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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 8, 2018 14:44:49 GMT -5
I've been re-reading part of The Hobbit these past couple of nights too. I started at Bilbo and the Dwarves' arrival at Laketown and read up until the book's end. It is a brisk read, but I love Tolkien's charming prose style in that book. Just wonderful stuff. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the film adaptation of The Hobbit had just been one 3 hour film and stuck as closely as possible to the book text, with all of its action and humour, it would've been a much better film. I would've rather seen that one 3 hour movie than the three bloated ones I did see. Plus that crazy stuff that they added like the battle with the Necromancer. The book didn't need it, and the movies didn't either. Yeah, I was disappointed in The Hobbit movies. The book was wonderful, they they seemed to feel compelled to stretch this thing into three movies, even adding stuff that wasn't in the books. Plus, the tone of the movie was much darker than the book. I agree with both of you, they'd have been better off with one three hour movie that stuck closer to the book. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2018 23:20:41 GMT -5
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Post by berkley on Mar 30, 2018 23:32:41 GMT -5
Which actual language do you think comes closest to Tolkien's invented Elvish in sound or spirit? You know what I mean: different languages have different characters, at least to the ears of non-speakers of those languages. Wiki says he was inspired by Finnish but I sometimes think there was a bit of Gaelic in there too - which is interesting, because apparently he wasn't an admirer of Gaelic or Irish mythology. Also, doesn't the Elvish script look a bit like some examples of Arabic or Persian writing? Again, this goes against expectations for someone who was trying to build an Anglo-Saxon mythology.
I imagine there are probably some youtube clips of epople trying to speak Elvish, I'll have to give them a listen to see how they sound. Can't remember how it was handled in the movies, now.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 31, 2018 16:09:41 GMT -5
Which actual language do you think comes closest to Tolkien's invented Elvish in sound or spirit? You know what I mean: different languages have different characters, at least to the ears of non-speakers of those languages. Wiki says he was inspired by Finnish but I sometimes think there was a bit of Gaelic in there too - which is interesting, because apparently he wasn't an admirer of Gaelic or Irish mythology. Also, doesn't the Elvish script look a bit like some examples of Arabic or Persian writing? Again, this goes against expectations for someone who was trying to build an Anglo-Saxon mythology. I imagine there are probably some youtube clips of epople trying to speak Elvish, I'll have to give them a listen to see how they sound. Can't remember how it was handled in the movies, now. French, obviously! A, elbérette giltonielle, oui, oui silivrène penna mirielle, alors! O menelle aglar èlènatte, mon ami na carède palan dirielle, alors du coup! |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 21:50:41 GMT -5
A previously unpublished Tolkien book is slated for release in 2018, the last edited by his son Christopher before Christopher retired. The Fall of Gondolin is due out in 2018, supposedly written by Tolkien as he was convalescing from the Battle of Somme but never published. Bleeding Cool has a little fun with this release announcement talking how even dead, Tolkien has been more prolific and released more new books than George RR Martin who hasn't released a new book in the Song of Fire and Ice series since 2011. Here's a story in The Guardian about the new book as well and a look at the cover art...  from the Guardian article... -M |
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Post by berkley on Apr 11, 2018 20:16:28 GMT -5
So if I understand correctly, this story has not appeared in any of the earlier collections of Tolkien material, at east not in this form?
I'd prefer an edition without Alan Lee's illustrations, myself. If Tolkien didn't leave behind any drawings related to it I'd rather have no illustrations at all.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2018 20:38:01 GMT -5
It appears Amazon is reaching out to a number of established writers, directors and showrunners to get pitches for their LOTR series, and Peter Jackson is among those they are reaching out to. J. Michael Straczynski has gone on record as saying he has al ot of interest in doing this show, but no word if he is actually under consideration or has been contacted by Amazon. The same report notes there are two Tolkien biopics int he works, one focused on his relationship with his wife Edith Bratt during WWI, and another on his relationship with C.S. Lewis. It also notes that Universal might be working on a Middle Earth theme park to open in Florida. Also of note, the article states that the deal with Amazon stipulates they must endter production within two years or they will lose the rights. -M |
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Post by berkley on May 9, 2018 2:59:41 GMT -5
What's the story on the tv series? What are they supposed to be doing - prequels, sequels, spin-offs, the Silmarillion, or what?
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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2018 10:25:17 GMT -5
What's the story on the tv series? What are they supposed to be doing - prequels, sequels, spin-offs, the Silmarillion, or what? Stories set before the Fellowship, before, concurrent or after the Hobbit but happening elsewhere in Middle Earth that would tie into events leading up to the War of the Ring. -M |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on May 10, 2018 20:30:31 GMT -5
What's the story on the tv series? What are they supposed to be doing - prequels, sequels, spin-offs, the Silmarillion, or what? Stories set before the Fellowship, before, concurrent or after the Hobbit but happening elsewhere in Middle Earth that would tie into events leading up to the War of the Ring. -M So, a non-canonical cash grab, chasing the Game of Thrones dollars. Urrggh. I think Roquefort Raider predicted as much earlier in this thread. |
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Post by berkley on May 10, 2018 21:58:17 GMT -5
Yeah, you have to feel pretty sceptical about the advisability of the whole idea. I think LotR is different from something like, say Star Wars or Star Trek, which, though the brain-childs of individual creators, were always collaborative projects right from the start as far as actual production is concerned, including the writing.
LotR was Tolkien's creation from start to finish and I'm not sure I want to see some other writer (or more likely some committee of writers) trying to come up with new stories and characters set in that world - any more than I'd want to read some 21st century novelist write a sequel to Great Expectations.
But there are fans who think Before Watchmen was a great idea so I'm sure it will find its audience.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2018 22:31:12 GMT -5
Stories set before the Fellowship, before, concurrent or after the Hobbit but happening elsewhere in Middle Earth that would tie into events leading up to the War of the Ring. -M So, a non-canonical cash grab, chasing the Game of Thrones dollars. Urrggh. I think Roquefort Raider predicted as much earlier in this thread. Yeah, you have to feel pretty sceptical about the advisability of the whole idea. I think LotR is different from something like, say Star Wars or Star Trek, which, though the brain-childs of individual creators, were always collaborative projects right from the start as far as actual production is concerned, including the writing. LotR was Tolkien's creation from start to finish and I'm not sure I want to see some other writer (or more likely some committee of writers) trying to come up with new stories and characters set in that world - any more than I'd want to read some 21st century novelist write a sequel to Great Expectations. But there are fans who think Before Watchmen was a great idea so I'm sure it will find its audience. Except they've been doing this with Middle Earth and Tolkien properties going on some 40 years now. Most of the material in the ICE products for Middle Earth role-playing released in the early 80's onward did exactly what these shows will do, take hints and allusions form Tolkien about other places and happenings in Middle Earth and extrapolate from them to create new material. Later Tolkien based rpg's did the same. So did the Middle Earth MMORGPs that sold incredibly well. For example, the forces of Hara fought with Sauron's forces in the War of the Ring, and Tolkien gave a little background on them, but there were obviously events taking place there leading up to the War that could be fodder for storytelling. A couple of rpg settlements expanded on what Tolkien did say about the men living south of Gondor and created adventures for gaming storytelling there, set in Middle Earth without interfering or contradicting anything in the Hobbit or the trilogy (at the time of the MERP game only the Silmarillion itself and none of the history of Middle Earth volumes had been released so not sure how the material stacked up with mateiral in those that wasn't available when the game was made). Peter Jackson himself (whether for good or ill) chose to expand on the events surrounding the Necromancer hinted by Tolkien and given a little bit of detail in the appendices. There's lots of room for someone to explore without adapting directly from the trilogy or the Hobbit, and since those have already been adapted (and wouldn't work as well on TV as they did as films) I am glad they are not choosing to rehash that material. Is it a cash grab, possibly, but it's no different from the type of material the Tolien estate has been allowing for 40 years, so if it's a cash grab now, it was a cash grab then, and even if so, the games that resulted form it brought a lot of new fans to the books and created a lot of interesting material, so I am willing to wait and see what the show actually is before I dismiss it out of hand out of some notion of Tolkien purism that hasn't actually existed in Tolkien-based material for most of the time I have walked the earth. -M |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on May 10, 2018 23:37:43 GMT -5
So, a non-canonical cash grab, chasing the Game of Thrones dollars. Urrggh. I think Roquefort Raider predicted as much earlier in this thread. Yeah, you have to feel pretty sceptical about the advisability of the whole idea. I think LotR is different from something like, say Star Wars or Star Trek, which, though the brain-childs of individual creators, were always collaborative projects right from the start as far as actual production is concerned, including the writing. LotR was Tolkien's creation from start to finish and I'm not sure I want to see some other writer (or more likely some committee of writers) trying to come up with new stories and characters set in that world - any more than I'd want to read some 21st century novelist write a sequel to Great Expectations. But there are fans who think Before Watchmen was a great idea so I'm sure it will find its audience. Except they've been doing this with Middle Earth and Tolkien properties going on some 40 years now. Most of the material in the ICE products for Middle Earth role-playing released in the early 80's onward did exactly what these shows will do, take hints and allusions form Tolkien about other places and happenings in Middle Earth and extrapolate from them to create new material. Later Tolkien based rpg's did the same. So did the Middle Earth MMORGPs that sold incredibly well. For example, the forces of Hara fought with Sauron's forces in the War of the Ring, and Tolkien gave a little background on them, but there were obviously events taking place there leading up to the War that could be fodder for storytelling. A couple of rpg settlements expanded on what Tolkien did say about the men living south of Gondor and created adventures for gaming storytelling there, set in Middle Earth without interfering or contradicting anything in the Hobbit or the trilogy (at the time of the MERP game only the Silmarillion itself and none of the history of Middle Earth volumes had been released so not sure how the material stacked up with mateiral in those that wasn't available when the game was made). Peter Jackson himself (whether for good or ill) chose to expand on the events surrounding the Necromancer hinted by Tolkien and given a little bit of detail in the appendices. There's lots of room for someone to explore without adapting directly from the trilogy or the Hobbit, and since those have already been adapted (and wouldn't work as well on TV as they did as films) I am glad they are not choosing to rehash that material. Is it a cash grab, possibly, but it's no different from the type of material the Tolien estate has been allowing for 40 years, so if it's a cash grab now, it was a cash grab then, and even if so, the games that resulted form it brought a lot of new fans to the books and created a lot of interesting material, so I am willing to wait and see what the show actually is before I dismiss it out of hand out of some notion of Tolkien purism that hasn't actually existed in Tolkien-based material for most of the time I have walked the earth. -M Well, Peter Jackson's additions to The Hobbit trilogy were pretty much the definition of ill-advised tampering for no reason other than to wring more money out of the cinematic Middle-earth franchise IMHO. However, those additions differ from this proposed TV show inasmuch as Jackson was elaborating on Tolkien's existing plot for The Hobbit and other texts found in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. Having a television creative team write original, non-cannonical stories -- rather than embellishing existing Tolkien ones -- using Middle-earth as a setting, is a whole other ball game. As for the MERP game, that's a little different to an original TV show as well, since the core concept of any role-playing game is for the players to create their own stories in a fantasy setting. As such, it kind of gets a free pass from me for embellishing Tolkien's cannon in order to flesh out certain areas of Middle-earth history. Also, as far as I recall -- and it's been some 30 years since I last played MERP or looked at the rule books and supplements -- any such "fleshing out" was pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things. I remember those RPG manuals as being very faithful to the source material, almost to the point where it was detrimental to game play. To be honest, I have less of a problem with the Game of Thrones-inspired cash grab aspects of this proposed TV show because Tolkien himself wasn't shy of making money out of the franchise. It's more that I have a concern about a cynical, corporate entity like Amazon churning out a load of sub-standard, "scripted by committee", soulless crap, aimed at the lowest common denominator audience, but set in a fictional world that is very dear to my heart (see recent installments of the Star Wars franchise for more details). Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Superhero fare does not have a good track record on TV, as far as I'm concerned. Most shows from the last 30 years are utter bo****ks. So, I'm not gonna lie...I really hope this doesn't get made. |
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Post by berkley on May 11, 2018 0:10:04 GMT -5
Well, I didn't watch the Hobbit movies in large part precisely because I had heard they were going to pad out the original story with new material.
But as often happens when this kind of issue is raised, whether its Tolkien or something in comics (e.g. Moore's Watchmen, Kirby's new Gods, etc) I think we end up talking at cross-purposes. I'm mostly trying to express why I personally don't like the idea, as opposed to saying that no one else should watch it. When I said "You have to feel sceptical", I was using the general "you" - once I could have said "One has to feel sceptical", which makes more sense, but nowadays people tend to think it sounds stilted and pompous.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on May 11, 2018 5:31:59 GMT -5
I'd like to see the Silmarillion adapted into an animated form. Seeing Morgoth, Ancallion the Black, the original Balrogs, and the high elves of the Noldor in all their splendor and dread would be something else. This was an era when individual elves could take on Sauron 1 on 1 and win, and yet Morgoth still would have won in the long run. And with how beautiful the LOTR movies were, I feel only animation can capture what the world would have been like in the first age, which the beauty and grandeur of the third age depicted in LOTR is but a shadow of.
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