While the 1995 Japanese anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion revolves around human-shaped weapons called "Evangelions", the "Neon Genesis" part of the title is neither part of the original Japanese name, nor its direct translation. The Japanese name is 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン / Shin-seiki evangerion, "Evangelion of a new era/century". The series has other non-direct translations too, and apparently this style was approved of the original creators, but it was always a bit of a mystery whether the gap in the interpretation was intentional or not.
However, over two decades later, with the re-boot movie series Rebuild of Evangelion, in the final scenes of the final movie, the protagonist name-drops the words "neon genesis" in appropriate context. I've never grinned as hard in movie theater.
Neon is relating to "new" via neo- prefix, with -n added on because the Western idea in the 90s of Japanese aesthetic was futuristic neon.
Genesis is for as beginning to the new era. It's etymology is Greek for "origin, creation, generation" which is a sort of an "era". Plus a looser translation provides the extra wordplay and thematic heft with the Angels due to Genesis being first book of the Bible.
Not a translator but I write a lot of poetry, and that's what would be going through my mind as I see the difference between the literal translation and the English decision and the additional capabilities this translation gives. In my mind, the initial translator 100% intended this "gap", which is less a gap and more of an additional layering.
Oh, I 100% agree that the translator intended the "gap", and the original creators approved of it. However, what was not clear, was whether the director Anno Hideaki had in mind the primary(?) meaning of genesis, as in creation of the world, when he was sketching the original plot of the TV series and the translation title wasn't ostensibly decided upon yet.
But in the re-make movie whose plot extended beyond the original series, it's clear he absolutely had that meaning in mind. That made having the title drop a cathartic experience. It felt like it wasn't 100% planned out, but rather a happy accident turned into a bit of a nod towards the global audiences, while still having the "the meaning was there all along" vibes.
They're both ancient Greek, but different grammatical genders: neon (νέον) is neuter, while γένεσις is feminine. Better might have been "nea genesis" if those two words were to be interpreted together. But, "evangelion" (εὐαγγέλιον) is also Greek and neuter, meaning the gospel, good news, or a reward owed a messenger for his good news. I always figured the "new" of "neon" belonged with the "evangelion," and "genesis" was just kind of hanging around for no particular reason.
BTW neon the gas was called so because it was a new discovery (in a well-searched area, the composition of air). The name basically means "a new something", neuter gender, could be "lo nuevo" in Spanish or "das neue" in German.
Since "evangelion" and "genesis" clearly are taken from Greek, so was apparently "neon".
Intentionality matters. "It" should not count as a title drop. Nor Barbie (or any movie where the title is the characters name). But I understand it would be way more difficult to run the numbers with such a constraint. But this is a case where, to me, the results are very much tainted and thus I had to stop reading. To me this is like when developers run into a hard issue and somehow play a game of semantics with the wording of a ticket to avoid putting together something useful for the user
As noted by other commenters, the author addresses this, although I would have loved to have had a version of all the _statistics_ with name-based drops elided.
I think a case could be made for “It” being a quasi-name and therefore a different word that is spelled the same or, because “it” is a pronoun it only counts when it is used to refer to the thing that the title itself refers to.
While it is somewhat arbitrary, I am sure that "Barbie" is intentional, the somewhat obnoxious repetition of the word "Barbie" fits the theme. Also, maybe you stopped reading a little too early as the case where the title is a character name is specially addressed.
"It" may be the the special case here, as it is a very common word by itself but that a movie is named like this is notable enough for it to be included.
Have you stopped scrolling once you realized that? The article acknowledges that, and even has a special category of movies named after characters with just a single title drop.
That said, Barbie is a funny case indeed, as it's named after about half of its characters :P
Yes, but it would've been much more interesting to read about title drops where this is not the case. The top titledrops listed that are not names of a character are all names of something else, like locations or objects.
I agree, I think this analysis can benefit from some data sanitisation.
It is a silly one to include, because the word it is picked up by their analysis. Need to remove all hits except where the characters are referencing Pennywise directly.
I also noticed that in some cases a namedrop was registered where the eponymous character speaks, e.g. ALIENS: hisses. These need to be removed as well.
Movies where the name of the movie is the name of the leading character needs to be removed as well, or at least filterable from the list.
All of this makes the site a little less interesting imo. A good title drop in a movie is a fun little easter egg, especially if the name a bit more conceptual, e.g. The Phantom Menace. The way this site is set up at the moment makes it a bit more difficult to find those really good title drops.
This seems like something that could be handled easily with a second-pass on the data using an LLM. And the author has made the dataset available... [0]
Exactly. If they had limited it to cases where "it" is referring to Pennywise, that would be one thing, but not when anyone uses a very common pronoun!
I guess this is the downside of making a data analysis thing as a side project to hopefully get something going, but not having the time to take care of all potential edge cases.
I guess "Them!" is also affected by this, and maybe The Thing or The Birds...
I'm imagining some film school student explaining how Barbie would have been a better movie, a real film even, without mentioning the character's name.
Indeed, and this contaminates all other analyses as well. Sure, shorter titles are dropped more frequently – but that sounds like it could be just because character names tend to make for short titles.
> So for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring either "Lord of the Rings" or "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as title drops (feel free to hover over the visualizations to explore the matches)!
An unacknowledged partial title drop for that movie is that "Lord of the Ring" (with no s at the end) is uttered.
Sauron is twice called the Lord of the Rings in book two.
In chapter one, Many Meetings, Gandalf tells Frodo:
> Yes, I knew of them. Indeed I spoke of them once to you; for the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths, the Nine Servants of the Lord of the Rings.
And in chapter two, The Council of Elrond, Glorfindel says:
> And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it.
In the final chapter (The Grey Havens) of book six, the Red Book is also titled by Frodo “THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING”. Now there’s a title drop.
(Just in case it’s not obvious: I’m talking about the books here, not the movies. Never seen ’em.)
Sauron is referred to as the Lord of the Ring and the Lord of the Rings (second being much more common) multiple times.
The Ring is referred to as The Ring, The One Ring, The Ruling Ring, and a few other things, but I do not think it is ever referred to as the "Lord" of anything.
How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what this article purports them to be rather than the name of the film coming from the content and/or dialogue that is contained within it?
An analogy: when someone writes a song and then they need to name it, they will frequently choose a word or phrase that appears in the lyrics. When Leonard Cohen sings “hallelujah” in the song of the same name, is that a “title drop”? I assume not.
> How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what this article purports them to be
What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
> A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in.
That makes no distinction if the title or the script came first. The article does call out movies who do that in a cringe or obvious way (like Suicide Squad, which had prior art) but also includes movies where that is unavoidable, such as Barbie.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter which came first. As soon as you make a line and a title the same, the line becomes a title drop. The audience sees the final product, not the process.
> An analogy
That analogy doesn’t work. Songs are typically repetitive and a few minutes long. Everyone expects them to name the title. A movie, on the other hand, is an experience that asks suspension of disbelief from you, it tries to engross you in its world over the course of multiple hours. When a character title drops, in a second you’re suddenly and forcefully pulled back from the illusion and reminded you’re watching a movie.
> What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.
In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine, Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the script.
I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need a title."
My favorite "title drop" in a song is in How Soon is Now by the Smiths. After an instrumental break, Morrissey sings, "You say it's gonna happen now? What exactly do you mean..." You can almost hear the next line should be "How soon is now" but there's a pause and then he sings, "See I've already waited too long..." The title captures the mood of the song but is never actually said. It feels intentionally left out.
On the movie front, No Country for Old Men does something similar.
> Similarly, movies named after a protagonist have a title drop rate of 88.5% while only 34.2% of other movies drop their titles.
What is much more interesting is that 11.5% of movies named after their protagonist never mention them by name. I guess I can imagine a few edge cases where this would be usual (protagonists not usually called by their name due to their position, like kings, and movies with little talking), but it's surprising that there are that many.
They even included one in the article. At least I sincerely doubt that "The Scarlet Bond That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" [sic] was dialogue. Given the context I'm fairly sure it's just the title showing up on screen, but subtitled because it's in Japanese.
I was utterly disturbed by a story sent into the Kermode and Mayo radio show many years ago. The listener explained that their family went to the theatre, sat down in their seats to watch the film, and then upon the first utterance of the title of the film they would clap, stand up, and walk out.
I assume this to be a joke. I've never found any reference of anybody doing this online, or anybody even discussing this one story from the show. But holy shit does it make my skin crawl.
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However, over two decades later, with the re-boot movie series Rebuild of Evangelion, in the final scenes of the final movie, the protagonist name-drops the words "neon genesis" in appropriate context. I've never grinned as hard in movie theater.
Genesis is for as beginning to the new era. It's etymology is Greek for "origin, creation, generation" which is a sort of an "era". Plus a looser translation provides the extra wordplay and thematic heft with the Angels due to Genesis being first book of the Bible.
Not a translator but I write a lot of poetry, and that's what would be going through my mind as I see the difference between the literal translation and the English decision and the additional capabilities this translation gives. In my mind, the initial translator 100% intended this "gap", which is less a gap and more of an additional layering.
But in the re-make movie whose plot extended beyond the original series, it's clear he absolutely had that meaning in mind. That made having the title drop a cathartic experience. It felt like it wasn't 100% planned out, but rather a happy accident turned into a bit of a nod towards the global audiences, while still having the "the meaning was there all along" vibes.
Since "evangelion" and "genesis" clearly are taken from Greek, so was apparently "neon".
Deleted Comment
"It" may be the the special case here, as it is a very common word by itself but that a movie is named like this is notable enough for it to be included.
That said, Barbie is a funny case indeed, as it's named after about half of its characters :P
It is a silly one to include, because the word it is picked up by their analysis. Need to remove all hits except where the characters are referencing Pennywise directly.
I also noticed that in some cases a namedrop was registered where the eponymous character speaks, e.g. ALIENS: hisses. These need to be removed as well.
Movies where the name of the movie is the name of the leading character needs to be removed as well, or at least filterable from the list.
All of this makes the site a little less interesting imo. A good title drop in a movie is a fun little easter egg, especially if the name a bit more conceptual, e.g. The Phantom Menace. The way this site is set up at the moment makes it a bit more difficult to find those really good title drops.
[0] https://www.titledrops.net/
I guess "Them!" is also affected by this, and maybe The Thing or The Birds...
He specifically calls out `"real"` title drops just a few sections later.
An unacknowledged partial title drop for that movie is that "Lord of the Ring" (with no s at the end) is uttered.
In chapter one, Many Meetings, Gandalf tells Frodo:
> Yes, I knew of them. Indeed I spoke of them once to you; for the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths, the Nine Servants of the Lord of the Rings.
And in chapter two, The Council of Elrond, Glorfindel says:
> And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it.
In the final chapter (The Grey Havens) of book six, the Red Book is also titled by Frodo “THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING”. Now there’s a title drop.
(Just in case it’s not obvious: I’m talking about the books here, not the movies. Never seen ’em.)
The Ring is referred to as The Ring, The One Ring, The Ruling Ring, and a few other things, but I do not think it is ever referred to as the "Lord" of anything.
Source? I can't find anything.
Also in Peter Jackson's movie.
An analogy: when someone writes a song and then they need to name it, they will frequently choose a word or phrase that appears in the lyrics. When Leonard Cohen sings “hallelujah” in the song of the same name, is that a “title drop”? I assume not.
What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
> A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in.
That makes no distinction if the title or the script came first. The article does call out movies who do that in a cringe or obvious way (like Suicide Squad, which had prior art) but also includes movies where that is unavoidable, such as Barbie.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter which came first. As soon as you make a line and a title the same, the line becomes a title drop. The audience sees the final product, not the process.
> An analogy
That analogy doesn’t work. Songs are typically repetitive and a few minutes long. Everyone expects them to name the title. A movie, on the other hand, is an experience that asks suspension of disbelief from you, it tries to engross you in its world over the course of multiple hours. When a character title drops, in a second you’re suddenly and forcefully pulled back from the illusion and reminded you’re watching a movie.
It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.
In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine, Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the script.
I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need a title."
imo it does matter and is the difference between cringe (sometimes intentional) and not
On the movie front, No Country for Old Men does something similar.
What is much more interesting is that 11.5% of movies named after their protagonist never mention them by name. I guess I can imagine a few edge cases where this would be usual (protagonists not usually called by their name due to their position, like kings, and movies with little talking), but it's surprising that there are that many.
Aliens (1986)
(Aliens hissing)
https://www.titledrops.net/explorer?movies=tt0090605&title=
I assume this to be a joke. I've never found any reference of anybody doing this online, or anybody even discussing this one story from the show. But holy shit does it make my skin crawl.