Amazon to make new Tolkien series...

[Pyan]

Set to debut later in 2021, this edition of The Lord of the Rings will tell “the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history” and is “set thousands of years before the events of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings”.

So, bits of the Silmarillion, then. Presumably they think that they'll get more interest if they mention JRRT's most famous title, rather than be accurate.

Amazon to spend $465m on new Lord of the Rings series

 

[BAYLOR]

So, bits of the Silmarillion, then. Presumably they think that they'll get more interest if they mention JRRT's most famous title, rather than be accurate.

Amazon to spend $465m on new Lord of the Rings series

This a has great potential !

 

[Maseeha.Aellari]

This is going to be so epic! I can't wait to go back to Middle Earth and discover more about Tolkein's universe.

But... WHY? I thought that LOTR would be that untouchable series that would not be remade. No one can do Tolkein like Tolkein (unless they are Peter Jackson). I'm probably not going to like the new cast but hey, that's on me. I detest remakes with my entire being, even if it's for my favourite book and movie series.

I'M STILL GOING TO WATCH IT THOUGH

 

[paranoid marvin]

Jackson did well with the LOTR; I didn't have issues with Legolas riding a shield (he definitely comes across in the books as having style as well as substance, so it's in his character) , but I did have issues with him changing the character of Faramir - and it was totally unnecessary to do so. Removing the Scourging of the Shire effectively misses the whole point of the story, but it's understandable why they did so for a movie audience, same as removing Bombadil.

I understand that to make a movie that you have to make changes and compromises, and the landscapes and locations were all superbly done. The real travesty came in The Hobbit, where Jackson really went to town with completely uncalled for alterations and additions in order to justify another 3 movies. There are some good things about it (Eddie Izzard and the Goblin Town song, Cumberbatch as Smaug and inspired choice of Billy Connolly as the irate Dwarf chieftan. But over all, not good.

I suspect that the new tv series will be more Hobbit than LOTR, and I forsee Got meets LOTR, with lots of characters and races hardly (or not at all) mentioned in Silmarillion. Personally I don't have a problem with it being sold under the LOTR , as commerclally that makes perfect sense. In fact I would be very surprised if 'Silmarillion' gets mentioned in the titles at all.

My guess (as I mentioned above) will be a GoT style show with Sauron's rise to power. I can well see Legolas featured as well Galadriel and Celeborn, Saruman and Gandalf and ancestors of characters from the LOTR.

 

[Timebender]

I understand that to make a movie that you have to make changes and compromises, and the landscapes and locations were all superbly done. The real travesty came in The Hobbit, where Jackson really went to town with completely uncalled for alterations and additions in order to justify another 3 movies. There are some good things about it (Eddie Izzard and the Goblin Town song, Cumberbatch as Smaug and inspired choice of Billy Connolly as the irate Dwarf chieftan. But over all, not good.

To be fair, iirc Jackson wanted to make a duology pair of movies that would be more faithful to the book, but the studio kept demanding he make things more like Lord of the Rings.

 

[HareBrain]

To be fair, iirc Jackson wanted to make a duology pair of movies that would be more faithful to the book, but the studio kept demanding he make things more like Lord of the Rings.

According to a (very entertaining) analysis I saw on YouTube, this was partly because two studios were entitled to a cut of the first Hobbit film, but not subsequent ones. It therefore benefited Warners to increase the number of subsequent films, meaning narrative arcs had to be hastily rejigged, to disastrous effect.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Those sound like likely reasons for the 3 movie set up. With the success of LOTR as a 3 parter, they probably so no reason why a second trilogy would not work equally as well. It's a shame that Jackson proceeded to make a film against his wishes; considering how successful and well known a director he is, he should have been able to make his film or just walk away. But I'm sure the chance to add in lots of new material appealed to him. As a two parter it would have been a much better film, but (according to Wikipedia) a budget of £745m returning £2.935 billion confirms (from the money men's perspective) that they made the right decision.

 

[Extollager]

A year ago Chrons made the decision to forbid discussion of Covid here, saving the forums as a place to get away from horrible thoughts. I wish they would do the same with regard to this Lord of the Amazon thing. Gahhhhhhh.

 

[BAYLOR]

A year ago Chrons made the decision to forbid discussion of Covid here, saving the forums as a place to get away from horrible thoughts. I wish they would do the same with regard to this Lord of the Amazon thing. Gahhhhhhh.

You think this series is not going to be good ?

 

[Bick]

You think this series is not going to be good ?

As popcorn epic fantasy it might be passable.
As a rendition of Tolkien's Silmarillion, I'm quite sure it will be entirely dreadful. I don't expect I'll bother to watch, as I respect Tolkien's work too much.

To be fair, iirc Jackson wanted to make a duology pair of movies that would be more faithful to the book, but the studio kept demanding he make things more like Lord of the Rings.

The irony here being that by doing so they ended up with movies that were completely unlike LOTR, in mood, reliance on CGI, pace, diversion from the literature, and overall quality.

 

[BAYLOR]

As popcorn epic fantasy it might be passable.
As a rendition of Tolkien's Silmarillion, I'm quite sure it will be entirely dreadful. I don't expect I'll bother to watch, as I respect Tolkien's work too much.


The irony here being that by doing so they ended up with movies that were completely unlike LOTR, in mood, reliance on CGI, pace, diversion from the literature, and overall quality.

Bick , If I may offer suggestion , watch at least two episodes.

Peter Jackson made the best possible adaptations of Tolkien's work . However , have you considered the possibility that maybe the movies might increased interest Tolkien works ?

 

[Extollager]

"Peter Jackson made the best possible adaptations of Tolkien's work" -- not true. The movies teem with avoidable shortcomings and blunders of taste, tone, etc.; they could have been much better without the need for spending even more money.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I think LOTR was about as good a series of movies as Jackson would have been allowed to make. Including Bombadil and The Scourging of the Shire (two of the biggest omissions) would have been a plus point to Tolkien fans but likely a minus point to the average cinema-going man on the street. I think it's usually the case that lovers of a book will be disappointed with the on-screen adaptation; but movies are not usually made for those markets.

As I mentioned above , I find very little wrong, and very little in ways of alteration that I can't accept or understand. The landscapes were amazing and did justice to Tolkien's descriptions of Middle-earth, the locations such as Minas Tirith were just as I imagined them, and all of the major characters were easily recognisable from the books (apart from Faramir). In fact as I mentioned in a previous post, the change of character in this one character was my only real issue. But Gandalf was well played, Gollum was brilliant, Sam Pippin and Merry were all very good. And the underlying humour of Tolkien was also captured, with some great horseplay between Pippin and Merry, and Gimli and Legolas.

The Hobbit is (literally) a different story, and what was an enjoyable - relatively short - story about a hobbit going on an adventure and surviving by wits more than fighting or action turned into another LOTR trilogy, but a much poorer one because much of the material had to be made up.

I think that the tv series will do well on the back of the LOTR license, but I think that Silmarillion fans will be disappointed. The tv show is likely to be a continuous storyline following the main characters, and Silmarillion is more a collection of stories. I think character names will be used, as well as some of the locations and storylines, but in a cohesive continuing storyline. Basically the backstory of what lead to the creation of the Ring and up to the defeat of Sauron.

 

[Bick]

Peter Jackson made the best possible adaptations of Tolkien's work .

No, he didn't - he ruined The Hobbit, and made far too many 'sacrilegious' changes top LOTR too, for my comfort.

 

[BAYLOR]

No, he didn't - he ruined The Hobbit, and made far too many 'sacrilegious' changes top LOTR too, for my comfort.

No questions getting three films out the Hobbit was really stretching things alot . Should have been two films at the most and even that would been stretching things a bit . Lots of adds story element added to the film. Evens so, I still enjoyed the Hobbit films for what they were which was popcorn entertainment.

Each of the LOTR film averaged Three plus hours if you included the extended scenes. Jackson could not not possibly do an exact interpretation of LOTR given how many story elements there are in the whole trilogy. He had time constraints to deal with so he had take liberties with the story narrative and he had to leave things out. Had he done a exact Interpretation of each segment ,each film would have been 10 hours long. The last director I can recall who attempted to films an entire book was Director Eric Von Stroheim who tried that with Frank Noris novel McTeague under the title Greed it topped out at 9 or 10 hours which was unacceptable to the studio

 

[Bick]

No questions getting three films out the Hobbit was really stretching things alot . Should have been two films at the most and even that would been stretching things a bit . Lots of adds story element added to the film. Evens so, I still enjoyed the Hobbit films for what they were which is popcorn entertainment.

Each of the LOTR film averaged Three plus hours if you included the extended scenes. Jackson could not not possibly do an exact interpretation of LOTR given how many story elements there are in the whole trilogy. He had time constraints to deal with so he had take liberties with the story narrative and he had to leave things out. Had he done a exact Interpretation of each segment ,each film would have been 10 hours long. The last director I can recall who attempted to films an entire book was Director Eric Von Stroheim who tried that with Frank Noris novel McTeague under the title Greed it topped out at 9 or 10 hours which was unacceptable to the studio

Jackson did a lot that was good in the original LOTR films. He cast it very well, set design and locations were excellent, and he directed it well, developing characters well and delivering emotional scenes. Overall, I was quite pleased with the films. There's no doubt to my mind that he captured the imagery of Tolkien's world superbly well. What he did less well, was not that he missed things out - he didn't have time for every scene Tolkien wrote as you correctly point out - but that he changed events and mucked around with the storyline. For instance, for me, Helms Deep has greater resonance in the book as it's rather like man's last stand after the race of 'men' has been forsaken by the elder races. This raises the stakes and adds poignancy. But Jackson has a load of elves turn up, just because he likes them I suppose. In the same film, he has Aragorn fall off a cliff, adding 5 minutes to the movies, just so he can arrive back at Edoras on his own with a theatric flourish. It was unnecessary; I guess he just couldn't help himself from changing Tolkien's story. In the final film, I didn't like how he changed the race and appearance of some of the dark lieutenants, such as Gothmog, nor made some aspects of Pelenor Fields cartoon-like in tone. But no, they were not nearly as bad as the films that shall be named no more.

 

[BAYLOR]

Jackson did a lot that was good in the original LOTR films. He cast it very well, set design and locations were excellent, and he directed it well, developing characters well and delivering emotional scenes. Overall, I was quite pleased with the films. There's no doubt to my mind that he captured the imagery of Tolkien's world superbly well. What he did less well, was not that he missed things out - he didn't have time for every scene Tolkien wrote as you correctly point out - but that he changed events and mucked around with the storyline. For instance, for me, Helms Deep has greater resonance in the book as it's rather like man's last stand after the race of 'men' has been forsaken by the elder races. This raises the stakes and adds poignancy. But Jackson has a load of elves turn up, just because he likes them I suppose. In the same film, he has Aragorn fall off a cliff, adding 5 minutes to the movies, just so he can arrive back at Edoras on his own with a theatric flourish. It was unnecessary; I guess he just couldn't help himself from changing Tolkien's story. In the final film, I didn't like how he changed the race and appearance of some of the dark lieutenants, such as Gothmog, nor made some aspects of Pelenor Fields cartoon-like in tone. But no, they were not nearly as bad as the films that shall be named no more.

Okay , Fair enough Bick . I have to go back and reread Tolkien again at some point.

Its been a while since I read the books . Gandalf was imprison by Saruman . I don't recall a Wizard battle between the two of them nor rescue by the Eagles .

What are your thoughts on how Jackson depicted Moria, the battles and confrontation with the Balrog?

 

[Bick]

What are your thoughts on how Jackson depicted Moria, the battles and confrontation with the Balrog?

Excellently done - I couldn't really fault any aspect of the Moria sequences. Likewise, Hobbiton was perfect.

 

[BAYLOR]

Excellently done - I couldn't really fault any aspect of the Moria sequences. Likewise, Hobbiton was perfect.

Both Impressed

Gandalf on the Bridge of Kazadum facing off against Balrog . I love that scene.

 

[Pyan]

Bick: But Jackson has a load of elves turn up, just because he likes them I suppose. In the same film, he has Aragorn fall off a cliff, adding 5 minutes to the movies, just so he can arrive back at Edoras on his own with a theatric flourish.

When you add this to other things such as Aragorn not being given Andúril before he left Rivendell, the utter rubbishing of the character of Faramir, the rejection of Sam by Frodo, the killing of the Mouth of Sauron by Aragorn and worst of all, the removal of the Scouring of the Shire, I seriously question the phrase "Peter Jackson made the best possible adaptations of Tolkien's work".
I've watched the Hobbit trilogy once, basically because I feel you can't really discuss something you've never read or watched*. I doubt very much if I will do so again. The thing that really impressed me was the sheer chutzpah of stretching 272 pages of illustrated children's book into 9+ hours of film: somehow Bernard Cribbins managed the whole thing in two hours on Jackanory in the 70's.


* This does not apply to the recent "adaptation" of TP's Guards books by BBC America. I doubt my blood pressure would let me apply the rule.