his friend Clerval , and his wife Elizabeth . Frankenstein meets his own death while chasing the monster into the Arctic Circle .
Pop culture versions of the Fantastic Machine prove just as darkly ambiguous . In the 2006 film The Illusionist , the stage magician Eisenheim , with his elaborately created illusions , wins his childhood sweetheart Sophie , the Duchess von Teschen , from her fiancé Prince Leopold , but only by framing Leopold for a murder he did not commit . In Hayao Miyazaki ’ s Princess Mononoke , Lady Eboshi enlists a leper colony to create a lighter , deadlier gun to defend the people of Iron Town . But she also uses her new gun to decapitate the Forest Spirit , the leader of the deities that protect the wilderness around the humans . In Haruki Murakami ’ s Hard- Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World , the old scientist whom we first encounter in his underground workshop can give the human mind both supercomputing abilities and the fantastic inner world of the core consciousness . However , all of the subjects to whom he has given these powers have died , and the narrator , the last surviving subject , cannot avoid death either , despite the scientist ’ s efforts to save him . In the movie version of Iron Man , Tony Stark creates his first suit in an Afghanistan cave ( the underground lair ) to escape a band of terrorists ( he flies away , like Daedalos and Weyland ) and then builds a wardrobe of improved suits in his Malibu workshop ( another underground lair ). But he owns a company that churns out advanced weapons for the American military . Ironically , it is after demonstrating one of his missile systems in Afghanistan that he is wounded and captured by the terrorists , who are using his own weapons .
At times , the ambiguity is displaced into humor . As told in the Odyssey , the story of how Hephaestos uses an invulnerable net to catch his wife , Aphrodite , in bed with the war god Ares ends with the Olympian gods laughing at the lovers . In recent popular culture , Nickelodeon character Jimmy Neutron , in several TV episodes and a full-length movie , devises inventions in his underground laboratory . When it comes time for Jimmy to put them to the test , though , they fail spectacularly . Another example is Hiccup , the protagonist of the movie How to Train Your Dragon , who invents a tail wing for Toothless , the injured dragon he eventually befriends . But at the beginning of the film , in his rush to use his bolas cannon to capture one of the dragons attacking his village , he causes widespread damage . Even in Iron Man , Tony Stark has several crashes while testing the new features of his suit .
The Blacksmith as Secondary Character
The storylines discussed above characterize the Blacksmith as the protagonist . The Blacksmith may also appear in a secondary role — frequently as the weapons master of another
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