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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1776 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 22, 2024

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Do you think that Silmarillion will ever be put to screen? It is just too depressing with few bright spots.

There was a window for “serious fantasy” adaptation around the peak of Game of Thrones. I could see one of the more contained stories, Beren and Luthien or even Túrin Turambar, working in that context.

You can’t get too mythic, or you’ll lose people. See Marvel vs. DC films. But you also can’t inject human elven interest, because it will subsume the setting into thin plots. See everything about Rings of Power. So parts I, II and IV are out. I’d argue against doing the War of Wrath for the same reasons. It’s amazing in the source material as a culmination of this centuries-long slide into oblivion. Without that setup, it’s pure dei ex machina.

A lot of the other stories only work as part of that arc. The characters are static and situations are largely out of their control. I could see a miniseries or similar capturing the various political disasters, building up to Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but man. Talk about a rough place to end it.

The mûmak in the room is, of course, Fëanor. He’s got some of the best character notes, but that’s not enough to make a character arc. He sets so much in motion, but without room for the payoff, it’d fall flat. Maybe he’d work as a force of nature, silhouetted in the opening credits and otherwise avoided? The Dark Souls opening cutscene, so to speak? I can’t think of a good comparison in TV.

Anyway. I suggested the best options were Túrin and Luthien. The former works as a self-contained tragedy. It’s got great setpieces, actual character development, and the lurid and very human disasters so popular in prestige TV. I think it’d still work, even if the market for grim stories has subsided a bit.

Beren and Luthien are pretty different. They’re more fleshed out than most Silmarillion characters, and have enough plot beats for an actual movie. But the setpieces are kind of underwhelming—could one portray dancing Morgoth to sleep without causing eye-rolls? I could see this one working only as a painfully unironic portrayal. Something on par with the Jackson movies, where excellent production and casting lets people suspend disbelief. A well-executed love story consistently sells well. However…I’m not sure such an angle would be chosen today. The urge to Subvert Expectations is still incredibly strong.

I miss @FarNearEverywhere.

Depressing is not that big of a deal, a lot of genres (horror, noir, catastrophe, etc.) aren't exactly sunshine and puppies. It's just that the source material is sometimes a bit dry for general audience, and the fun parts aren't often spelled out but only implied, so the movie script needs to add a lot of things that make it a movie attractive to a modern audience. And this needs to be done very tastefully because the original is not of that nature at all. And "tastefully" does not seem to be something the people in (extended) Hollywood are capable of doing. Thus, abominations like ROP are born. Is it possible in theory? I think it might be. But it requires a lot of skill and love and integrity, and I don't expect somebody with all these qualities to be able to pass through the gatekeepers of Hollywood and be able to actually execute such project.

In animated form, maybe. Not live action. Too niche. Should've been part of the Peter Jackson-era if attempted. And Hollywood has regressed too much to pull it off now.

It's too disjointed a narrative to work as one story (either on film or on tv), but I could see movies or series being made out of particular vignettes that are loosely connected. I could definitely see adaptations of the stories of Beren and Luthien, Turin Turambar, Earendil and the War of Wrath, etc. at some point down the road.

Beren amd Luthien is the only story in the Silmarillion with enough meat on its bones to really fill out a movie or tv show script. That, combined with the obvious through-line to Aragorn and Arwen and the fact that it's the only Silmarillion sub-story with 4-quadrant appeal, means it's by far the most likely to get an adaptation any time soon.

An adaption is possible, but many people, especially Tolkien fans, won't like it.

It's possible, since Christopher Tolkien died. It's not clear to me that whoever manages the estate now (his children, I guess) will be as protective of the legacy as he was. I think it's kinda hard to adapt because there isn't a real character through-line, but Hollywood might invent something there.

That said I have no interest in seeing it happen. LOTR was already the best case scenario we're likely to see, and I thought the movies had egregious problems as adaptations of Tolkien (though they were great movies on their own merits). The Hobbit movies were straight up bad movies (let alone being good adaptations), and from everything I've read about Rings of Power it's laughably bad. I doubt that a Silmarillion adaptation would fare better, and as it's my favorite book of all time I have no real desire to watch that train wreck.

LOTR was already the best case scenario we're likely to see, and I thought the movies had egregious problems as adaptations of Tolkien

I remember thinking with each movie that the problem was never stuff that was left out but the completely and utterly pointless Hollywoodisms that were added. I can only guess how bad job a modern production would do, particularly with source material that doesn't spell as many things out.

Yeah, that was basically my complaint as well. For all the attention that got paid to Tom Bombadil, I thought it was perfectly reasonable to cut him. It was when Jackson and Walsh went "we need to add more conflict and play up the Ring" that things really left a sour taste in my mouth. I do think that the Scouring of the Shire should've been included, though. It is the capstone on all the Hobbits' character arcs, and not having it at all was a big misstep. Perhaps leave it for the Extended Edition, but you gotta have it in some form.

My line of thought was that is mostly a tragedy. It is just 400 pages of the elves getting their asses handed to them (not entirely without their own cooperation in that)

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