New Lord of the Rings movie in the works centered around Tom Bombadil

[Mannahnin]

I've heard from a Hollywood insider that they're in the initial stages of a series focused on teenage balrogs.

I heard that @zenopus ' "Party of Balrogs" adventures at GaryCon have been market research for said series.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I've heard from a Hollywood insider that they're in the initial stages of a series focused on teenage balrogs.

Morgoth High, only on the CW.

 

[Mannahnin]

I always felt like he must have been an incredibly important character to Tolkien given that a substantial chunk of time was spent on him despite him having minimal narrative impact and his significance to the worldbuilding being a giant confusing questionmark. But no, he's clearly not all that important to the narrative, or at the very least he does not have wide-reverberating narrative impact. When they cut him from the cinematic trilogy it didn't require adjusting lots of other parts for his absence.

I would say making a Tom Bombadil heavy movie is also a mistake because if there is a point to him being in the narrative, it's surely to remind the reader that there are mysterious and unexplained aspects to the world, as well as to illustrate that it is a world with alien beings who see time, life, and reality fundamentally differently than our audience surrogates the hobbits do. Fundamentally "taming" Tom Bombadil into an understandable character with for whom substantial new dialogue can be written to fill screen time, or giving him motivations and goals suitable for being an actual participant in heroic narrative, probably undermines whatever importance he actually was intended to have.

Pretty sure the thread is mistitled and it's led to some confusion. The author of the GiantFreakinRobot story seems to be trolling us or to have a profound disability or language barrier impairing their auditory comprehension, and @trappedslider has inadvertently echoed and extended the error.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I always felt like he must have been an incredibly important character to Tolkien given that a substantial chunk of time was spent on him despite him having minimal narrative impact and his significance to the worldbuilding being a giant confusing questionmark. But no, he's clearly not all that important to the narrative, or at the very least he does not have wide-reverberating narrative impact. When they cut him from the cinematic trilogy it didn't require adjusting lots of other parts for his absence.

Bombadil always struck me as the character Tolkien just liked too much, especially after learning that it was the name of a doll that belonged to one of his sons, and around whom (the doll) the Adventures of Tom Bombadil poems were set.

He sort of makes sense in the original, episodic fairy-tale style story that the Hobbit was and that Tolkien started out writing for what became Lord of the Rings, when it was primarily "a sequel to the Hobbit with more about hobbits." But as LotR moved on, it morphed into an epic fantasy (Aragorn as future king vs the original wooden-footed Trotter the Hobbit who was tortured by orcs, frex). Tom no longer really fits in that sort of narrative, but I think Tolkien was too attached to cut him.

I stand by my view that cutting Tom's chapters fundamentally improves the story. There's plenty of textual ruins elsewhere, much delivered by Aragorn, to hint at a larger world not explained, and Frodo gets enough character growth at Weathertop and elsewhere that little is lost by deleting the Barrowdowns. Yeah, you have to explain where the hobbits' swords come from , but the PJ films handled that just fine.

ducks as other Tolkien fans throw rocks

 

[ART!]

I've heard from a Hollywood insider that they're in the initial stages of a series focused on teenage balrogs.

If only the young, misunderstood Balrogs knew that the nerdy Mithril Science teacher gets them - she was them, in her Maiar youth. More's the pity.

I always felt like he must have been an incredibly important character to Tolkien given that a substantial chunk of time was spent on him despite him having minimal narrative impact and his significance to the worldbuilding being a giant confusing questionmark. But no, he's clearly not all that important to the narrative, or at the very least he does not have wide-reverberating narrative impact. When they cut him from the cinematic trilogy it didn't require adjusting lots of other parts for his absence.

I would say making a Tom Bombadil heavy movie is also a mistake because if there is a point to him being in the narrative, it's surely to remind the reader that there are mysterious and unexplained aspects to the world, as well as to illustrate that it is a world with alien beings who see time, life, and reality fundamentally differently than our audience surrogates the hobbits do. Fundamentally "taming" Tom Bombadil into an understandable character with for whom substantial new dialogue can be written to fill screen time, or giving him motivations and goals suitable for being an actual participant in heroic narrative, probably undermines whatever importance he actually was intended to have.

I think Rings of Power did an...okay? job with Tom. I wasn't annoyed by how he was used, written, or played - but I wasn't in love with it, either. I like that they made use of him, and they even did a song!

 

[Gradine]

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Pretty sure the thread is mistitled and it's led to some confusion. The author of the GiantFreakinRobot story seems to be trolling us or to have a profound disability or language barrier impairing their auditory comprehension, and @trappedslider has inadvertently echoed and extended the error.

Or the author of the article focused on the most memorable thing from the chapters the project is focused on, which was the weird, unexplained maybe god that the characters met. He's also the easiest thing to make some sort of Jackson trilogy compatible narrative around, since the movies have replacement plotting covering much of what happens in those chapters.

Yes I agree that there is a conclusion being lept to by the GiantFreakinRobot author, but it's the most natural conclusion to arrive at. That said, Colbert is a Tolkien completionist, so it also makes sense to take him at his word that really wants to focus on all those chapters as they are written, I just struggle to fathom what the mentioned framing device could possibly be that makes those chapters compatible with the existing Peter Jackson movies.

I stand by my view that cutting Tom's chapters fundamentally improves the story. There's plenty of textual ruins elsewhere, much delivered by Aragorn, to hint at a larger world not explained, and Frodo gets enough character growth at Weathertop and elsewhere that little is lost by deleting the Barrowdowns. Yeah, you have to explain where the hobbits' swords come from , but the PJ films handled that just fine.

Totally agree. Whatever Bombadil and the interactions of our heroes with him add to the worldbuilding and character growth is better and more satisfyingly handled elsewhere. I kind of love having him in the book (even if 12 year old me wanted to hurry up and get to the good parts) because it makes it feel more like an ancient heroic epic having weird bits that don't quite serve a clear narrative purpose and feel like they belong to some earlier version of a story born of oral tradition or whatever. But it's the first thing I'd cut from practically any form of adaptation, because it just slows things way down right at the beginning.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I always felt like he must have been an incredibly important character to Tolkien given that a substantial chunk of time was spent on him despite him having minimal narrative impact and his significance to the worldbuilding being a giant confusing questionmark. But no, he's clearly not all that important to the narrative, or at the very least he does not have wide-reverberating narrative impact. When they cut him from the cinematic trilogy it didn't require adjusting lots of other parts for his absence.

I would say making a Tom Bombadil heavy movie is also a mistake because if there is a point to him being in the narrative, it's surely to remind the reader that there are mysterious and unexplained aspects to the world, as well as to illustrate that it is a world with alien beings who see time, life, and reality fundamentally differently than our audience surrogates the hobbits do. Fundamentally "taming" Tom Bombadil into an understandable character with for whom substantial new dialogue can be written to fill screen time, or giving him motivations and goals suitable for being an actual participant in heroic narrative, probably undermines whatever importance he actually was intended to have.

My take is that while Tom Bombadil is not important to the narrative, he is important to the themes of the book. That sense of mystery and history. That even in the darkest times, there are places untouched. There are people and things over which the shadow holds no power.

 

[ART!]

Whatever Bombadil and the interactions of our heroes with him add to the worldbuilding and character growth is better and more satisfyingly handled elsewhere. I kind of love having him in the book (even if 12 year old me wanted to hurry up and get to the good parts) because it makes it feel more like an ancient heroic epic having weird bits that don't quite serve a clear narrative purpose and feel like they belong to some earlier version of a story born of oral tradition or whatever. But it's the first thing I'd cut from practically any form of adaptation, because it just slows things way down right at the beginning.

My view is that Tolkien was a truly great writer, but a bad novelist - which is fine, because he had no interest in writing a novel; in a lot of ways, he wanted to write what you're describing.

 

[Mannahnin]

Or the author of the article focused on the most memorable thing from the chapters the project is focused on, which was the weird, unexplained maybe god that the characters met. He's also the easiest thing to make some sort of Jackson trilogy compatible narrative around, since the movies have replacement plotting covering much of what happens in those chapters.

Yes I agree that there is a conclusion being lept to by the GiantFreakinRobot author, but it's the most natural conclusion to arrive at. That said, Colbert is a Tolkien completionist, so it also makes sense to take him at his word that really wants to focus on all those chapters as they are written, I just struggle to fathom what the mentioned framing device could possibly be that makes those chapters compatible with the existing Peter Jackson movies.

I don't think it's natural at all to conclude that it's a movie about Bombadil. Which is what saying the movie will be "centered" on Bombadil indicates (as several folks in the thread have thought). That he's the protagonist or at least that he plot centers on him. But nothing Colbert said about his ideas even implies that.

My understanding is that it's still going to be centered on Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin's journey in those chapters. They'll still be the protagonists. As for the framing device, I believe it's something like Sam and his daughter taking a journey once she's grown (or at least grown enough for an overland hiking trip), during which they'd cover a lot of the same physical ground, and he'd tell her the full details of the original flight from the Shire, many of which were left out of the best-known (original movie) version of the tale.

Edit: I can understand your concern about the replacement plotting, though. There's IS a truncated version of the trip in the movie, and some of it directly clashes with the events in the book, such as how they meet up with Merry & Pippin, and the nature of Farmer Maggot's involvement.