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fannish5: Five Favourite Monsters
Apr. 7th, 2007 07:43 amI'm excluding vampires here, as that would make this list somewhat monofannishly tilted, and go for monsters more in the classic sense. Meaning "monster", not "favourite villain" or "favourite character with darkish/demonic aspects" etc. Also, I picked monsters I was actually scared of, which excludes the Daleks, whom I am very fond of otherwise.
1) The Alien in Alien. I wrote two lengthy posts about all four movies, so let's just say that the Alien still works as the ultimate Other, and best of all in the original movie.
2) The Gentlemen in Hush, BtVS. They were classic fairy tale monsters as opposed to villains (which made them something of an exception on this show), and fantastically impressive as such. The scene where they move in to vivisect a student and the student opens his mouth... and no noise comes out, and suddenly you realize why all the voices were taken away still makes me shudder.
3) Shelob in Lord of the Rings. Brrrrrr. The sequence with Frodo and Sam encountering Shelob scared me reliably to bits each time I read the book. Black Riders, Orcs, Balrogs? Pffff. But Shelob? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Though the way the preceding events up to that encounter have been altered in the movie version are one of the few issues I have with same, I'm glad PJ did the encounter itself justice.
4) The Shadows in Babylon 5. Talk about scary spiders. I was a bit hesitant to include them here, because semi-gods are another matter, plus I actually am glad that B5, as opposed to DS9 with the Pagh Wraiths and the Prophets, did ultimately NOT present the conflict between them and the Vorlons as Evil versus Good but showed buth sides were rotten and the sensible thing to do was to pick neither. This being said, the Shadows still work as classic monsters within the show; they never get individualized, whereas we do get to know two Vorlons, and through Anna Sheridan and Carolyn Sanders, we see them do what works as one of the ultimate horrors in stories, take mind and personality away and use a body as canon fodder. Visually speaking, my favourite scary Shadows moment remains the one when Sheridan keeps changing the frequences of the security cameras showing us Morden's cell, and suddenly, for just a second, he's able to see the Shadows surrounding Morden. It still sends a jolt through me each time.
5) The Ring in Lord of the Rings. This is actually more true of the film version than of the book version, because of the stronger emphasis on what the One Ring does to its carriers or those who covet it (poor Boromir!), and the implication it has an active agenda of its own. True to classic monster tradition, the Ring is most effective when rarely used - in The Two Towers, we hardly see it at all, but it's absolutely central to the way the Frodo/Gollum bonding and foreshadowing works. And in the darkness bind them indeed.
1) The Alien in Alien. I wrote two lengthy posts about all four movies, so let's just say that the Alien still works as the ultimate Other, and best of all in the original movie.
2) The Gentlemen in Hush, BtVS. They were classic fairy tale monsters as opposed to villains (which made them something of an exception on this show), and fantastically impressive as such. The scene where they move in to vivisect a student and the student opens his mouth... and no noise comes out, and suddenly you realize why all the voices were taken away still makes me shudder.
3) Shelob in Lord of the Rings. Brrrrrr. The sequence with Frodo and Sam encountering Shelob scared me reliably to bits each time I read the book. Black Riders, Orcs, Balrogs? Pffff. But Shelob? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Though the way the preceding events up to that encounter have been altered in the movie version are one of the few issues I have with same, I'm glad PJ did the encounter itself justice.
4) The Shadows in Babylon 5. Talk about scary spiders. I was a bit hesitant to include them here, because semi-gods are another matter, plus I actually am glad that B5, as opposed to DS9 with the Pagh Wraiths and the Prophets, did ultimately NOT present the conflict between them and the Vorlons as Evil versus Good but showed buth sides were rotten and the sensible thing to do was to pick neither. This being said, the Shadows still work as classic monsters within the show; they never get individualized, whereas we do get to know two Vorlons, and through Anna Sheridan and Carolyn Sanders, we see them do what works as one of the ultimate horrors in stories, take mind and personality away and use a body as canon fodder. Visually speaking, my favourite scary Shadows moment remains the one when Sheridan keeps changing the frequences of the security cameras showing us Morden's cell, and suddenly, for just a second, he's able to see the Shadows surrounding Morden. It still sends a jolt through me each time.
5) The Ring in Lord of the Rings. This is actually more true of the film version than of the book version, because of the stronger emphasis on what the One Ring does to its carriers or those who covet it (poor Boromir!), and the implication it has an active agenda of its own. True to classic monster tradition, the Ring is most effective when rarely used - in The Two Towers, we hardly see it at all, but it's absolutely central to the way the Frodo/Gollum bonding and foreshadowing works. And in the darkness bind them indeed.
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