In the James Bond books, he’s pretty fucked up by the end. He completely acknowledges that he’s a broken soldier that’s always drunk and high.
I was thinking this when I watched dandadan. Like, almost all main story arcs in the first season centre around some form of sexual assault, and you’re telling me the MCs weren’t scarred by them in any way, shape or form???
Frodo at the end of LotR was pretty permanently screwed up from his suffering. Sometimes there’s a hint of realism from authors/media creators.
LOTR is deeper than people give it credit for IMO. Sam’s empathy for the Southron soldier really struck a chord with me. I’m not a vet but I imagine that echoes Tolkien’s experience in the Great War.
I know he rejected attempts to assign allegory to the story, but Gollum is the perfect portrayal of an addict. I want it, but I hate it. It harms me but I need it.
Yeah, The Lord of the Rings isn’t an allegory, but it does have themes, and Tolkien definitely drew on his experiences in WWI when writing it.
You don’t have to be trying to depict addiction to end up doing it anyway. The ring’s allure might be magical, but the pattern is broadly the same.
There’s a part in Lord of the Rings Online that sticks with me. When I finally got out of Moria and went to Lothlorien, Frodo is there. The game has a mechanic where when you’re in the presence of particularly strong evil you get a debuff called dread that lowers your morale (essentially your HP). When I approached him I noticed I had a dread debuff and was confused as to what was causing it until I remembered - of course, he has the ring! The game doesn’t make any mention of it, it’s just left for you to notice. It was a great way to subtly depict the burden he would have to carry for a long time.
I’m not a professional but it’s probably not healthy to compare your experiences to fictional content created for entertainment.
That’s been changing recently. Hell even the Daniel Craig James Bond movies have him deal with trauma from the job. He usually just shakes it off or says he’s fine, but you can tell it’s hard on him.
Superhero movies are even doing this now, that was a huge plot point in Thunderbolts. That’s basically Hulk’s whole character motivation, too.
It wasn’t as intense as the comic version obviously but Stark had his alcoholic moment and tons of PTSD in his character
Iron Man 2 and 3. At the time I thought it was a little weird, probably just the way they portrayed it when he freaked out after the kid asked him how he escaped the portal in Avengers.
Even Captain America lost Peggy in his first movie, and didn’t get to truly reunite with her until Endgame. He talks about it a few times throughout the movies.
Superheroes in general deal with tons of trauma. Batman is probably the poster child for superhero trauma. Which is another thing; we can all enjoy Batman as a character and the stories he shows up in, but at the end of the day we all should realize that Batman is not healthy or even fully sane. He regularly throws himself and others into danger, trying to save himself as an 8-year-old night after night.
Spoiler for an over a decade old cartoon...
That is one thing I do really like about Legend of Kora. Throughout the show the seasonal antagonists all hold some level of power over her psych and cause her some level of trauma that doesn’t magically disappear the next episode. I think the only exception might be Kuvira since there wasn’t really enough time to get into that.
I think the way you can tell from the subtleties of how her character changed as the series progresses due to the trauma was incredibly well done. So much detail for how much more weight she carries over the course of the show.
Bruh only in episodic shows.
Any good movie, or tv show that moves through time…?
Breaking bad? Walt is pretty traumatized by his cancer diagnosis. Skylar is pretty traumatized by Walt’s shit.
Ozark? I mean holy shit. His son has a fake identity and is laundering money writing essays for peers in high school. That’s a fucking coping and modeling masterclass. Charlotte starts drinking and smoking.
Yeah maybe like in Friends or Everybody loves Raymond they don’t get traumatized but those are just sitcoms.
That’s one of the things I like about The Hunger Games, the characters are realistically affected by the trauma
The protagonist also gets constantly hunted by all sorts of bad guys, terrorists, global conspiracy organizations, intergalactic demons etc. No thanks!
And as a result typically end up with a trail of bodies in their wake, yet no police, no investigation, just go home.
If it’s a generic action movie, millions worth of material damage too. Broken cars, exploded buildings etc.
If it’s a Marvel movie, half the city is usually levelled by the time we’re done with the plot. Who knows how many people die every time the protagonist goes shopping.
I just watched The Black Phone last night. Spoiler:
spoiler
The climax involves the child protagonist killing the villain. When he returns to school, all the kids whisper around him about how badass he is, then he goes to his class, sits next to the girl he has a crush on, and confidently tells her to call him “Finn” instead of “Finny” because he’s personally grown so much from being locked up in a dungeon and haunted by the dead kids who came before him.
He’s shown to be traumatized by it in the sequel, although it’s not very good.
I did read the synopsis of it and thought it sounded like an interesting take. I’m not sure I liked the movie enough to bother with the sequel though. As an ending to its own contained story, it felt really tone-deaf.
I wouldn’t recommend it. It goes into Nightmare on Elm Street style supernatural territory, which is fine for that series but tonally clashes with the first one.
