Hah! Looking at that picture above you didn't believe me about the ROBO-ORC thing in the previous post didya?!
Well, it seems that the orc may be outliving his uselessness afterall. We've seen fantasy properties where orc-like creatures are called different names like; Hurlocks, Grunts, Grogs, Mogs, etc. But, let's really call it what it is... an orc! Changing a green guy's name doesn't cloud the fact that you plagiarized the hell out of someone's work. If it grunts and walks like a Planet of the Apes reject, then an orc by any other name would smell as nasty.
A huge iconic race of characters was created by a stuck up british guy in the 1940's and they've been with us ever since. So, yeah, he lived through WWI and saw the orcs as the German war machine bearing down on him while he slogged through the mud ridden trenches. Yeah, he saw the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and made an allegory about Saruman and the Uruk-Hai . He even inspired some "down under" filmmaker to replicate Hitler's speech at Nuremburg, with Saruman preaching to the thousands of orcs below the Tower of Orthanc. Yeah, he also saw his forests being eradicated by what he thought were orcs, out of the view from his balcony. Damn, Tolkien was out of it, wasn't he?
But, today, what do the orcs really mean to us in our everyday lives? Maybe it's your green skinned, tusk encrusted boss hovering over you as you slave at that cubicle job? Maybe it's your smelly, green breasted wife nagging at you to keep your battle-axe off of the coffee table? Maybe the orcs represent the pounds of fast food slogging away through your intestines and ravaging your colon with ladders on hooks and siege machines? I believe they represent evil in the way it was meant to be represented, green with tusks jutting out of their bottom jaw, ready to cleave you in two.
And what of the future? Do the orcs have a place in our Facebook and Twitter society? Maybe, the orc will evolve into pure A.I. and cause the downfall of man? Maybe O.R.C. is a three letter word, an acronym for the apocalypse... and by apocalypse, I mean a bunch of green guys with tusks crashing through your front door with battle-axes. Just maybe it's the 666 we've been looking for; the Number of the Beast! O is the 15th letter multiplied by R and using the square value of C.... well it doesn't come out to 666, but you get the idea.
I think the future holds more orc copies than we've ever seen before, because screen writers and authors are lazy individuals and like to use the "homage" excuse for everything. Oh, it's an "homage" to Lord of the Rings! Let me tell you something, cousin. Lord of the Rings doesn't need any more "homages", in fact the entire fantasy section at your local bookstore is a Lord of the Rings "homage"! And more game developers will have their Orcfest "homages" now, so be ready for the next orc incarnation to show up, crawling out from under the toilet rim while your trying to take a peacful crap. That's how bad it's going to get!
"Thank you sir, may I have another" - Sir Belvedoorknob receiving pennance from his horse.
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