Is it me, or is the Cthulhu Mythos something of a no-woman zone?

I’ve been working through the Cthulhu Mythos Mega Pack 

(if you have a Kindle download this now now now, it’s only 37p and, despite what I’m about to say, I bloody love it)

and it would appear that

• meddling in things we ought not to wot of,
• getting spooked by rats that, it turns out, are never rats,
• calling up what cannot be put down,
• mutating into fish monsters,
• or generally just having to cope with a whole lot of tentacles,

is strictly a male affair. You can be a female in this mythos…but don’t expect to be allowed to actually narrate the story, have any real impact on it, or entertain much chance of surviving it. At least not in this selection.

I shouldn’t be too surprised, considering quite a few of the stories in this collection are ‘classics’ written by H.P. Lovecraft himself, as well as Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. The stories written more towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st don’t have so much of an excuse, but pulp writing has always been very much a male province, in theory if not in actuality.

Still, I’m curious as to whether there have been any female writers inspired by the Cthulhu mythos, and what works they’ve produced.

(Goes on the hunt for the elusive female, amid the tentacles and the fish things.

No, the female Deep Ones don’t count.)

So. Snow White and the Huntsman. And some dwarves.

You know, this one was probably just as stupid as Prometheus. I think the reason why I DIDN’T love it is A: It didn’t have all that many clever moments to atone for the stupidity, and B: I went in frankly not expecting much, and not much is what I got.

At least I wasn’t disappointed.

(Spoilers from here-on, be warned.)

So. Where does ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ go from here?

I can’t have been the only one who laughed when, at the end of ‘An Unexpected Journey’, the company act like they’re only a few miles away from the Lonely Mountain and when the shot cuts to it it’s so far away you can barely see it.

Also, during the ‘Misty Mountains’ song over the credits, one line is ‘We’ll be there soon’ and I said out loud “You poor eejit, you have no idea,” and then I realised I was talking to the soundtrack as if it was a real person and that this, this was what this film had done to me.

Still, I have actually doubted at times if they’re going to get to Smaug even by the end of the second film, let alone kill him off. And I know that sounds pessimistic, but consider that we’ve still got a shed load of stuff to get through:

1. Getting to Beorn’s house and staying there for a while,

2. Getting to Mirkwood and Gandalf leaving,

3. Trying to get through Mirkwood and not having much success in that area and generally implying the passing of time. Seriously, they spend about a month in there, maybe more. Also possibly the stream that Bombur falls into which makes him lose his memory, although whether they’ll include that is still unclear. The same with the Elves feasting and trolling them when they try to approach,

4. Getting captured by spiders and Bilbo coming to the rescue, though not before he’s fought off his own spider and named Sting,

5. Getting caught by the Wood Elves,

6. Being imprisoned by the Wood Elves,

7. Escaping from the Wood Elves,

8. Dealing with the process of escaping from the Wood Elves i.e. nearly getting drowned in rapids, from what I can tell from the behind-the-scenes footage,

9. Getting to Lake Town,

10. Interacting with the people in Lake Town,

11. Getting to the Mountain,

12. Getting into the Mountain,

13. And, in addition, finding time to show whatever wacky hijinks it is that Gandalf and the White Council are getting up to.

This is all before Bilbo even comes face to face (you know what I mean) with Smaug. Probably it doesn’t sound like too much laid out, but it all adds up. And this is just the bare bones of what happens; there’s a lot more that can be added on, considering the messages, plot threads and Chekov’s Guns that need to be gotten across to the audience.

So. The Hobbit.

Before we proceed, a warning. If you haven’t already seen The Hobbit, this is a not quite stream of conciousness of what I was thinking and feeling as I watched it. Beware spoilers.

First off; the prologue.

You know, I really wish Peter Jackson hadn’t chosen to go with the whole ‘Older Bilbo’ encapsulating narrative. I like Ian Holm as Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings so it pains me to say that here, he just doesn’t do it for me. He constantly looks bored and/or like he’s forgotten what he’s even doing in this film. His narration fell flat when it could have been so good if it’d been done by someone like Thorin, or even Gandalf. My first impression of the whole thing was long, wordy and far more telling than showing. I though the experience would improve with a second viewing, but nope. Still unnecessary.

And yes, I know that there was a lot of exposition in the prologue to Fellowship as well but, let’s face it, Bilbo is no Galadriel. (Not that Galadriel doesn’t have her faults, but we’ll get to that later.) I know there’re plenty of people who haven’t read The Hobbit for whom this introduction was very useful, but my experience of all this info was more akin to being spoon fed.

And during this whole bit I was just sitting there and wondering, ‘So, wait, wouldn’t Frodo know about all this already anyway?’ which really kind of took me out of it.   

So. Prometheus…DANG

On the off-chance you haven’t seen Prometheus, better stop reading. This’ll spoil it for you.

Okay.

Okay.

I knew what was going to happen when I saw Prometheus. I’d spoiled it for myself, so I’d know precisely when to cover my eyes.

And you know what?

It was glorious. And it was stupid, and rather clever as well, and I loved it.