The Analytical Nerd

          When I watched my first episode of Star Trek Enterprise, I was almost appalled by the opening titles. What is this strange song? Why are there almost country sounding lyrics instead of the beautiful, transcendent instrumentals of previous series? And what are all of these weird historical clips instead of images of planets and the Enterprise? Simply put, after just rewatching Next Generation and Deep Space 9, I had very high standards and did not like change.                However, just half a season into Enterprise, I was warming up to the concept and the characters, and instead of immediately skipping the opening titles, I was beginning to listen. The song was getting stuck in my head, and I found myself weirdly inspired by it. As I examined it more, I realized that both the opening titles and the show itself resonates the closest to where we as a sp...

Spoilers ahead! If you haven’t watched the movie Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse , I can’t recommend enough that you watch it and completely ignore this post or read it later. The s cene in Into the Spider-verse where the world learns of Peter's death is absolutely beautiful and intense and evocative with the sounds, visuals and emotions. I can’t get it out of my head, so of course what do I do when that happens? Analyze exactly why it’s so wonderful. Why does the mixture of scenes and voices and music mesh so perfectly to create feelings that are hard to explain? Click here the scene to watch along with the screenshots, as neither screenshots nor gifs really do justice to the scene alone. The first piano chord hits perfectly on note with the news announcement of Spiderman’s death as Miles' parents watch the news. The paino starts the song out with intense emotion in just this single chord. Both parents shocked to see the news, Miles' dad isn...

  Part 1: The Failure of Tauriel's Character The lack of women in Lord of the Rings franchises is a well-known and obvious problem. In 21 hours of Tolkien based cinema for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the three Hobbit Movies, there are only four main character women: Tauriel, Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn. The lack of female representation is of course an issue, but even more than that, all four of these women have plots that are partially or completely centered around romance, love, or physical attraction to or from a man. At first that does not seem to be of that much importance. As long as there are women, they’re being properly represented, right? However, because of their ingrained connection with their romances to a man, they are dependent on these men for their own character growth and development. Most of these women are still fantastic characters, but their dependence on romances and the men they are connected with hinders their character in a way that the d...