Amled

Why not do a trilogy based upon the Silmarillion?
That’s got it all!
A treasure trove of characters.
Noble and evil elves and men and dwarves.
As an arch villain, the Fallen Angel himself!

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When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

deadkenny

To be done 'right', I believe that it should be done in 6 parts / movies. Tolkien originally wrote it that way; it was only 'packaged' as a 'trilogy' for publishing purposes. As 6 movies it could fit into the 'standard' 2 hour 'format' without having to compress or leave out parts to make it 'fit' (e.g. the entire Old Forest / Tom Bombadil / Barrow Downs).

xerxes

Deadkenny, you are right ...

however, the six books have different time lines, for example, while book 1 and 2 are chronoligical, book 3 follows the story of Aragon et al. (for seven days), while book 4 goes back in time for 7 days, and follows the story of Frodo. Simply, put it is quite impossible to put it into a seamless movie in that format. Thoug, perhapes they could have followed the format of the TV-movie Children of Dune, which was a three parts mini-series.

I tend to think that a TV-movie or mini-series of LOTR, though closer to the book would have lost its epicness and half of its budget.

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If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery of gunpowder with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind. - Edward Gibbon

Low-tech

sci-fi, dont get me started.

dune is a must read, employs alot of metaphor thats relevent today within global politics. its one of the best sci-fi books i ever read. a really deep read.

blade runner is actually based on a philip k dick book called "do andriod dream of electric sheep". the book is good and worth reading.

my opinion on tolkien is that he is an amuetur as far as literature goes......but a virtuoso in terms of literary vision. this goes exactly the same for philip k dick coincidently

so to explain that, what i mean is that his<tolkien and k. dick>concepts/worlds are more interesting than the stories themselves.

basically his<tolkiens> writing style sucks. alot of people dismiss it by playing the angle that these are kids books<spoonfed plot, archetypical/easy to identify good and evil, really cheesy melodramatic dialogue,etc.>..........i aint buying that. everything ive read by him is just like a big spaced out/half-baked ramble.....its the way the guy writes and its subpar by literary standards......but the stuff hes writing about is really fun, inspiring and pretty much kicked off the whole "role-playing" genre of pen and paper games which now have evolved into rpg videogames and movies.

i do love the LOTR books tho


well,as far as the topic is concerned, i havent seen 300 and alot of reviews have me kinda bummed out on it. being an american of greek heritage ive felt that hollywood portrayal of ancient greek themed movies in the past years have been disasters and that maybe american audiences arent ready for these stories<troy and alexander did well abroad, believe it or not>, whether they are national epics or historical pieces to be told.

its based on a comic, and comics pretty much existed on the premise that what you're reading cant be done on film, larger than life heros, epic battles, travel to other worlds and dimensions, etc. its only till the last 20 years or so that film is slowly catching up to make comics a reality and its real fun to see.....batman, sin city,x-men and so forth.

thermopoly is way more interesting as a historical event than a context or a premise for some over-the-top cgi,battles and so forth.

ill see it when it hits the dollar theatres, id rather see something that attempted to show what happened.


a good backstory on the Spartans is Plutarch, stories and essays. as far as im concerned they were the closest thing to a militarized communist/totaltarian state.....ever, kim jong il aint got nothing on the spartans. funny that they should be ballyhooing about freedom when thier slaves<from which thier entire economy/agriculture was based>were fighting along side with them as far as the real history is concerned.

basically persian rule would be way more preferable........persians freed the jews for chistsakes........they were very tolerant people and thier model of acquiring large amounts of foriegn territory was the model basically used later by the greeks and romans.

looks like im doing some rambling of my own here

execrable

Interesting viewpoint - by what criteria do you so quickly rubbish Tolkien and Dick? We're all allowed an opinion but sometimes we might have to explain our views - I'm asking you to explain why you think Tolkien is an "amateur."

dalem

Possibly because his writing style is so "un-novelic". I like it myself - the flowery phrasing, the archaic constructions, and the deep background. Like one of the editors said in the movie commentary track, one of the biggest and arguably most significant battles of the whole story, the Ents attack on Isengard, is only vaguely detailed, and only in a weak narrative flashback by one of the Hobbits. The main villain of the whole story, Sauron, is never "met" or even really described.

I never noticed any of these things until they were pointed out to me - I think it all works, but I concede that in technical terms it's not written "well".

-dale

Low-tech

in philip k dicks case.....alot of his books are duds....but the ones that are good are overwhelmingly influencial especially now because alot of his ideas are being ripped off by hollywood. i cant explain it much further than that.

tolkien is mixed bag of really cool incorporation of scandinavian mythology into a world thats very thought out and complete, he even made the elf language and stuff...attention to details borders on the fanatical when it comes to middle-earth. dont get me wrong....i love his books.

but lets not kid ourselves, theres little to no grey area between good and evil, every character is way too archetypical, character development is predictible<kinda melodramatic and cheesy at times> and we never really doubt most of the characters intentions. the plot, the climax is spoon-fed the same way star wars is.

its too simple of a formula......i like grey area, i like knowing that experiences change the characters dramatically to where you may not consider them evil or good anymore, that characters have vulnerabilities that are deeper than the obvious fear of death or failure, they have self-doubt, they make mistakes, thier judgement is in error, they cant cope or deal with situations and they do very real, human things.

im not saying his books are totally deviod of these things, its just there isnt enough emotional depth that satisfies me, i still like the LOTR books but, in terms of the nuts and bolts literature its not the end all be all.

dalem

So you knew that Frodo would fail and claim the Ring and that Gollum would prevail and get it back? That's funny because even the old Prof. himself wasn't 100% how that would work out while he was writing it.

But seriously, I disagree completely with most of your points re characters. First, and my own personal distaste for angsty "grey" characters aside, there is no "grey" regarding Good and Evil - acts are either one or the other. JRRT's characters are not all one way or the other although some certainly are. Boromir fails, Faramir prevails, but both are tested and know it. Likewise Galadriel and Gandalf both pass by refusing the Ring but they KNOW that if they claim it they will use it to do great Evil no matter that their intentions would be Good.

Regarding character growth, Gimli and Legolas overcome their ancient animosities and grow to be fast friends. Gandalf passes and is "reborn" into a starker, greater version of himself. Saruman falls, mainly by his own design. Denethor falls as well, another casualty of "mere" human frailty and clouded good sense. Grima is given a chance at his own redemption but fails that in the end. The Hobbits have grown immensely as we see at the end of their story and the Scouring of the Shire.

I could go on.

Of course, if you DO like pussyboy indecisive self-doubters in your fiction then I agree that LOTR is not for you.

-dale

xerxes

@Low tech

Gandalf was the Grey Pilgrim.

while Saruman was the White , and the Saroun that held the Black Hand was black . I would say Saruman changed alliegence to the Lidless Eye, while Gandalf ascended deeper into purity when he became White.

I consdier Eoywen's character to be Grey. In fact so is Borormir and many others.

gunnut

So did Leonidas lead 300 Spartans to the battle or did he have 299 with him? If he had 300, then with him would make 301. If he had only 300 including himself, then he had 299 with him. Who leads 299 men to a fight? Maybe it's really 301 Spartans?

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

ArmchairGeneral

I've wondered if a mini-series format would be better. It certainly worked well for Pride and Prejudice, none of the movies can match the 6 hr miniseries. Although I think the 3 book format does have some significance to the structure of the story, I think it could be dispensed with. The problem is where else to break it up. I don't think 6 smaller movies would really work, as the books don't seem to have the right episodic quality to them. I don't know, but perhaps a division into a mini-series would work. Someday...

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-Theodore Dalrymple

xerxes

@Armchairgeneral

If they make a six-part mini-series, no one is gonna watch 80% of part VI

... but I am open to it.

Low-tech

[quote]we dont live in a world of absolutes, so why should some folks living in some fantasy realm? im not saying there is no emotive substance/emotive depth here, its just its all way to predictable and has become a cliched formula<granted by imitators and hacks>. archetypes,pet characters, stoic antiheros, bad guys who look evil,act evil and couldnt possibly be mistaken to the contrary, contrived, composite stereotypes<dwarves dont like elves, elves disdain humans>its like, nick nolte and eddie murphy not seeing stuff eye to eye in the movie "48 hours", total re-hash,formulaic stereotypes from which characters...individuals...relate to one another, everyone pretty much does the honerable thing, says the rights things, for the most part.

so what i look for in any book regardless of genre, is tangable,realistic human emotion, dialogue and actions, no matter how far fetched the context. the grey areas portrayed reflect the subjective way in which characters...individuals....relate to the story, relate to one another, relate to the world as presented to them. tolkien employs a formula thats very absolutist,spoon-fed, unmistakable is as presented. i want to be forced to second guess the guys im rooting for, i want hidden metaphor thats run contrary to whats being presented, i want to re-evalulate the morals,principles,ideology of my own when i analyze the context of problems,conflicts presented in a novel. i dont get much of it with tolkien........i do, however, get a whole hell of alot of it with frank herbert with the dune series.

im not denying there is good stuff there, its just his writing style has already been made cliche' by countless hack movie directors and fantasy novelists, its not tolkiens fault, but its hard to look past.

i swear, man, im down with tolkien, make no mistake, was a huge D and D geek in my childhood and love fantasy/sci-fi movies/comics/books to this day. tolkien is like the jimi hendrix of fantasy.i just hold my favorite books to a high standard, the LOTR series i hold in high regard, it just reads like a comicbook in book form, nothing wrong with that, but im more used to more complex stories in which not everything is revealed and explained, where everything isnt supposed to be revealed and explained and where you are still left with questions afterwards.

dalem

[quote=Low-tech;361353]I do.

Well, LOTR is an epic and ultimately heroic story. The good guys mostly prevail - such is the way of much heroic fiction.

That's fair, we just have different tastes (I disagree that there is any real "formula" with JRRT though). What you describe above as "realistic", I describe as vacillating and weak. An author like Herbert leaves me cold precisely because he claims no center, no foundation, from which you can measure his characters - it's just muddle and "maybe if could be". I can't stand people like that, and I don't want to read about them either.

I think it's incorrect to equate "complexity" with "vagueness". LOTR is very complex, but it does have an ending that is relatively unambiguous.

-dale

execrable

Thanks for that guys, I really appreciate your responses. I do agree that Dicks books don’t work on the same level that other sci-fi writers work – strange that his ideas and worlds tend to have been so influential both in holywood and among other writers.

To me Tolkien is the Grand-daddy of the whole fantasy genre, there are obviously predecessors but his works really set the whole 20th Century fantasy worlds genre going and when you are the first you will obviously also have others influenced and better. Would the later books have been as good or explored areas that Tolkien only skimmed over? I think not.

One of my favourites until I read Tolkien was the Thomas Covenant series – now here was an anti-hero with all the inner demons you could ask for. It was only when I read Tolkien after that I saw how heavily the author had leaned on Tolkien to help “create” his own world.

Useful stuff, thanks again for your opinions. Much appreciated.