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

Parmandur said:

You see, I broadly agree thst the LotR adaptation is extremely problematic...but the movies are good enough to transcend their sins.

One of the key differences is that the LotR is losing stuff by trying to cram too much into too little time. Whereas the Hobbit films are mostly original, to the point where it is in the same vein of adaptation as Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

The Hobbit "trilogy" is over nine hours long. The 70s Rankin-Bass carton is about 90 minutes and covers everything in the book except for the Beorn episode comfortably. There is no reason for a Hobbit movie to be over two hours even with the songs, let alone nine.

Click to expand...

I can actually agree with this take. I think it was a mistake to make it into 2 long movies, much less 3 long movies. It allowed them more time to add things (similarly to how they added things to LotR) adding to the Hobbit in more abundance. (One thing that annoys me about LotR is that they took out things that they could have included, and then added things that were not in the book).

The entire romance thing was nonsense as well in the Hobbit. As I noted, as a piece of Art, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is an absolute masterpiece (ignoring it as a supposed adaptation).

The Hobbit is nowhere near that masterpiece, but on it's own, it's not the terrible thing people make it out to be either. It's an okay film trilogy. Get's kind of boring at points with some of the added plot points, but it has some nice eye candy (special effects and such) at times.

Is Tom Bombadil and important character? Like, I've heard he wasn't affected by the one ring but that he otherwise didn't do much.

cbwjm said:

Is Tom Bombadil and important character? Like, I've heard he wasn't affected by the one ring but that he otherwise didn't do much.

Click to expand...

He's a bit of a deus ex machina for the hobbits at a key point in "Fellowship," so in terms of the plot of the novel he's important - without him, the quest is over almost before it begins. However, in terms of narrative structure he's unnecessary and it made sense for Peter Jackson to leave him out.

As far as being an important character in the overall LotR canon...not really. Tolkien never really gives us that much on him, except that there this ancient, incredibly powerful being doing his own thing. I kinda like that he's there and not everything in the world of Middle Earth is about the overarching silmarils/ring history.

Clint_L said:

He's a bit of a deus ex machina for the hobbits at a key point in "Fellowship," so in terms of the plot of the novel he's important - without him, the quest is over almost before it begins.

Click to expand...

He's also a reminder that there's light even in the darkest moments. Like Gildor and his elves showing up to scare of the Rider early on, and Rivendell later - but unlike the elves TB's presence is permanent. He's not going to fade and leave Middle-Earth to its fate.

He foreshadows that there's inherent goodness in the natural world, and that its peoples don't have to rely on the elves for the strength to stand against the darkness. More specifically, I think, he shows Frodo that there's power and succour in words and song, which foreshadows the moment that Frodo calls out "Elbereth" on Weathertop.

Clint_L said:

He's a bit of a deus ex machina for the hobbits at a key point in "Fellowship," so in terms of the plot of the novel he's important - without him, the quest is over almost before it begins. However, in terms of narrative structure he's unnecessary and it made sense for Peter Jackson to leave him out.

As far as being an important character in the overall LotR canon...not really. Tolkien never really gives us that much on him, except that there this ancient, incredibly powerful being doing his own thing. I kinda like that he's there and not everything in the world of Middle Earth is about the overarching silmarils/ring history.

Click to expand...

To a large extent, the point of Tom Bombadil is that Tolkien was a discovery writer who just spent a good deal of time in revising and editing, but wasn't interested in ironing out all the weirdness that emerged from his subconscious mind.

This strikes me as a remarkably terrible idea.

Mannahnin said:

The thread appears mis-titled. As far as I can tell from Colbert and Jackson's comments, the idea is to cover the chapters skipped in Jackson's version of Fellowship, and use a flashback framing device. This would mean that Bombadil would necessarily be included, but the story wouldn't be centered on him.

It'd be about the more gradual first steps of adventure and danger the Hobbits encountered before meeting up with Aragorn. Including Old Man Willow, the Barrow Wights, and Bombadil's help. Encountering the Barrow Wights would also close a tiny plot hole from the movies, in terms of where Merry got the blade that was able to wound the Witch King and create that opening for Eowyn.

Click to expand...

To my mind, that's about the only way the story could work properly, if they're including post-LOTR scenes.

Of things I want to see, Tom Bombadil is not one of them. He's a silly prat.

Do Scouring of the Shire instead.

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

cbwjm said:

Is Tom Bombadil and important character? Like, I've heard he wasn't affected by the one ring but that he otherwise didn't do much.

Click to expand...

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.