A LoTR Inspired Fantasy Movie Renaissance - What Happened?

[Endur]

I agree that Dragonlane will be a blockbuster film. The D&D movie was crap. Had they based it on DragonLance, they would have been raking in money.

With regards to Tolkien, remember that before Tolkien, fantasy consisted of Cthulu, Doc Savage, Tarzan, and Conan.

Tolkien created the modern day fantasy genre. And yes, he most certainly would have gotten through a modern-day publisher. The critics who make those claims don't know what they are talking about.

Hey, I'm just a messenger. After having gone through TTT Appendices DVDs that come with the Extended Edition, most of the critics have agreed that if Tolkien were alive today and turn this work to a modern-day publisher rather than 50 years ago, he wouldn't get past the front door.

 

[Ranger REG]

I dunno. In all honesty, I wouldn't let Courtney Solomon anywhere near a Dragonlance film project. To me, he's like Brannon Braga ... someone who thinks he can revive and strengthen the franchise but can only lead it to ruin. Had HE done DL instead of that other film, knowing that he would put his OWN spin to the story, I'd have walked out of the theater in disgust.

As for the critics, you may be right. But I know from my own reading experience, I usually skip over the songs written in the book. I mean once I know they're camping, that's great and I want to move on to see what happens next.

 

[KenM]

Sorry to get a little off topic. Part of the reason the DnD movie was total crap was it was the directors very first movie. He is a DnD fanboy, and bought the rights for a DnD movie as soon as He could and based it on his own games he played in.
He should have done what Steven Speilberg did with Shindlers(SP?) List. When Steven was just starting out, he bought the rights to that movie, but He waited until he had some directing experence and knew what He was doing because he did not want to make a bad adaptation.

 

[Skade]

They're doing a live action version of The Last Unicorn aswell which should be amazingly awesome...

Will they keep the America Soundtrack? I loved those songs, especially Man's Road. For that matter, will characters break into song?

I'll certainly go see it, as the original, and the novel, are among my favorites, but I worry about it also. I do so want to the the Red Bull in all it's Balrog like glory.

Totally as aside, I think its cool that a poster called Arken is posting about a cartoon that had a character voiced by Allen Arken.

 

[Assenpfeffer]

Tolkien created the modern day fantasy genre. And yes, he most certainly would have gotten through a modern-day publisher. The critics who make those claims don't know what they are talking about.

I think it's Brian Sibley who comes right out and says that in the documentaries. He's not so much a critic as a Tolkien cheerleader. Nonetheless, much of the commentary by other Tolkien scholars on the discs support the notion - which has at least some validity, really, though possibly no more so today than it was in the 50s.

The idea being that publishers are less daring nowadays and more prone to looking strictly at the bottom line. Which may be true, but I think it's really impossible to say whether or not LotR could have gotten published today, since Tolkien's own impact on the field of fantasy has shaped it to such a great degree that it's almost unrecognizable now.

And remember that, if not for Tolkien, there would have been no D&D, though there may have been Roleplaying Games of some sort (M. A. R. Barker was experimenting with something like RPGs as far back as the late 60s, and his work grew up pretty much independently of Tolkien's.)

Which makes for interesting speculation, really... what kind of hobby would we have today if the great groundbreaking game, and thus the primary formative influence on RPGs, had been Empire of the Petal Throne instead of D&D?

 

[Assenpfeffer]

LOTR didn't make fantasy immensely popular - it made it VIABLE. Fantasy as a movie genre is a red-headed stepchild, with Sci-Fi being the poorer, yet very acceptable middle-class cousin. Comic Book is huge right now (Spider-Man, Hulk, Blade 2, Punisher, Hellboy, others I'm sure I'm missing), and we are, for fantasy, seeing now movies like Troy, which would previously not likely have had the possiblity for name actors.

I'd like to learn more about Troy (which does look like it'll be worth seeing,) before lumping it into any genre other than fairly traditional Hollywood historical epics. If it's taken straight out of the Illiad, then it'll have some fantasy elements - but it might play more like Braveheart or Spartacus, as a straight historical movie.

 

[barsoomcore]

They're doing a live action version of The Last Unicorn aswell which should be amazingly awesome...

Right. Unless it totally sucks. Where Hollywood is involved, that possibility is never very far off.

Couple of observations -- fantasy movies are EXPENSIVE. They're FAR more expensive than, say, sci-fi movies, because in a sci-fi movie you can put everybody in polyester jumpsuits, film the whole thing in a warehouse, add some cheap effects shots of spaceships that don't have to match anything else, and you're done.

A fantasy movie you'll need period costumes of SOME sort, weapons of some sort, maybe horses, rustic-looking sets, exteriors without modern building in the background, animals and if you use any effects shots they're going to have to integrate into SOMETHING -- even just plain old matte paintings have to look a million times better than a starfield if you're going to avoid howls of laughter from your audience.

Now, sure, if you're shooting in New Zealand, which had low wages, a skilled workforce that until just recently had been working on two fantasy-based TV series and so had tons of experience making costumes and whatnot (Ngila Dickson was costume designer on Xena before joining LotR), you've got a genius like Peter Jackson on board, temporary insanity among the New Line executives AND are in possession of the single most valuable property in literary history (okay, maybe not, but you could probably make a reasonable case for that based on book sales alone) -- THEN you can get the money to make a really good fantasy picture.

If you have seven years and completely insane partners.

Fantasy movies are hard. Especially with today's audiences -- Harryhausen stop-motion effects just won't cut it anymore, they're too savvy and they demand too much realism from their images.

I am deeply suspicious of the idea that a Dragonlance movie would make money. These are not HUGELY popular novels. Popular, to be sure, but a novel has to be huge before it makes a viable movie property.

That's not to say you can't make a successful film from a little-known novel, but you'll have a very hard time getting anybody to invest in it. If you go to the executives at a major studio and say, "There's these books that TSR put out, they were really popular back when and we should make movie about them," you'll get tossed out on the street.

Courtney Solomon owns the rights to Dungeons and Dragons and had a time getting anyone to invest. Of course, wanting to direct it himself probably didn't do him any favours. I salute him for that, and am looking forward eagerly to the next one.

 

[Assenpfeffer]

Barsoomcore, I was with you right up to the last sentence...

 

[nikolai]

Can I ask what the Last Unicorn is? It seems common knowledge among you lot, but I haven't a clue!

 

[KenM]

Can I ask what the Last Unicorn is? It seems common knowledge among you lot, but I haven't a clue!

It was an animated fantasy film done in the mid 1980's, I think around 1984. I think it was based on a novel. I heard good things about the movie but never seen it. You can probibly find it on VHS for rent. Don't know if its on DVD.