Warner Bros wants to make Lord of the Rings films. Not remakes, fyi.
- Thread starter darjr
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delericho
Legend
If they can get the rights to Tolkien's other writings, especially his "great tales" (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, the Fall of Gondolin), there are some good movies to be made. If they can't, and they're stuck respinning the same 50 pages of the LotR appendices endlessly, then it would be better just to leave it alone.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
I think there's room for some really interesting films still left in the old IP-horse yet. Some ways I can think to still flog it:
1) A Waiting For Godot type take on the mythos with a standard party of Middle Earthen action adventurers sitting around a hillock in Rohan arguing about the fact that this new existential threat is taking bloody ages to appear. In the post-credits scene we see that they actually missed it about half-way through.
2) A film where Sauron and Galadriel swap bodies but have to pretend to be each other all through the second and third acts, before being brought together to swap back during the climax and realising it's a meet cute now that they've, yanno. Felt each other's presents. Not sure about sequels to this one though I think a TV series exploring their new relationship, how they get on with their old friends, new neighbours etc. might have some legs. You could do each episode in a different style of fantasy fiction, ending the series with a tie-in to a new D&D movie.
3) A remake of Ghostbusters 2 replacing Vigo the Carpathian with Sauron and the Peter MacNicol character with Gollum. Or heck, why not make it Morgoth and Sauron? MacNicol's still around as far as I know and I'd love to see him reprise the role, with a twist!
4) A close-up of a giant red-lipsticked mouth shouting and babbling all the words from the Silmarillion at the audience for 7 hours, but not in the order they appear in the book.
Kaodi
Hero
If there is no room for other stories in the world of the supposed paragon of worldbuilding does that not suggest that we misjudged how deep the world was somewhere along the way?
Maybe they could tell a story about the history of Gondor. Surely, over thousands of years, there must have been (other) people who questioned the system of "stewards" and why they were waiting for a "king" . Maybe they could explore how that fell through, perhaps with reference to the difficulty of change while existing next to an ever-present threat.
Or something along those lines.
Or maybe just actually try to explore East-Earth or South-Earth instead of sticking to Middle-Earth.
Maybe they could tell a story about the history of Gondor. Surely, over thousands of years, there must have been (other) people who questioned the system of "stewards" and why they were waiting for a "king" . Maybe they could explore how that fell through, perhaps with reference to the difficulty of change while existing next to an ever-present threat.
Or something along those lines.
Or maybe just actually try to explore East-Earth or South-Earth instead of sticking to Middle-Earth.
I mean I personally think that Middle Earth's storytelling appeal is limited, but I don't think people are saying that there's no room for other stories. More that there's no room for stories that aren't from the mind of JRR Tolkien.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
I don't think it's that the depth has been misjudged. The world-building is deep and wide and intricate but most importantly was already used to tell THE STORY OF STORIES! for that particular setting. Anything that fits into the world must be of small scale and scope and that doesn't gel well with the Hollywood EVEN MORE WOWIE ZOWIE! template that's going to be used to produce material that's always-already going to be some photocopy of the originals (in this case the books and the first trilogy).
Unless you ramp up the threat, ramp up the action, and by then is it still Lord of the Rings? Or is it LotR vs Mars Attacks!?
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
Yeah I agree, but I also think the general casual fan base are a problem too, because they've seen it before, and this'll just be more of the same. At least with the new D&D movie it's a "fast-paced, irreverant take on the fantasy genre with screwball dialogue and characters you can relate to" which is a break from the tone and tropes set by the LotR and Hobbit movies.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
I liked looking at it and there were scenes and threads here and there I enjoyed, but overall I found it pretty so-so, same-same. Which is cool and all, but I think to capture the casual Tolkien fantasy fan and the more hardcore folk it needs to work harder.
Its good, but Amazon had to block commenting and reviews on the series because of the upset fans. We've still never seen actual viewer numbers so I'd guess it didn't do as well as they wanted. If it had been a generic fantasy series I'd wager it would have had higher viewership and almost no negative reviews or upset fans.
100% this. If you just watch it w/o JUDGING IT against whatever "realism" for a fake world, it's quite good (with some great things and some not so great things). If you insist on comparing it to content they don't have the legal rights to use, and you don't like black elves, well, you are going to review bomb it. It's so silly, imo. There is nothing sacred about a fictional world.....nothing.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
First problem is making "prequels". Casual viewers are not as enamored of the "prequel" idea as fans, but fans also have their own vision in mind of "what came before" and if your prequel radically differs from that you're already off on the wrong foot. This was Amazon's biggest mistake IMO - they didn't have the rights to all of the prequel material that Tolkien had written, so they used what they were allowed to use and wrote new stuff around it. No matter how good it is the fans are going to hate it and the casual folks are just not going to care because it's a prequel.
Make it a sequel, set it a century after the original and tell a new story. Divorce yourself from the idea that your target audience is fans who are deep into the material and instead target mass appeal. You might miss but at least the work has a chance of being judged on its own merits rather than being compared to the prequel material that each individual fan carries in their own heads and that you're never going to be able to live up to.
(This is my attitude towards prequels in general - just stop. The original story probably started at the point it did for a reason. Probably because "what came before" is not interesting enough to tell as its own story. It's generally fine existing as backstory that doesn't need its own movie and is going to be more interesting as vague ideas of what came before instead of something concrete. But it's even worse for LotR because it has the existing twist that Tolkien had already written prequel material that they weren't able to use. )
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
Excellent news!
I think it's about time that we finally get Sauron's point of view.
I think it's about time that we finally get Sauron's point of view.
Star Wars is exactly the example I cut for space
Lucas in 1977 started Star Wars from Episode 4 instead of Episode 1 for a reason. In 1999 we saw why - starting that story in media res with the Empire at full power and the rebels at their lowest point was exciting - it was a tight, coherent story that was easy to jump into and understand as a casual filmgoer. The story about the fall of the Republic was ... less so. Part of that is Lucas's own storytelling abilities not having the chops to write a script centered around the political drama, but mostly it's just that the fall of the Republic is more interesting as backstory that we can all fill in how we want. And of course the cardinal sin of prequels was made - devaluing a character by filling in their backstory with something that isn't nearly as interesting as the filmmakers think it is.
John R Davis
Hero
Had a plot think......timelines can be wibbled with
The fall of the North trilogy (c.1975)
1. Splinter of Arnor (Last king etc).
2. Rise of the 5 wizards.
3. Return of Glorfindel. (flash back balrog fight)
The fall of the North trilogy (c.1975)
1. Splinter of Arnor (Last king etc).
2. Rise of the 5 wizards.
3. Return of Glorfindel. (flash back balrog fight)
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