momnar:

I don’t know why this is occurring to me at 11:30 in the evening, but I’m stuck on the gargoyles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame so here we go.

I’ve heard about that one guy who hated the gargoyles with a passion and what they did for the pacing of the movie, so he cut every scene with them out and otherwise left it alone. I’m inclined to support the idea, personally, since the trio doesn’t really fit with the rest of the film and their existence as forced comic relief for an otherwise incredibly dark movie is jarring. However, I do appreciate some of their humorous moments, so instead of cutting them altogether, I’m thinking about their wasted potential.

I feel as though the gargoyles were supposed to be a Greek Chorus of sorts, except they were scripted by someone who has no clue what a Chorus actually does. They had narrative moments, and they had their bouts of exposition, but always to Quasimodo who’d lived there all his life and shouldn’t have needed to hear it. Instead of being deliberately (coyly?) vague about whether these characters are imaginary friends or not, the writers could have just changed the slightest thing: Quasimodo can’t hear them. Poof, instant correctly-handled Chorus.

Having an actual Greek Chorus in mind, they could even take over Clopin’s role of narrating as well? They could still have their funny asides because comic relief does often fall to the chorus when the story itself is dark. Suddenly there’s no need to explain their presence either or specify how real they are. They’re just representations of the spirit (or the Eyes) of Notre Dame.

Final, very pressing question: How has my life reached the point where midnight homework screeches to a halt because I’ve been struck with the need to write extensive Gargoyle discourse on the tumblr.com?