CT participate in HOBBIT films?

[Sauron the White]

This is pure speculation brought on by a discussion I was involved in yesterday on these boards. The subject was a possible HOBBIT movie or two directed by Jackson. Several reports indicate that in addition to THE HOBBIT as we know it, Jackson may attempt to add a second film using other materials from the Appendecies and elsewhere in the canon. This brings up the debate about the extent to which they can do that.

For example, Gondolin is mentioned in THE HOBBIT, but it certainly is not described to the level of detail that is found in THE SIL and and HOME. A person on these boards whose opinion I respect, William Cloud Hicklin, wrote the following

For events of the Third Age the LR and its appendices are really the only source, aside from the 'History of Galadriel and Celeborn' and the historical essays in UT. I noted in a thread a while back that in the (EE) death of Isildur PJ stuck with the LR account and avoided any part of the more detailed UT version.

Nobody's going to bother with de minimis borrowings, like the Ring of Barahir or the origin of Elves. Brief mentions can fly under the radar. Full narratives, on the other hand, based on elements of say Akallabeth which are manifestly not in the Appendices would pose a problem.

What I think is more likely is that PJ or whoever is going to concoct a near-total fiction involving the White Council and the Necromancer, which legally they can do. Dammit.
__________________

Which brings me to ask this question. If film directors are going to pursue to use material in the Appendecies but such material is not fully fleshed out there, should the Tolkien Estate consider participation in such films as an attempt "to get it right" rather than risk total misrepresentation?

I realize that they want nothing to do with such films. I realize they do not need additional monies that may come from such an arrangement. However, it seems to me that a self fulfilling prophecy of such is going to take place which goes like this.

The films come out, use sketchy material from the mentioned sources but is not consistent with the fuller material in SIL and HOME. The purists pile on the criticism using this as more proof of both Jacksons faults and his arrogance.

Jackson camp: we did the best we could based on sketchy material from what we owned and were barred from using more detailed sources.
Tolkien purists: well you got it wrong yet again. You should never have made this movie in the first place.
Jackson camp: well we could have gotten it right with just a little cooperation from the Estate which we would have paid for that help.
Tolkien purists: 40% right? 50% right? who cares about your movies? Not us.

So my question is this. In the interest in getting it right - as much as is possible in the change of medium from book to film - would it be in the interests of the Tolkien Estate and the filmmakers to make a little peace and work together?

[davem]

They had the complete rights to LotR & still messed the whole thing up. Why? Because they thought they could tell Tolkien's story better than Tolkien could, that they could tell a better story by chopping huge chunks of Tolkien's original & replacing them by trivial, nonsensical drivel. That being the case, even if they did get access to the Sil/HoM-e/UT material what makes you think they wouldn't do the same thing? The Estate could grant them the rights to the Gondolin material (to pursue your example) & still find the movie version full of shield-surfing Gondolindrim & the like.

This is about respect for the material, & Jackson, Boyens & the other one had their chance with LotR & blew it. Why should they be trusted again? The Estate, & CT in particular, would want the stories told as written, but if they sold the rights all they would be doing would be supplying Jackson & New Line with raw material to do with as they would - & every time they raised an objection they'd be met with the stock response 'Well, movies & books are different.' or 'We know what we're doing - look how much money we made with LotR.'

The Estate have nothing to gain from selling the rights - least of all any guarantee that the material would be treated with respect.

Look, they have the right to make a Hobbit movie. Any other movie(s) will be made for one reason & one reason only - to make money. If you think their concern stretches to matters of 'authenticity', or conforming to Tolkien's tale, you're sadly mistaken - Jackson et al are concerned with what will look good on screen, on SFX & 3d gimickry. If they don't want to get things wrong they can make a movie of TH, drawing on the book, & leave it at that.

Speaking for myself I've already seen & re-seen the Hobbit movie I want to see - its the one that runs in my head every time I read the book.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, it's an interesting idea to maunder about, although in real life we'll see squadrons of aerobatic swine first.

I can't see any arrangement which would satisfy the parties, in the first place because CRT has never tolerated anyone else playing on his father's patch; indeed not even himself (save that notorious gap-filler in The Silmarillion, which his older self now thinks was wrong), and certainly never remotely considered allowing Middle-earth novels by somebody else. It follows that Middle-earth screenplays by somebody else would be equally verboten.

In the second place, even if that essential barrier were to disappear, I couldn't imagine the Estate considering 'participation' unless they retained JRRT's 'absolute veto over objectionable material,' or Final Shooting Script Authority- and since Cash is no longer an issue, it's Art or nothing. No director or producer would ever tolerate any such thing, except in extremis (for instance Harry Potter, where the 'property' was too valuable not to let Jo have her say).

Participation would unavoidably imply endorsement, and I think an Officially Endorsed Tolkien Product which was to all intents and purposes authored by Philippa Boyens or Timothy Zahn or somebody is utterly out of the question. As far as the author's son is concerned, 'by Tolkien' means 'written by the late Professor JRRT.'- and there will never be any more of that (aside from some non-Middle-earth poems which have yet to be published).

It seems to me that if PJ wants to milk The Hobbit for two movies and doubled revenues, he could merely shoot the book without being forced by time constraints to make cuts. Given the quality of the 'original' material he added to the Rings trilogy, I can't see a prequel invented from whole cloth as avoiding the lameness of another Eragon.

[Sauron the White]

Both replies have an amount of truth in them. It is very hard for me to find fault with the thoughts of davem in saying

They had the complete rights to LotR & still messed the whole thing up. Why? Because they thought they could tell Tolkien's story better than Tolkien could, that they could tell a better story by chopping huge chunks of Tolkien's original & replacing them by trivial, nonsensical drivel. That being the case, even if they did get access to the Sil/HoM-e/UT material what makes you think they wouldn't do the same thing?

It is very hard to argue with the historical record. Yes, Jackson certainly did indeed have the complete rights to LOTR and made some changes. Again, that brings us back to the argument heard thousands of times already about the value of changes, both omissions and additions. I join you in not likeing some of the changes. But I certainly liked others and felt they made for a better film.

Are you correct in that Jackson could do the exact same thing even if he had the rights to expand the story and use more detailed descriptions and dialogue from other sources? Probably. The past is the best predictor of the future.

But again we come back to the debate about the merits of changes. WCH argues that if they want to make two films out of THE HOBBIT, they certainly can do so simply by filming the book as is.

It seems to me that if PJ wants to milk The Hobbit for two movies and doubled revenues, he could merely shoot the book without being forced by time constraints to make cuts. Given the quality of the 'original' material he added to the Rings trilogy,

Again we have the discussion about filming a book - not just the HOBBIT but any book - as a script for a film. Is that wise? It obviously would please some people - the Tolkien purists for one group - but would it make for a good film, or even as good of a film as otherwise could be.

My two cents are that I would hope Jackson - or any filmmaker - would include as much of HOBBIT as possible without excluding much save anything which would detract from the film or story. In that I would include the serving animals of Beorn who are just too jarring for my tastes. I also think it would add another facet of the inhabitants of Middle-earth which is not consistent with what the first three films gave us in LOTR and that which hundreds of millions of people are already familiar with.

But it does seem to me that the suggestion to add some other material - say the White Councils meetings and subsequent business with Dol-Guldur and events which bridge H with LOTR - would be welcomed by many viewers of the previous films.

But without the ability to use more accuracte and fuller desctiptions of those events from other sources, are we doomed to failure? Is this not a variation of a self fulfilling prophecy?

"No, we don't want you to use more detailed descriptions because they are not in the material you own. And when you try to wing it on your own by filling in the blanks with your own desctiptions, scenes and dialogue, we will be ready to pounce upon you and throttle you and scream that you got it wrong yet again."



There has to be a better way which takes in both the real world busniess considerations of filmmaking and those who intende to make these films with the legitimate want of the Tolkien print community to have things portrayed as accurate as possible.

[davem]

I suspect that Jackson's/New Line's position is that they want access to all Tolkien's M-e writings - not so that they can produce 'faithful' adaptations, but simply so that they can produce anything M-e related that they want to - or to put it another way, they don't want to be restricted in what they produce, story-wise.

My feeling is that they want to be able to produce a series of M-e movies (this applies to New Line in particular - it looks like their latest venture 'The Golden Compass' is on track to lose them money, so another M-e movie may well mean the difference between success & going out of business altogether), because M-e is a money spinner for them, but their motives are purely commercial.

In short, I don't think the studio has any desire to accept any deal that would give the Estate any creative control, let alone final say, & I think the Estate are savvy enough to know that selling the rights without that kind of control being retained will lead to a very slippery slope of a series of increasingly bad sword & sorcery movies at the end of which lies the Saturday morning cartoon 'Adventures of Merry & Pippin' depicting their 'hilarious' adventures in Fangorn taking on Saruman.....

[Sauron the White]

Of course the making of movies is a business - a big business with a huge downside of having to risk millions of dollars. sometimes over a hundred million dollars. Any film company which is not cognizant of the business side of the process will not stay around for very long.

I cannot take issue with the idea expressed that New Line Cinema is looking for revenue and certainly has not found it since ROTK left the theaters in 2004. COMPASS simply is not passing the test and will not be that revenue stream for them. Of course, the next Babe Ruth never is.

I am not as down on the business as others here seem to be. I accept it as a money making business and do not hold that against them. So is the book business and the publishers of JRRT certainly know how to milk something over and over again to keep those presses printing dollar and pound notes. Thats fine. If New Line wanted to fiendishly explot LOTR to the tune of making Saturday morning Merry and Pippin cartoons they certainly have had four years to attempt to do that. They have not sunk that low.

There seems to be an attempt to take the higher road of feature films in the spirit and feel of LOTR. YES YES YES I already know that Gimli doing fart jokes is not necessarily the higher road. No postings necessary about that. But in the continuum of motion picture quality, LOTR was fairly over on the higher quality side of that scale.

As I get older I get more pessimistic about nearly everything. One big reason is you realize that there are no real answers to the Big Questions you had as a youth. Heck, if you really become down you realize that there are not even any questions either. But I truly love the Middle-earth of the books as written by Tolkien. I have for the last three and one-half decades. I also have loved movies for even longer and love the LOTR films. It would be nice if this same old scene did not play out the way it appears to be playing out with all sides doing just what is predicted by convention and habit.

Five years from now I do not want to be engaging in a debate with davem and WCH about the lack of purity in THE HOBBIT films. And I certainly do not want to read how the filler stuff Jackson put because he was barred from the fuller more descriptive material was rubbish. There is opportunity here and I would love to see it actualized.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Five years from now I do not want to be engaging in a debate with davem and WCH about the lack of purity in THE HOBBIT films. And I certainly do not want to read how the filler stuff Jackson put because he was barred from the fuller more descriptive material was rubbish. There is opportunity here and I would love to see it actualized.

If they want to make a movie of TH they have all the material they need. Personally, I would have a problem with them importing other material into the story - whether that be the White Council & the assault on Dol Guldur or even the Quest for Erebor material. TH is a perfect, self contained tale & should be left as is.

Beyond that whether a further movie is made is entirely down to New Line - the idea that they would be agonising over not having access to the material they need to make it is a bit odd - like me agonising about how I'm going to juggle four rabid ferrets: the solution to that particular problem is that I don't actually have to juggle them at all.

Maybe its my age, but I honestly don't see why books have to be automatically turned into movies - as though books are nothing but 'first draft screenplays'. There is no necessity for any more M-e movies, & the only reason New Line want to make them is that they're apparently so incompetent that they can't come up with any other movies that anyone wants to watch (on the Golden Compass thing - I don't know whether its down to the 'boycott' which some Churches have tried to organise or whether its down to it being a bad movie, but New Line clearly have got themselves into a position where only another couple of Tolkien movies can save their bacon & that's the only reason they've gone crawling back to Jackson & want access to more of Tolkien's writings - they need to produce Tolkien movies that don't annoy the fans. But after what they did
to LotR I don't see why the Estate should care what happens to New Line....)

[Sauron the White]

davem - in this recent post and in other past posts you write that nobody has to make a movie. Any future problems can be dispatched with the ease of a magic wand simply by not making the movie. I certainly cannot argue with that. If I never drive in New York City I certainly do not have to worry about the traffic there. If I do not build a house on the side of a steep hill in California I certainly do not concern myself with fires and mudslides in that part of the world. Very very true.

However, allow me the temerity to say that your approach is extremely simplistic. Effective yes. But simplistic just the same.

We both live in a very real world. In that world, the imperatives that drive business may well drive an important part of the world. Here are the facts regardless of how you or I or anyone else may feel about them.

New Line Cinema owns the film rights to JRRT's LOTR and THE HOBBIT.
Peter Jackson helmed three of the most financially successful films of all time using these rights.
New Line Cinema is in the business of making films to make money for its owners and stockholders. In business, nothing succeeds like success.
Jackson is the odds on favorite, perhaps the prohibitive favorite, to helm future Middle-earth films based on properties that New Line owns.
There is far more in LOTR and HOBBIT about Middle-earth than the simple narrative tales of a brief time span. They have numerous references to events going back to the First and Second Ages as well as highly detailed material about the Third Age in which both LOTR and HOBBIT are placed. As such, those references are owned by New Line and are fair game for any director they may hire to lead such a project.
Some of these historical references are sketchy and not fully fleshed out to the point where you can make a sustained film about them.
There are other JRRT works, not owned by New Line, which provide a fuller, more descriptive narrative of these events which could be employed to bridge a gap between a HOBBIT film and the LOTR films which hundreds of people are already well acquainted with.

I think those facts are reality. To say that New Line or others simply do not have to make the films is to ignore that reality.

I am not advocating that the Tolkien Estate sign over the rights to SIL or HOME or any other property. I am suggesting that common sense prevail and the Estate allow the filmmakers to properly use more fully developed narratives, dialogue and descriptions in events in those books IF THEY APPLY TO MATERIAL COVERED IN EITHER THE HOBBIT OR LOTR.

I am not talking about a movie about Goldolin simply because Elrond mentions it in THE HOBBIT. I am not talking about a movie about Beren and Luthien and the silmarils simply because Aragorn sings about it in LOTR. But the White Councils dealings with the rise of the Necromancer, the assault on Dol guldur, the Erebor events and other material would be relevant and subject for inclusion.

But after what they did to LotR I don't see why the Estate should care what happens to New Line....)

I do not think they should be too angry about all the extra millions of copies of LOTR that were generated because of renewed interest in that subject generated by the success of those three films. If that amounts to harsh or shabby treatment, please, where do I get in that line for some of that harshness

[davem]

On the specific point:

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

I am not talking about a movie about Goldolin simply because Elrond mentions it in THE HOBBIT. I am not talking about a movie about Beren and Luthien and the silmarils simply because Aragorn sings about it in LOTR. But the White Councils dealings with the rise of the Necromancer, the assault on Dol guldur, the Erebor events and other material would be relevant and subject for inclusion.

I don't see any of that as being part of TH as such, but rather part of the later development of the Legendarium which came about as a result of the writing of LotR & its integration into the Legendarium. TH was not written as part of the Legendarium (as CT has stated, & he intentionally left out analysis of it in HoM-e) & is best seen & treated as a stand alone work. To introduce these 'darker', more complex themes into a move of TH would make the more 'fairy story' aspects of TH (Beorn's animals, talking birds etc) too difficult to integrate convincingly. Hence, for a movie of TH none of the material you mention is necessary.

On your more general point, I honestly don't care what kind of a pig's ear Jackson/New Line make of their 'Hobbit' movies, & I'm fairly sure that if they had access to every single thing Tolkien wrote they'd still fill them with the kind of inanities they filled LotR with.

And the real point, as Mr Hicklin as pointed out, is that it ain't gonna happen.

[Sauron the White]

Ah yes. So we just buy our tickets, take our favorite seats around the well worn track track while, as advertised, the familiar cars scream towards each other at high speeds. They crash, burn and we walk away talking about the recklesness of it all and why did this have to happen yet again?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

Ah yes. So we just buy our tickets, take our favorite seats around the well worn track track while, as advertised, the familiar cars scream towards each other at high speeds. They crash, burn and we walk away talking about the recklesness of it all and why did this have to happen yet again?

At the risk of stating the obvious, JRR Tolkien was a writer of books, not screenplays. He wrote stories for people to read, not for them to be made into films for the hard of thinking. Anyone who wishes to can pick up his books & experience the stories as they were meant to be experienced.

Movie adaptations of great literature are in most cases essentially trivialisations, & LotR proved this. The one thing that is lost in any adaptation is language, & Tolkien's language is some of the most beautiful & evocative in modern literature - this is why the radio adaptation of LotR works so well in capturing the spirit & mood of the book: at least 90% of the language (including narration) is taken straight from the book. Its also why the movie fails to capture that mood & spirit: almost none of the dialogue in the movie is Tolkien's & there is no narration. Hence, any movie adaptation is bound to fail, & your thesis that if the movie makers had access to Tolkien's other M-e writings they would be able to create a faithful adaptation is simply incorrect.

[Sauron the White]

At the risk of stating the obvious JRR Tolkien sold two of his books to be made as films. Tolkien did this of his own free will, as a thinking adult weighing the various options in front of him. He also signed a contract giving up any control of the content of these films, the use of characters or anything else contained in THE HOBBIT and LOTR. He made a very clear choice - money or art and he selected money which he was paid in full. To then offer arguments which appear to claim that movies of his books are less than honest is a complete fraud.

You want to get angry about somebody you think ruined the books of JRR Tolkien? The first person in line is JRRT himself.

I have said it before and will say it again here. I find it simply amazing that the world embraced the three LOTR films as they never embraced any other such films before. Professional film critics loved them and the film industry showered them with awards of excellence. They were wildly successful beyond what anyone had a right to expect of them considering that LOTR adaptions had a pretty lousy track record. But is that good enough for the hardcore purist word community? Nope. Nothing less than a word for word, page for page translation would have pleased some folks and even then we would have heard how they got the first 26 hours pretty spot on but them mixed up the speech on page 1046.

I say that in all seriousness.

[Aiwendil]

Sauron the White: I wish I could understand why you are (apparently) so irked or offended by the fact that some people have a different opinion concerning the films than you do. Obviously, no one can dispute that they are popular. But, to speak plainly, what's it to you if Davem or I or anyone else think a poor job was done in certain ways? Surely it's not surprising that the people who are the most avid fans of LotR in its literary form may be among those least enthralled with its cinematic adaptation. Surely the fact that something is popular does not mean it ought not be criticized. And surely the fact that something is inevitable (e.g. the production of a film) does not mean that everybody has to be happy about that fact.

I don't mean to add more kindling to the fire - I'd just like to understand what it is that you're arguing for. Surely not that dissenters are forbidden to have an opinion or are wrong to express it.

[Galin]

Sauron the White wrote: '... Nope. Nothing less than a word for word, page for page translation would have pleased some folks and even then we would have heard how they got the first 26 hours pretty spot on but them mixed up the speech on page 1046.'

Well, no one I have ever read has ever argued for such a thing. I would think David Bratman speaks for many when he writes...

'I can cite you three Austen scholars who hold that "Clueless" is more faithful to the spirit of Austen than any of the actual Austen adaptations. In fact I did cite them: see p. 32-33 of my essay in Tolkien on Film'.

The point, of course, being that faithfulness to the spirit is not the same as strict adherence to the text. So when we criticize Jackson for lacking the spirit, it doesn't mean we're demanding that he make a literalist adaptation. (...) A film of a book that is _too_ faithful to the text is likely to be stultified and boring. The adaptation process does require a creative imagination. I ask only that this creative imagination be faithful to the spirit of the text.'

[Sauron the White]

Galin - I have never read Jane Austen or seen any of the films made of here works. I understand and appreciate that her work is beloved by many women who feel her characters speak to them. My comment about the page to page adaption is made after several frustrating years of discussing these matters with others. I have only joined this site within the last year but participated in these debates elsewhere too many times to count. The anti-film crowd almost always concedes in theory that you have to make some changes from a book to a film but when it comes to real instances, they find few that suit them preferring to state over and over and over again how much better it was done in the book. Davem has said many times here how his favorite adaption is the BBC radio series which was extremely faithful to the books in its almost lifting of the pages to the airwaves.

Perhaps my statement was made in slight exaggeration to make a point - but only slightly.

Robert Deniro in THE DEERHUNTER said "this is this... this isn't something else ... this is this." A book is a book and a film is a film and they are two very different things. This fact of life apparently does not sit well with some here who insist on confusing the two repeatedly.

Aiwendil - I have no problem with anyone criticizing the films because what was in them did not work well as a film. Its when people cannot understand or accept that a book and a film are two different things and they keep comparing the two that I get irked. Allow me to give an example.

In ROTK, we see the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in some length. At its conclusion, the Army of the Dead is seen in green scrubbing bubble form quickly overpowering Saurons forces and washing away his soldiers like so much comet cleanser on a filthy sink. It happens so fast and is done with such ease that it completely negates the previous scenes of heroism and sacrifice by the Gondorians, Rohirrim and other forces of good. What was the point of the masive calvary charge if the Army of the Dead was going to so easily save the day anyways? Jackson could have still used the Dead if only he had edited that few seconds of scene in which the green bubbling army washes over the battlefield and the city. It was far too easy.

That it a criticism of the Jackson films based on what happened in the films. It requires no knowledge of the books and stands alone apart from the books regardless if a viewer has read them or not read them.

But over and over again, we read here and on other sites how such and such a scene was not done as well as it was in the book. Boromirs death scene was too dramatic and dragged out too much in the scene and was far more subtle and sublime in the book. Arwens weakness was not right because it was not done that way in the book. Boromir never should have picked up the ring on the slopes of the mountain because it was not done that way in the book. And on and on and on.

If you want to criticize the films - and they certainly are not perfect and are fair game for criticism - do so in judging them as films.

In the excellent film THE COLOR PURPLE, based on the equally excellent book, the character of Celie is questioned by Shug Avery. Shug has been sleeping with Albert the husband of Celie and cannot understand why he is so kind and doting with her while with Celie he is a crude brute. Shug asks how does Albert treat her when she is away and only Celie and Albert are together.

and Celie gives a heartbreaking answer that describes the motivations of many anti-film people here -
"He beats me when you aint here. He beat me for not being you."