TROLL BRIDGE | The Moving Picture
February 1, 2021 10:09 AM   Subscribe

More than 15 years in the making, a Thrillinge Saga in a Worlde Gone Madde, from Century of the Fruitbat Snowgum Films, a short film adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Troll Bridge (YouTube).

Troll Bridge is a labour of love adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett's 1991 short story of the same name. Originally proposed in 2003, it raised funding on Kickstarter in 2011, wrapped in 2018 with the approval of Terry's old assistant Rob, and finally premiered at Flickerfest in Sydney in January 2019 before touring film festivals for the last two years and receiving a number of awards.

Cohen the Barbarian is one of the Discworld's recurring characters. Essentially, what would an OAP Conan look like? Troll Bridge has Cohen encountering a troll on his bridge, and ending up exchanging memories rather than blows.

Make sure that you listen to the end credits as well, as they're practically a sequel in song.
posted by MattWPBS (22 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
My mental picture of Cohen is always of him being more muscly and with a shrt, trim(-ish) beard. This is certainly 100% wrong, but I stand by my brain.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:40 AM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


That fit my mental image of Cohen absolutely perfectly and I loved every single thing about it. Right down to the details of Cohen's din-chewers.

(Absolutely definitely stick around for the song over the end credits.)
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 10:55 AM on February 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


Agree on the shorter beard, but otherwise this one looked just about right.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:45 AM on February 1, 2021


This was good. I want more! Are you listening, Hollywood suits? More Discworld stories!!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:48 AM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


What a delightful 30 minutes. Thank-you.
posted by dangerousdan at 11:50 AM on February 1, 2021


(Absolutely definitely stick around for the song over the end credits.)

Now we can all applaud madly, now we can all applaud ma-a-a-a-adly.
posted by traveler_ at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2021 [4 favorites]




Level with me here. Does it have 1,000 elephants?
posted by qntm at 2:29 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


No, just four very very big ones.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:49 PM on February 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


Astonishing that something like this can be produced noncommercially.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:01 PM on February 1, 2021


As seen in "The Last Hero".
posted by hat_eater at 4:34 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


This is probably the best Pratchett adaptation I have seen to date and the song over the credits is just the icing on the cake.
posted by tdismukes at 7:17 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


This portrayal of Cohen is pretty much dead-on with the 2008 Sky1 TV adaptation.
posted by WaylandSmith at 7:28 PM on February 1, 2021


That was amazing and wonderful and I want mooore!

::applauds madly::
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:54 PM on February 1, 2021


That was so much fun! My only regret is wanting more.
posted by meinvt at 8:08 PM on February 1, 2021


It's hard to do a film that faithful to the original text and have it work, but by gum they did it. Pretty much perfect.
posted by tavella at 8:58 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


Did not leave disappointed. The song was as good as the movie, which was good!
posted by maxwelton at 9:32 PM on February 1, 2021


Explicitly non-commercial as well, this is from the FAQ about why you can't buy it on DVD. They went into this knowing that they wouldn't be able to make money on the production, that they couldn't.

Our contract with Terry Pratchett was explicit; we could continue raising money while we were in a position to spend it back on the film itself.

Just to agree with people above, this left me wanting more of the same quality. I'm still amazed that nobody has made an adaptation of Discworld for the big screen, or a Netflix/HBO style series. We're talking LotR/GoT style epics, with epic comedy on top. He's an author who sold over 80m books (as of 2013, so gods know how many now) translated to 37 languages, and all without a major motion picture or series to drive the sales. That's nearly the same as GoT (90m), after 8 seasons of TV.
posted by MattWPBS at 2:26 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


The visuals alone in this are pretty great. Cohen is straight off the cover of the Last Hero, and the troll looks like someone commissioned Udurzo to do concept art for Shadow of the Collosus.
posted by entity447b at 3:02 AM on February 2, 2021


That was superb! Best trolls I've seen in any Discworld adaptation, and the song was lovely.
posted by offog at 2:10 PM on February 3, 2021


Since the video has subtitles for lots of languages, I was curious as to how they'd handled the song. Most of them just translate it literally, but the Esperanto subtitles (by Esperantist and Discworld fan Bill Walker) are actually singable!
posted by offog at 3:36 PM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


a Netflix/HBO style series

There are the scattered BBC one-off adaptations, which to me always feel a bit janky but can pull a Charles Dance as Lord Vetinari. But meanwhile, perhaps you can be interested in The Watch (also from the Beeb).
posted by Going To Maine at 9:31 AM on February 5, 2021


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