A to Z 2015 Hollywood Minute "Favor the Bold"

Hey, let's face it.  Even though the usual scheme is to follow the movie careers of Joe and Zola outside of Hollywood Minute and Fall of Troy, which here would lead to a tepid discussion of Joe's Favor the Bold, you don't want to read about that.  You want to know about Fall of Troy.  And let's get the obvious out of the way, too:

Fantasy status of Joe and Zola in relation to Favor the Bold: Minimal.  It's not a bad movie, to Tim's reckoning, and would have led to some interesting talking points, if something else hadn't hogged all the attention.

Fantasy status of Joe and Zola in relation to Fall of Troy: This is when the fantasy ends, of course.  During the making of this movie, Zola and Tim fall in love.  Rest assured, just because you know the ending, doesn't mean the rest of the story isn't worth exploring.

Which leaves us here:

Fall of Troy 

We begin in live action as Cressida's father defects to the Greeks.  As this is discussed among the Trojan ranks, Troilus argues the merits of handing Helen over, ideally in the form of a trade, in order to facilitate the end of the war, when he sees: 

The face to risk it all,

against the ships,

to defy the fall. 

Their romance is instance and intense.  Here's where we switch to stop-motion animation, contrasting young lovers with the horrors of the battlefield, as mighty warriors clash in epic duels (particularly spotlighted are the brave Hector, fighting on the side of the Trojans, and the sullen Achilles, who sings everything as a hopeless ballad even though he wins all the time).  To make it all the more thrilling, of course, the whole thing is set in space, with the fighting taking place between single-pilot ships as they dramatically pursue each other looking for the best angles at which to fire (very much like a gunfight in a Western, actually). 

We are once again in live action.  When Cressida is forced to choose between loyalty to her father and her love of Troilus, she sings her own version of the first song: 

The face to risk it all,

against all hope,

to defy the fall! 

She knows as well as anyone that the Trojans were doomed all along.  She makes an impassioned plea for Troilus to join her, but he refuses, instead opting for one last assault against Achilles.  The movie ends with Cressida having decided to try and intervene, not on the side of the Greeks or Trojans, but on behalf of Troilus.  True love.

That's what happens in the movie.  During the making of the movie, Zola finds herself equally torn.  She has never seriously considered a romance with Joe before, and so making a movie with him again is the moment when she must confront the idea for the first time.  And in a weird kind of way, Tim undergoes the same torment.  Before writing the screenplay, Tim had never been in a position to actually meet Zola, and so he had still been clinging to the idea of the Joe/Zola fantasy.  Then everything changes.  True love.