That's a fecktonne of money. It had better be a hit.
Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
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That's a fecktonne of money. It had better be a hit.
Gut tells me that the Witcher tv show is going to piss all over this and i'm a huge LOTR fan. But the premise just isn't good and if Jackson wants in then its doomed.
It doesn't need to be. It needs to convince people Amazon are serious about their media production and keep their brand in the news for reasons beyond working conditions.
Is there much to base this on? Not the biggest Tolkien fan so only know of Hobbit, LoTR and Silmarillion, but haven't read the latter (and as far as I know it was mostly about some very old stuff, including Morgoth)
LOTR is overated. I said it.
Films, books or the whole?
A few short stories concerning young Aragorn. Silmarillion is mostly about the 1st Age (which is where all the cool shit happens).
I think that’s feasible. Sapkowski’s short stories and general modern fantasy lend themselves to the medium of TV series a lot better than The Lord of the Rings does.
The book, Fall of Gondolin is about to be released too.
It would certainly be more likely to please the GoT crowd who will be looking for a new show. Considering the raw, and NSFW environment TW is set in. My biggest concern is with that show is that crappy sfx can totally break the immersion. In LOTR they can get away with colorful fruity shit like the Hobbit. The Witcher s creatures, towns etc need to be very believable. Like a alternate version of real medieval Europe.
That’s what I was thinking. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it have a GOT-like trajectory; beginning with the raw gritty backdrop, nice nudity, and remaining faithful to source material at its inception. Once the show expands in popularity and finances, it begins to opt more for action and increasing a larger, more casual fan base.
Agree. I don't know how interesting they will make this, there is nothing Tolkien wrote for this period of time, and we all know where it will lead. Also, people after Game of Thrones probably won't enjoy as much simplistic fantasy stories (I love LOTR as much as anyone, but it is really simplistic compared to modern sagas, a bit like Star Wars in that aspect).
The Witcher has so many fantastic stories and it is one of the most mature fantasy sagas right there. If done right, it could become the new Game of Thrones.
Agree on your initial points regarding lack of source material (they pretty much have carte blanche to do what they want if based on young Aragorn: they’ve just got to hit the few established facts of his life in that period), but the Lord of the Rings is anything but simplistic.
Indeed, the subtelties and complexities of LOTRs themes and composition are far greater than those of The Song of Ice and Fire, whose complexities come from a labyrinthian plot (that I’d argue even the writer has now lost track of). The issue is more that, in order to adapt LOTR into a movie, they simplified and lessened the thematic subtelty of the book. Violence, sex and brutality are not the only components that entail maturity.
Of course it is simplistic. There are the goodies who are good and the baddies who are bad. The good ones are selfless, the bad ones are evil and want power. And Aragorn is amazing because he has king blood, he can even heal almost dead people because of it.
If LOTR was published today, it wouldn't have been considered a classic. Even WoT who is now largely criticised has far more complicated characters than LOTR. As I said, it is the fantasy Star Wars (or vice versa considering that it is older). It is epic and enjoyable but it is definitely shallow and simplistic compared to many of modern fantasy sagas.
Without wanting this to turn into an exchange of essays, I couldn’t disgree more. To read the LOTR and consider it to have binary morality between sides of good and evil is difficult for me to understand and it is this sort of critiscism I came to expect from the self styled guardians of literature whilst at University (most of whom had not read the book and most certainly not with the care they took when pouring over the language of Joyce). Clearly you are a fan of fantasy though, so this can’t be the case.
So, in terms of complexities of morality: the Numenoreans, Boromir, Denethor, the Elves entire history, the Dwarves entire history, the corrupting influence of power on any person (Frodo, Saruman,Galadriel, Sauron himself, Elrond, the afore mentioned steward and his son), the indolence of good men, the shifts in morality that occur in ordinary people, the perils of interpretation of events, the ring itself, the wildmen and pukel men’s subjugation, the layers of complex discussion on the nature of faith, the notion of how language defines a people, the corruption of Empire, etc, etc
I won’t even touch on the linguistic depth and the huge subtleties and beauty of Tolkien’s language, the former Don of English Language of Oxford, a man with a keen and idiosyncratic mind whose world building skills were unprecedented and, I would say, remain unmatched. As intellectual as Asimov, he did not lack complexity. He was however deeply conservative which I deem his major flaw.
You’re right it wouldn’t get published now. It is written in a style and with a narrative structure that no publisher would touch, it expects the reader to work to find meaning and a significant majority of genre fictions have ripped off the surface elements (including the trilogy format, even though that was a necessity of cost) to such an extent it would be considered derivative.
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I would tend to agree with you here. I'm reading Martin's books right now and it feels extremely complicated (and you can see the author actively trying to deceive you, like with changing the names of the chapters when characters are in disguise and such stuff for example), but not in any way subtle; with LOTR you always feel like you're just taking a peek into this huge complicated world. Although there are heroes and villains in LOTR and Martin tries to move away from those labels.
Tolkien created a universe and then started writing about it while Martin is making the stuff up as he goes if it makes sense.
I'm not sure if Revan read the books or not but it is pretty clear that in many ways the movies over-simplified the narrative (but I still enjoyed them). You don't fully appreciate the symbolism of the story until you read the books and appendices several times and also read a bit about Tolkien himself and the life experiences that drove him to create the world he did.
Comparing LOTR, GoT and TW to each other is doing a disservice to all of them. LOTR is probably the only one that gets picked on as much as it does because it has been so tone setting for the run of the mill high fantasy you tend to find everywhere now. That also makes GoT and TW so wonderful because in many ways they are entirely unique in their own right. LOTR relies on a pace that is much more natural because of how long things take and the fact that most of its lore cannot be captured in 3 books. GOT has so many moving parts that it feels like a rollercoaster ride, whereas TW is a bit of both but benefits from the fact there mostly is just one character to put the focus on.
Comparing LOTR, GoT and TW to each other is doing a disservice to all of them. LOTR is probably the only one that gets picked on as much as it does because it has been so tone setting for the run of the mill high fantasy you tend to find everywhere now. That also makes GoT and TW so wonderful because in many ways they are entirely unique in their own right. LOTR relies on a pace that is much more natural because of how long things take and the fact that most of its lore cannot be captured in 3 books. GOT has so many moving parts that it feels like a rollercoaster ride, whereas TW is a bit of both but benefits from the fact there mostly is just one character to put the focus on.
Yes, I think that's fair. If Revan is not overly familiar with the books, considering LOTR to be fairly simple is quite valid.
The films do not, partly necessarily and partly un-necessarily, contain the subtleties of the book and drop most of the book's deeper themes. I do still enjoy them (especially the Fellowship) but the over simplification of many of the characters (notably Frodo) and the simply inexplicable additions (Boromir as a double agent, the bizarre Ent Moot sequence, the Nazgul seeing the Ring at Osgiliath) combined with the mis-readings (Sauron as a floating eyeball, when "the eye of Sauron" is a metaphor) do mean that the films, great though they are, are far less complex and subtle than the book.
Sorry, what's TW?
Yes, although Tolkien didn't write to a plan. However, the core themes and the sub history that lived in his head did exist and give a solid foundation. The books are, I think, about theology, history and language principally.
I enjoy the Song of Ice and Fire, but it has become a messy slog of late and I fear Martin will struggle to achieve resolution.
The Witcher
The Witcher.
On topic, I feel like this will only work as a TV show if they make it more mature than the films were. Explore the more darker aspects of middle earth. But then they probably won't because it's going to cost a fortune and LotR appeals to all ages so why cut out so many potential watchers.
Also, if you go down that path, you may as well create something new, despite the appeal of hanging onto a massive franchise. I struggle to see how they pull this off.
However, making LOTR as a full length series, with the time to tell the story at leisure and with suitable depth has merit. However, so soon after the PJ movies, I can't see this happening. It'd be worth it for the sheer clusterfiuck that Bombadil would inevitably be.
The should cancel this and put all the money in the Ian Banks "Culture" TV show they have the rights for.
I used to think that but then other things came out like the new Star Wars movies and any superhero movie that isn't Nolan's Batman movies and it actually made me quite thankful for them.
Seconded.
And Darth Vader is not totally evil, and Luke is not totally pure, and Han shot (probably) first. Still, Star Wars is quite simplistic. As is LotR.
Of course, I have read the books, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about them. Personally, I wouldn't even put it on my top 10 of fantasy reading sagas.
For people who like the genre, we have our own fantasy reads thread: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/fantasy-reads.373168/
And you'd be right. As for the books, I couldn't finish The Two Towers, it was such a painful read, but then again it's(LOTR)for young teens. The movies were fun though and they looked great back then.
I enjoyed the LOTR films when they came out, but re-watching the Hobbit ones recently was painful. How many fecking death-defying escapes can you have in one film? It got boring very quickly.
Both correct!
I gave up halfway through Return of the King with the books, way too descriptive and not enough narrative, "the grass was slightly greener than before, damper under foot, the length was slightly more than in Hobbiton where the grass was slightly more beige in colour and the hew would gather more underfoot than in Castleton where the grass was altogether burnt. And the leaves were slightly more... blah blah blah...", "oh and then there was a battle where some people died but the grass! oh the grass!"
One big snooze-fest, the whole trilogy. Don't get me started on the films...
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The Hobbit films are just not very good at all.
Can't wait for it.
And good reminder ... Blackwater episode. I will start GOT from season 1 again...
They're bad (bar the second movie which I think was acceptable). It was always going to be that way, splitting a kids book (which was half as long as any of LOTR books) into three movies. If they had made a single movie, it might have been decent.
The books are for young teens?! No way would a teen be able to get through them.
I did.
Granted, the Silmarillion felt a bit like hard work but the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy were required reading for young teens when I was growing up.
Yes, although I think two could have worked, as they wove in LOTR appendices and lifted the story to be a more "adult" film. The second half of the first film and most of the third are risible.
...and actually a fair chunk of the second one too, now I think of it.
I read LOTR as a pre teen, but certainly didn't come close to properly understanding it. I will refrain from wittering on about the deep themes of the book again as I've already derailed this thread without making any sort of convincing argument.
It was always going to be difficult to translate,
what in essence is a childrens book, into one that would be enjoyable for fans of the original trilogy. Felt to me like they got caught between the two.
Yes, and Peter Jackson with a big cgi budget has no self control.