hypothetical Beren and Luthien movie

[Rast]

We all know that the Silmarillion won't be filmed during Christopher
Tolkien's lifetime (and here's hoping that lasts longer than Peter
Jacksons's cinematic career). But it'll probably be filmed eventually.

So what kind of changes do you feel would be reasonable, and what would
be unacceptable?

- Huan can talk whenever he likes, not just three times?
- Huan goes with them to Angband?
- ...and carries them out (no eagles)?
- Melian and Luthien come along to join in the Hunting of the Wolf?

[John W Kennedy]

Post by Rast
We all know that the Silmarillion won't be filmed during Christopher
Tolkien's lifetime (and here's hoping that lasts longer than Peter
Jacksons's cinematic career). But it'll probably be filmed eventually.
So what kind of changes do you feel would be reasonable, and what would
be unacceptable?
- Huan can talk whenever he likes, not just three times?
- Huan goes with them to Angband?
- ...and carries them out (no eagles)?
- Melian and Luthien come along to join in the Hunting of the Wolf?

I don't think the Silmarillion can be filmed. It's both too diffuse,
and too extensive. Parts of it could be filmed, no doubt, but what on
earth would be the point? 99% of the dialog and 75% of the action
would, of necessity, have to be the creation of the writer and the
director, who would, as a result, have nothing to look forward to but
the open contempt of "fans".

Maybe someone could go back to the 1890s and do a one-reeler (silent,
of course) of "Scenes from 'The Silmarillion'", all in moving tableaux.

[solar penguin]

Post by Rast
We all know that the Silmarillion won't be filmed during Christopher
Tolkien's lifetime (and here's hoping that lasts longer than Peter
Jacksons's cinematic career). But it'll probably be filmed eventually.
So what kind of changes do you feel would be reasonable, and what would
be unacceptable?
- Huan can talk whenever he likes, not just three times? - Huan goes
with them to Angband?
- ...and carries them out (no eagles)? - Melian and Luthien come along
to join in the Hunting of the Wolf?

I don't think the Silmarillion can be filmed. It's both too diffuse, and
too extensive. Parts of it could be filmed, no doubt, but what on earth
would be the point?

Well, it's got to be an improvement over the book itself. Let's face it,
it couldn't be any worse.

99% of the dialog and 75% of the action would, of
necessity, have to be the creation of the writer and the director, who
would, as a result, have nothing to look forward to but the open
contempt of "fans".

He'd have my praise and gratitude. It's just a shame Christopher Tolkien
didn't do that before publishing it in the first place, because then we
might actually have had something readable and enjoyable instead.

Maybe someone could go back to the 1890s and do a one-reeler (silent, of
course) of "Scenes from 'The Silmarillion'", all in moving tableaux.

And so get our own copyright on the story first, then the Tolkien Estate
will never be able to publish that boring book? If so, I'm all for
that. Lead me to the time machine.

(BTW you ought to know I really, really hate The Silmarrilion.)

[Wayne Brown]

Post by solar penguin

99% of the dialog and 75% of the action would, of
necessity, have to be the creation of the writer and the director, who
would, as a result, have nothing to look forward to but the open
contempt of "fans".

He'd have my praise and gratitude. It's just a shame Christopher Tolkien
didn't do that before publishing it in the first place, because then we
might actually have had something readable and enjoyable instead.

I'm very grateful CT didn't do that, as "The Silmarillion" is my favorite
of Tolkien's books, just as it is.

[John W Kennedy]

Post by Wayne Brown

Post by solar penguin

99% of the dialog and 75% of the action would, of
necessity, have to be the creation of the writer and the director, who
would, as a result, have nothing to look forward to but the open
contempt of "fans".

He'd have my praise and gratitude. It's just a shame Christopher Tolkien
didn't do that before publishing it in the first place, because then we
might actually have had something readable and enjoyable instead.

I'm very grateful CT didn't do that, as "The Silmarillion" is my favorite
of Tolkien's books, just as it is.

And there you are, you see.

Mind you, I seem to recall reading somewhere, in a letter, or somewhere
in HOME, perhaps, that at least one point, Tolkien actually foresaw and
welcomed the possibility of future artists using the Silmarillion as a
sourcebook. The notion is not unheard of, after all, even in modern
times, and was perfectly normal in the ages that he knew best.
Moreover, his dream of creating an English mythology could hardly have
succeeded in any meaningful way without that eventually happening.

In an ideal world, I would hire J. Michael Straczynski to produce a
television series.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by John W Kennedy
Mind you, I seem to recall reading somewhere, in a letter, or somewhere
in HOME, perhaps, that at least one point, Tolkien actually foresaw and
welcomed the possibility of future artists using the Silmarillion as a
sourcebook. The notion is not unheard of, after all, even in modern
times, and was perfectly normal in the ages that he knew best.
Moreover, his dream of creating an English mythology could hardly have
succeeded in any meaningful way without that eventually happening.

Tom Sharpe, who died recently, said much the same thing. Something to the
effect that, when making a film based on a book, you throw away the plot and
just use the characters.

[John W Kennedy]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by John W Kennedy
Mind you, I seem to recall reading somewhere, in a letter, or somewhere
in HOME, perhaps, that at least one point, Tolkien actually foresaw and
welcomed the possibility of future artists using the Silmarillion as a
sourcebook. The notion is not unheard of, after all, even in modern
times, and was perfectly normal in the ages that he knew best.
Moreover, his dream of creating an English mythology could hardly have
succeeded in any meaningful way without that eventually happening.

Tom Sharpe, who died recently, said much the same thing. Something to the
effect that, when making a film based on a book, you throw away the plot and
just use the characters.

That’s a bit extreme. But adaptation to another medium, just like
translation into another language, always introduces problems. For
example, one classic movie based on a book /had/ to make a major
change, because the big reveal on the last page of the book (like that
of a certain book by Asimov) is that two characters were actually the
same person all along. (The hero has amnesia.) The Tale of the Children
of Húrin, in fact, only narrowly escapes that very problem. But the
great difficulty with the Silmarillion is that it is written like a
saga, full of "X did this, and then did that, and Y did the other
thing...," with virtually no dialog at all for entire days and even
years of story time, and what dialog there is, is boiled down like
newspaper headlines. Try to film that, and what you get is more or less
a box of ViewMaster® reels with a history lecture for a soundtrack.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by John W Kennedy
Mind you, I seem to recall reading somewhere, in a letter, or somewhere
in HOME, perhaps, that at least one point, Tolkien actually foresaw and
welcomed the possibility of future artists using the Silmarillion as a
sourcebook. The notion is not unheard of, after all, even in modern
times, and was perfectly normal in the ages that he knew best.
Moreover, his dream of creating an English mythology could hardly have
succeeded in any meaningful way without that eventually happening.

Tom Sharpe, who died recently, said much the same thing. Something to the
effect that, when making a film based on a book, you throw away the plot and
just use the characters.

That’s a bit extreme. But adaptation to another medium, just like
translation into another language, always introduces problems. For
example, one classic movie based on a book /had/ to make a major
change, because the big reveal on the last page of the book (like that
of a certain book by Asimov) is that two characters were actually the
same person all along. (The hero has amnesia.) The Tale of the Children
of Húrin, in fact, only narrowly escapes that very problem. But the
great difficulty with the Silmarillion is that it is written like a
saga, full of "X did this, and then did that, and Y did the other
thing...," with virtually no dialog at all for entire days and even
years of story time, and what dialog there is, is boiled down like
newspaper headlines. Try to film that, and what you get is more or less
a box of ViewMaster® reels with a history lecture for a soundtrack.

Perhaps I'd better quote more exactly, rather than what I remembered from
Sharpe's obit:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22795507

'In 1975, he wrote Blott on the Landscape, centred on the proposed
construction of a motorway in a fictional rural county in England.

The book was adapted into a six-part series by Malcolm Bradbury for
the BBC in 1985.

"Books and films are totally different things," Sharpe said during his
interview on Desert Island Discs.

"I say throw the book out the window and use the characters."'

I think that would cover the kind of thing you are suggesting, and would work
for "The Silmarillion", using it as a sourcebook. Telling some of the stories
in it would, as you say, mean writing the dialogue from scratch.

I have my doubts about how well it would work with "Lord of the Rings" or "The
hobbit" (I haven't seen the films of either) because those are discrete
stories.

[Paul S. Person]

On Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:37:34 +0200, Steve Hayes
<***@telkomsa.net> wrote:

<snippo>

Post by Steve Hayes
Perhaps I'd better quote more exactly, rather than what I remembered from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22795507
'In 1975, he wrote Blott on the Landscape, centred on the proposed
construction of a motorway in a fictional rural county in England.
The book was adapted into a six-part series by Malcolm Bradbury for
the BBC in 1985.
"Books and films are totally different things," Sharpe said during his
interview on Desert Island Discs.
"I say throw the book out the window and use the characters."'
I think that would cover the kind of thing you are suggesting, and would work
for "The Silmarillion", using it as a sourcebook. Telling some of the stories
in it would, as you say, mean writing the dialogue from scratch.
I have my doubts about how well it would work with "Lord of the Rings" or "The
hobbit" (I haven't seen the films of either) because those are discrete
stories.

After some thought, I have come to the conclusion that this might be
true, provided

1) "character" is interpreted to include how each character interacts
with the others and how each character acts in significant events; and

2) "story" is interpreted as "all the picky little plot details".

In this case, it would mean that you do not focus on reproducing the
picky little plot details but rather on the characters and their
interactions, both with each other and significant events. That might
work, particularly for books that are more about the setting and the
characters than the specific plot anyway.

For the Silmarillion, it would mean fully describing the characters,
as defined above, and then determining how to put them together into a
coherent story, which would be 90% "made up" but which, if done
correctly, would be recognizably true to the original.

As far as /LOTR/ and /TH/ go, it might have produced a better (in the
sense of being truer to the books) than we got from PJ & accomplices
(theirs being based, not on characters, but on Action Sequences)..

[Mike Sullivan]

Post by Paul S. Person
On Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:37:34 +0200, Steve Hayes
<snippo>

Post by Steve Hayes
Perhaps I'd better quote more exactly, rather than what I remembered from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22795507
'In 1975, he wrote Blott on the Landscape, centred on the proposed
construction of a motorway in a fictional rural county in England.
The book was adapted into a six-part series by Malcolm Bradbury for
the BBC in 1985.
"Books and films are totally different things," Sharpe said during his
interview on Desert Island Discs.
"I say throw the book out the window and use the characters."'
I think that would cover the kind of thing you are suggesting, and would work
for "The Silmarillion", using it as a sourcebook. Telling some of the stories
in it would, as you say, mean writing the dialogue from scratch.
I have my doubts about how well it would work with "Lord of the Rings" or "The
hobbit" (I haven't seen the films of either) because those are discrete
stories.

After some thought, I have come to the conclusion that this might be
true, provided
1) "character" is interpreted to include how each character interacts
with the others and how each character acts in significant events; and
2) "story" is interpreted as "all the picky little plot details".
In this case, it would mean that you do not focus on reproducing the
picky little plot details but rather on the characters and their
interactions, both with each other and significant events. That might
work, particularly for books that are more about the setting and the
characters than the specific plot anyway.

A device for that could well be to not make the plot of a film
about the primary "heroes" in the stories, but of other characters
present at the the time of the great histories. One need not have
to flesh out a character for Beren, Tuor, or for Turin, but have these
other film characters at hand at key plot points, observers at times,
participants at another.

Write simply a great action/drama film set in first age, and throw a bone
to us geeks by filming the major events from an 'epic distance'.

I'm thinking 'Little Big Man' as a wood elf who is in Beleriand when
the Noldor arrive, can live much of the age at Nargothrond, some things
he is witness to, some things are told to him by survivors.

Eriol is the "reporter" who comes to Tol Eressea.

[Igenlode Wordsmith]

Mike Sullivan <***@yahoo.com> wrote in message <4310bc91-d97d-4005-830f-***@googlegroups.com>

[snip 'throwing out the book and using the characters']

Post by Mike Sullivan
A device for that could well be to not make the plot of a film
about the primary "heroes" in the stories, but of other characters
present at the the time of the great histories. One need not have
to flesh out a character for Beren, Tuor, or for Turin, but have these
other film characters at hand at key plot points, observers at times,
participants at another.
Write simply a great action/drama film set in first age, and throw a bone
to us geeks by filming the major events from an 'epic distance'.
I'm thinking 'Little Big Man' as a wood elf who is in Beleriand when
the Noldor arrive, can live much of the age at Nargothrond, some things
he is witness to, some things are told to him by survivors.
Eriol is the "reporter" who comes to Tol Eressea.

Yes - the classic 'historical novel' approach (especially common in
children's fiction, for obvious reasons) of creating your own original
characters who take part in the fringes of great historical events and
brush against the significant personages of the age -- thus freeing the
novelist/screenwriter from the strict constraints of known biography
(and allowing, for example, a novel set around the Babington Plot to
maintain suspense as to whether the protagonists will escape or not,
though we know that the major players are all doomed from the start).

[~consul]

Thread resurrection, just because my thunderbird got messed up and
pulled random old posts that are oddly appropriate ...

Post by Igenlode Wordsmith
[snip 'throwing out the book and using the characters']

Post by Mike Sullivan
A device for that could well be to not make the plot of a film
about the primary "heroes" in the stories, but of other characters
present at the the time of the great histories. One need not have
to flesh out a character for Beren, Tuor, or for Turin, but have these
other film characters at hand at key plot points, observers at times,
participants at another.
Write simply a great action/drama film set in first age, and throw a bone
to us geeks by filming the major events from an 'epic distance'.
I'm thinking 'Little Big Man' as a wood elf who is in Beleriand when
the Noldor arrive, can live much of the age at Nargothrond, some things
he is witness to, some things are told to him by survivors.
Eriol is the "reporter" who comes to Tol Eressea.

Yes - the classic 'historical novel' approach (especially common in
children's fiction, for obvious reasons) of creating your own original
characters who take part in the fringes of great historical events and
brush against the significant personages of the age -- thus freeing the
novelist/screenwriter from the strict constraints of known biography
(and allowing, for example, a novel set around the Babington Plot to
maintain suspense as to whether the protagonists will escape or not,
though we know that the major players are all doomed from the start).

So this seems to be like what could make the amazon series work?

[tenworld]

Silmarillion would fit better with an HBO quality series that has a lot of
characters but no main cast, more like a Wagon Train anthology. HBO of course
would not work because they dont do stuff without nudity and (bad) language.

It will be interesting to see if CT's heirs sell the rights.

[Paul S. Person]

Post by tenworld
Silmarillion would fit better with an HBO quality series that has a lot of
characters but no main cast, more like a Wagon Train anthology. HBO of course
would not work because they dont do stuff without nudity and (bad) language.

That would still require an awful lot of newly-written dialog and,
once you have someone writing dialog, how do you keep them from
writing what the characters do or even creating entirely new
characters as well?

Which isn't to say it might not be worth watching, but that the chance
of it being the Silmarillion (or any part of it) is not very large.

Post by tenworld
It will be interesting to see if CT's heirs sell the rights.

Of course, the copyright will expire eventually, I suppose. Then there
won't be any rights to sell. Whether CT or his heirs want to or not.

[John W Kennedy]

Post by tenworld
Silmarillion would fit better with an HBO quality series that has a lot of
characters but no main cast, more like a Wagon Train anthology. HBO of course
would not work because they dont do stuff without nudity and (bad) language.
It will be interesting to see if CT's heirs sell the rights.

Yes, a straight-up movie of the Silmarillion would be insane, as would
a movie series of any tolerable size; a television series is the only
way to handle the scale. Even trying to slice the story up into
elements wouldn't, for the most part, work, apart from, perhaps, the
Children of Húrin. The story of Beren and Lúthien might seem possible,
too, but it actually has no ending except in the context of the overall
story of the Ruin of Doriath.

But the fundamental problem is that "The Hobbit" is a novel, and "The
Lord of the Rings" is a novel, and "The Children of Húrin" is pretty
close to a novel, but the Silmarillion isn't a novel -- no more than
is, say, Edith Hamilton's "Mythology". Making any kind of adaptation of
it is going to take the efforts of, not a screen adapter, but a
full-blown experienced professional dramatist, who is going to have to
tear down and rebuild every character and every action. (Heck, even the
guy doing the Chibi Silmarillion is having trouble in spots.)

[JimboCat]

Post by John W Kennedy

Post by tenworld
Silmarillion would fit better with an HBO quality series that has a lot of
characters but no main cast, more like a Wagon Train anthology. HBO of course
would not work because they dont do stuff without nudity and (bad) language.
It will be interesting to see if CT's heirs sell the rights.

Yes, a straight-up movie of the Silmarillion would be insane, as would
a movie series of any tolerable size; a television series is the only
way to handle the scale.

Heard of the SilmFilm project? Totally hypothetical. No plans for any actual filming, ever. It's an effort to create scripts and ancillary materials for a series of films covering the entire Silmarillion. It's kind of interesting.

Basic information at
https://silmfilm.mythgard.org/

Discussion forums at
https://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php

Weekly podcasts on iTunes and at
http://media.signumuniversity.org/tolkienprof/feed

JimboCat