of all of them, because it centers on the nine heroes. Every time, I watch the opening narration, I get the same chills I get in the theater. When the hobbits see Aragorn, for the first time in the Prancing Pony, I get excited like I am reunited with an old friend. The battles are amazing, especially the saga's most iconic scene where Gandalf fights the balrog. The scenes that were added were necessary, helping make the villains that seldom appeared in the ...

I said a lot of information last week about how I will appreciate anything that shows respect for the world Tolkien created in his Middle-earth stories. I talked about how I like The Hobbit trilogy, and its only crime was not being as good as Lord of the Rings. I will now talk about the animated movie Ralph Bakshi made in 1978 based on The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.  I was familiar with Tolkien's stories when I first saw that, just when I started reading The Hobbit. Seeing how every time somebody got stabbed in that movie, it felt like they got stabbed. John Hurt's performance as Aragorn, nearly stole the show for me. The only downside was how Sam was depicted as almost a child, that whined a lot. Some of the rotoscoping was a little disturbing. It looked good on the orcs, but the human or human like characters, it looked a little grotesque. Despite those flaws, I still enjoyed the movie, and it made me eager to finish The Hobbit so I could read Lord of the Ring...

To conclude my series that defends The Hobbit trilogy, I want to say that I see why people think it did not need to be three movies, but it is not 1937. With The Lord of the Rings already made, Peter Jackson needed to connect the two stories and make the movies as prequels. Some of the additional material may not be from the book but from work Tolkien wrote that his son published after he died. You also need to be aware that when Tolkien first wrote The Hobbit, he had no idea he was writing a children's novel, even if it was a sophisticated children's novel, that takes place in a world with a history of war and violence.  It is clear by now that I like The Hobbit movies almost as much as I like The Lord of the Rings movies. I heard some people say they should have had Smaug die at the end of the second movie, making his attack on Laketown the climax, but I didn't mind it opening The Battle of Five Armies. I agree the Beorn character was underused, and Legolas should have be...

  I talked last night, about how I respect anything that shows faith to Tolkien's world. Therefore, I have always had a soft spot for The Hobbit movies, even if they aren't as great as The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I like the parts taken from the book, even if there was some stuff in it that would be consider exposition now.  The thing I will talk about tonight is the addition of Tauriel. A lot of people did not like her because she did not appear in the book. She was only made up for the movie for modern gender politics. I am sure Tolkien was not sexist, in 1937 women in fantasy stories were only rewards the heroes rescued, meaning he did not want to conform to stereotypes. Therefore, I have no trouble with the Tauriel character. I only think it would have been better if they dropped the love triangle between her, Kili, and Legolas. Instead, she should have been the character that persuades Thranduil to look past his bigotry toward the Dwarves and help them and try to make p...

 Being so enraptured in the world of Arda, the world J.R.R. Tolkien created I will appreciate anything that shows respect to it. I have a soft spot for Ralph Bashi's animated version, even if it was not completed, and do not have a problem with the animated TV Hobbit movie, for the parts that are faithful to the book, even if the action was underwhelming. I look forward to the upcoming anime movie, Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, and will now talk about the things in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies.  When I heard it was being made, I had a feeling it would not be as good as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, having spent decades being deemed unfilmable, but was still excited, because I always liked going to movies in December. While some of the criticisms about the movies are justified, the parts that were faithful to the source material were well done, because a lot of the problems were in the original book, and its only connection to Lord of the Rings was Bilbo finding the...

 After writing about my thoughts on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and how the last MCU movie that centered on those characters always makes me feel like I am getting ready to go on vacation in St. George Island, Florida, I would like to share what I think about another movie that makes me feel that way, and that is Snow White and the Huntsman. I saw it six weeks before my family and I travelled there in 2012, and it was a fun trip, like it is every time we go there. One would think because it starred Kristin Stewart it would be like Twilight, but I saw it because the trailers always reminded me of the fantasy adventure stories, I always enjoyed and drew inspiration from. The story was pretty generic, but I still enjoyed the battle scenes, and a lot of the acting was done well. Some criticized the way the dwarves were played by regular sized people with short people doubling as them, but that was a minor complaint. It is hard to be politically correct these days. Charlize Thero...

 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quanumania had mixed reviews, but I enjoyed it. What I think most people reflect on is how introduced the MCU's newest threat, and the next villain, the next Thanos. I liked the interaction between Ant-Man and his daughter. It is the right kind of movie for the action to be screwball, slapstick comedy.  The only downside for it on my point of view is that I won't feel like I am getting ready to go on vacation in St. George Island, like I do whenever I watch the last Ant-Man and Wasp movie. 

  I said several times that Casion Royale will probably always be my favorite 007 movie, but it pleases me seeing that people have had their opinions soften to its sequel, Quantum of Solace. For me, it's only real crime was not being as good as Casino Royale, because when a movie is following something that great, it is hard to match it. I always got annoyed when people say its lackluster, if not straight up boring, but as time passed people seem to have had second thoughts.  I like the way Quantum of Solace picks up just where Casino Royale left off, and I like seeing the friendship develop between James Bond and Felix Leiter. The only thing I wish happened was they had more time for Felix and let him be involved in some action scenes, but if I am ever commissioned to write a Bond script that will happen. The battle at the hotel was cool and the female lead, Camille, had a good backstory. While I agree Dominic Green could have been a better villain, I think it was cool the wa...

 It took me years to determine what my second favorite movie is after The Lord of the Rings trilogy because most of my favorite movies are part of a series, but it was definitely going to be my favorite James Bond movie. After years of consideration, I concluded that it was Casino Royale. All of Daniel Craig's performances are great, even the ones critics initially said were awful and are having second thoughts about, and I like Sean Connery, too, my favorite of his being From Russia with Love, but I also know I am not done watching Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Thunderball. For Pierce Brosnan, I have to go with GoldenEye and I seriously think Timothy Dalton is underrated. As for Roger Moore, all of his are on the lower end of good, they are probably ninety something on my list of 100 greatest movies, but my favorite has to be For Your Eyes Only. What I say makes Casino Royale great as a bookworm, out of all the movies adapted from Ian Fleming's books, that is the most faithful. The ...

 With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania coming to the theaters this weekend, I would like to share my thoughts on the last MCU movie centering on those characters, which was a great example of an action screwball comedy.  It was fun seeing them use cars that would look like hot wheels and throw a giant Pez dispenser at enemies chasing them. The ghost was an intriguing villain we felt sympathy for, and Lawrence Fishburne gave a cool performance as always, making you think he was a bad guy but redeemed himself. Walton Goggins was a fun secondary villain, with style and charisma, and Michael Pena was a good sidekick, gave it a good sense of humor.  Every time I stream that movie on Disney plus it feels like I am getting ready to go on vacation, because I went to see it a second time the night before my parents and I departed for our favorite vacation spot, St. George Island, Florida. At some point, the Covert Militia will use shrinking technology similar to what they use in ...

    With tomorrow being Valentine's Day, I feel obligated to write about a few chapters in The Penitent Warrior about the love of friendship, and about Jack Stamper's crush and enduring friendship with Kelly McCormick, Crown Princess of Atlanta, Georgia, and the story in my life that inspired it. It is about one of the worst things that happened to me in my twelve years in school, but it was still inspiring, and if it were not for this part of my life, I would not have material for my books. I will not spoil it, but if you knew me in eighth grade, you will probably know where it is going.  Despite being a hero of the Amulet War, and singer/guitarist an alternative metal band, Jack is bullied relentlessly. Some of the people he goes to school with torment him because they like picking on weird people, others because it is part of their job, being either Scorpion agents or agents of the Red Russians' spy killing corps SMERSH a contraction of the Russian words  Smyrt...

  There have been many movies based on James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans, but the best known and most recent, and only one I have seen is the one Michael Mann made in 1992, that received critical acclaim for the action, adventure, romance, and Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as Nathaniel "Hawkeye" Poe, and was one of the first R-rated movies I saw, however, if you remove the scene where Magua excised Colonel Munro's heart, it would probably be PG-13, but that is beyond the point. It became one of my favorite movies immediately, and I have always enjoyed the soundtrack. Hawkeye is one of several heroes I used as inspiration for Jack Stamper, being rugged with a sense of humor, and values his friends and family, even if they are only adapted. He was sympathetic, but not somebody you would want to oppose in a fight. Despite being evil, we can in some ways sympathize with Magua, for the way he lost his family to the British and was made a slave to ...

  Something you will notice in my books is that many of the characters have a penchant for headgear, and as you see from my picture I do, too. When I was in kindergarten, I found sunlight hurt my eyes when I went outside, and therefore started wearing a hat everywhere I went. I realized it made me unique, but some people, mainly my grandmother on my dad's side, tried telling me I look better without it, and should stop wearing it (that's coming from an elementary school kid with Asperger syndrome) and it always irked me, so I decided to literally never take it off. From my point of view with Asperger syndrome, it was like they did not want me to be unique, and I tried to prove there was nothing harmful or rude about having a hat on, but it never worked but maybe one day it will. Like I said, it is only to make my characters unique. That said, I have always found girls with hats on extremely attractive. The thing that made me see it that way was that Nickelodeon show about the g...

 With the fifth and final season of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom, available I am rewatching the other four in order to prepare. I am disappointed it is the last one, having read all thirteen of the books by Bernard Cornwell that it is based on, but then again, they are structured differently. Some of the things they did differently were probably to make Uhtred of Bebanburg a more likable protagonist. Honestly, I thought at first it would be confusing with all the people called lord, but they managed to make it clear who everyone was talking to, and sometimes characters who are close friends drop formality, something that was unlikely to happen in the Dark Ages. I like the way when it captions a particular location it shows what it was called at the time, and then transitions to how it is currently known, similar to what Cornwell does at the beginning of every book, by telling before he starts the story. Also, just for your information if you watch the show and have not read...

 In the early 2010s, nearly any time I mentioned I was an aspiring novelist, somebody would always mention The Hunger Games Trilogy, and when I saw there was going to be a movie based on it, I felt I should read it. I read the first book in the series while recovering from knee surgery and finished it just in time for its release. It at first seemed like a fad, but I am looking forward to seeing its prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes this November.  I do not watch the movies as much as I used to, but I am watching them this week, and here are my thoughts. I did enjoy them, but there were a few times where I felt like it needed more action, especially in Mockingjay Part 1, but when there was it was superb. A lot of it, especially the feminism in it, was nothing new, it was not the first action series with a female lead, and in the end, not that I am sexist, there are still some attributes where men are physically superior to women, but I am not putting them down and sa...

 Seeing the trailer for Knock at the Cabin, I had a feeling about what was going to happen. Because Metallica Four Horsemen is my favorite bike riding song, I have a feeling that any movie trailer that says something about the apocalypse and involves four people, I almost always see where it is going. Case in point, it did not get good until about halfway through, and it was entertaining enough after that started.  I do not know if the book my mom said she read is the one it was based on, but it probably is. Also, with M. Night Shyamalan, you can almost always see where he is going. He has been trying to shock us ever since The Sixth Sense, and though he is in no way a bad director, he needs to try doing something we can't see coming. One thing you can always expect in one of Shyamalan's movies is to see him in a cameo, and if you do not like being surprised, and find getting what you predict amusing, I highly recommend it.

I enjoyed monster movies ever since I was a kid, and the one credited with making movies about giant animals popular is the original 1933 King Kong. Nearly every movie that involves giant monsters from Godzilla to Jurassic Park has had some influence from it. I also like Peter Jackson's 2005 remake, though I do agree about the criticism about it being excessively long and how there were a few scenes that belonged in a different movie. I also agree about the criticisms about parts of the original being politically incorrect and sexist with the way it treated the leading lady, which is why I can't decide which one I like more, but you can clearly like both. I also feel I need to say I don't think it is possible to kill a t. rex by breaking its jaws, and it is cool that Kong knocked the sailors off the same log in both, and I like how they joked about the parts that did not age well in Jackon's version. With all that said, one time when my brother and I were playing with o...

  I say this a lot, but I know I am not the only author who gets inspiration from dreams. I often dream about things that happened to me during the day, combined with things I enjoyed in movies and shows I like, as well as things that annoyed me about them. The worst ones involve things that upset me coming full circle, but the good ones are action packed where I am the hero, and both are incorporated into my books.  Now that I said all that, I will explain what this has to do with the movie Inception, and that is the non-stop action, but I don't remember ever having a dream within a dream. The parts like the movie are when I am in battle, such as in the movie when Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries deterring the subconscious soldiers with an assault rifle, and Tom Hardy walks behind him and says, "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling," and gets out a grenade launcher. Since I mentioned that, in my books Jack Stamper and his cohorts often fight one battle wh...