Anyone else think the Godfather is over-rated? From a plot perspective, it's just endless tit-for-tat violence. You killed one of our clan/family, now we kill one of yours. Other side: now you insulted my honour, you must pay. And so on, for hours.

The acting is great, the production values are superb, but the actual plot is just 'Fuck you. No fuck you. No fuck you. No fuck you'.

Yes, I realize it can be a metaphor for Israel / Palestine, or any lawless conflict between drug gangs or militia, etc. Just seems infantile after a while.  Yes, a classic, but for not for the plot IMHO.

The Dark Ages (in terms of intellectual progress) were more like 2000 years long, rather than 500 years. The height of the Greek philosophical inquiry was about 400BC with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.

And the Enlightenment didn't take place until the 18th century. You could argue there were earlier moments of western civilization waking up e.g. Columbus' 1492 discovery of America surpassed ancient wisdom, as did Copernicus' heliocentrism in 1543, and Galileo with his telescope in 1609. The Renaissance is regarded as late 15th/early 16th century, but that time was more about recapturing lost knowledge, rather than surpassing it.

So it's closer to a 2000 year interruption, not 500 years. Without the Dark Ages, we'd be effectively now living in the year AD4000, for better or worse. Imagine the traffic jams.

And yes, you guys are right, Christianity bears much of the blame for why the Dark Ages were so protracted. Why care about the real world when you can study the Holy Scripture?

Frodo Baggins & Luke Skywalker... no mothers.

I would point out DUNE as a big exception, where Paul & his Mother are the two main characters and are together for much of the book. But he lost he father early on.

Yes, I wonder why it would change the dynamic having two nice healthy elderly parents pottering in the garden at the start of the adventure and they're still there at the end of the adventure.

Olivia Wilde and Summer Glau came out of the same alien vat