SIRWHALE: Prep the men up with Oasis.
PALADIN GREGOR: But sire, we have traditionally used symphonic music.
SIRWHALE: We need more fire with less tension.
Check out What’s the Story, Morning Glory.
[Starts singing] All your dreams are made
When you’re chained to the mirror and the razor-blade
Today’s the day that all the world will see.
HANS ZIMMER: We don’t need songbirds for war.
HOWARD SHORE: I think we need a general more.
VISCOUNT CHARMING-WHALE: Why is our general a songbird?
LADY CATATONIA: It has a certain ring to it…
ENYA: As he faced the sun he cast no shadow.
(THE REST): What?
ENYA: [Disorientated] Oh nothing, I was just trying to be poetic.
HANS ZIMMER: We don’t need poets for war.
SIRWHALE: We’re getting out of hand.
HOWARD SHORE: Who was the one who started singing first?
VISCOUTN CHARMING-WHALE: We’re always getting out of hand. In any case I’ve got a charming plan.
LADY CATATONIA: You always have charming plans.
PALADIN GREGOR: Charming plans are always useless plans.
VISCOUNT CHARMING-WHALE: Shut up.
ENYA: That’s not very charming of you.
PALADIN GREGOR: Which is why I said charming people are always useless people.
VISCOUNT CHARMING-WHALE: That’s not what you said.
PALADIN GREGOR: Grr.

A pause, as if the characters just realized how foolish they had been.

SIRWHALE: There are many things I’d like to say to you, but I don’t know how.
This is the greatest war I have ever faced, the greatest war, perhaps, we would ever face.
ENYA: The light that lead the way will be blinding, the roads winding.
SIRWHALE: Whatever the case, gentlemen, ladies, I am fully inclined to have a champagne supernova at victory’s end.
HANS ZIMMER: I decline your optimism.
SIRWHALE: I’d rather not look back in anger.

Another pause. Several silent moments pass.

HOWARD SHORE: What’s the story, Morning Glory?
SIRWHALE: I have no idea Howard, no idea at all.

Never have I despaired so much before an examination, never have the depth of despair been so terrifyingly suffocating. Defeated, through and through. We go back to one of my favorite saying, though of course I am sure many previous tacticians have said it before: There are two times when we fight at our strongest. One, when we’ve got everything to lose; and two, when we’ve got nothing to lose.

Men of courage face death in the eye
They do not have gasps of salvation
none of those last breaths of
     dying imagination.
Weary, spiritless they trudge
Swords lying dead in their scabbards
Unclaimed by rough, familiar hands
     living not to see the sun again.
It is one thing to carry on, they say,
Another to see one’s self through
Everybody wants a rest at journey’s end
In summer’s glory,
     or in winter’s blue.