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Tsagualsa wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
The Silmarillion makes LotR and Dune look like they were written for TV. I can't imagine a worse business endeavor than trying to adapt that terrible piece of prose for general audiences into what would have to be a big-budget affair, especially with a fan base with toxic elements ready to gak all over any deviation from the source material.

The only way you could maybe do these stories right is a series of ridiculously over-lengthy 'monumental movies' in the style of Ben Hur or The ten commandments, and the cost and economic risk of such an endeavour would basically mean you'd have to be insane to try.

In a streaming world I think it could be broken up into manageable chunks. And one perk of the format is you are not locked into fixed runtimes.

Ep 1, creation of world, into to valar.
Ep 2-3 mogoth being a jerk, kick him around.
Ep 4 awakening of the elves and migration to the west.
Etc.

Well they said that about the first 3 films

The best way to deal with the Sillymarrillies is to go with the individual stories it is actually comprised of.

Don't try to do the whole honking thing. Do the tale of that guy or the fall of that place.

 Overread wrote:
Well they said that about the first 3 films

They did, and it was true It took a long time for anyone to risk it, and in the end it paid off, but the attempt itself was very daring, and the film quite lengthy in the theatrical release and even longer in the extended cuts.

The best way to deal with the Sillymarrillies is to go with the individual stories it is actually comprised of.

Don't try to do the whole honking thing. Do the tale of that guy or the fall of that place.

Do it in some sort of Kurosawa-like 'That one dude telling the story of another dude because it relates to the story of that third dude over there' series of Vignettes. That could also work well in a streaming format where you could be more flexible with runtimes etc.

Honestly like a lot of epic sagas it really would suit a long TV series over a film.

Which is honestly more possible now than ever since we are seeing a falling of films and a potential rise of stronger story scripted TV series. Still a big gamble but the market is shifting a bit.
Granted our first showing of that for LotR isn't outstanding, but then again it was a strange contract to make a film basically on an appendix rather than the core of the book.


films are great for certain stories and types of storytelling, but not all kinds.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


It would be hard to top the original!

Spoiler:

^This.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Honestly I'd like a sequel set about 5000 years after LotR after the elves have left and the Hobbits have assimilated into humanity and a group of moving picture producers are seeking to tell the tale of the War of the Rings and end of the 3rd age.

That's where ROP should have started, and never called itself ROP.