Peter Jackson FIRED~!
Gandalf's Li'l Buddy
Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
CBC Arts
A film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit may be made without
director Peter Jackson because of a dispute over profits from the Lord of
the Rings films.
New Line Cinema, which owns the rights to The Hobbit, told Jackson they
would not be using him, according to a letter Jackson and partner Fran
Walsh posted on the Lord of the Rings fan site onering.net.
Peter Jackson accepts the Oscar after the film The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King won for best motion picture. Jackson posted a
letter on a Lord of the Rings fan site saying he won't be making the
planned film version of The Hobbit.Peter Jackson accepts the Oscar after
the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won for best
motion picture. Jackson posted a letter on a Lord of the Rings fan site
saying he won't be making the planned film version of The Hobbit.
At issue was an ongoing legal dispute over profits from the trilogy,
which generated nearly $3 billion US in theatres around the world.
Jackson has accused New Line of improper accounting practices in
calculating profits and refused to sign on to do the film until the
dispute is settled. His lawyers told the New York Times earlier this year
the discrepancy could be worth as much as $100 million.
And according to Jackson, New Line claims they needed to move on the
project soon before their rights to The Hobbit expire.
"This outcome is not what we anticipated or wanted, but neither do we see
any positive value in bitterness and rancor," they wrote. "We now have no
choice but to let the idea of a film of The Hobbit go and move forward
with other projects."
A spokesman at Jackson's Wingnut Films confirmed the authenticity of the
letter.
Jackson became revered among fans of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy for
managing to adapt the books for the screen. The third film, The Return of
the King, won 11 Academy Awards including best picture and best director
for Jackson.
New Line also had plans to make a second unnamed prequel to the Lord of
the Rings trilogy after The Hobbit, and Jackson had been tabbed as
director.
But the decision may not be as open and shut as the director writes. For
while New Line owns the rights to produce the film, the distribution
rights are owned by MGM, which has said in recent weeks it is committed
to The Hobbit with Jackson at the helm.
A spokesman told Variety on Monday "the matter of Peter Jackson directing
The Hobbit films is far from closed."
Christopher Kreuzer
rec.arts.movies.current-films in - is anyone there interested in this?]
Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
> http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2006/11/21/jackson-hobbit.html
>
>
> Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
> Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
> CBC Arts
<snip>
> Jackson became revered among fans of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy for
> managing to adapt the books for the screen.
Aaaggh! :-) Jackson became revered by _some_ Tolkien fans. And some of those
are technically fans of Jackson's interpretation of LotR, rather than
Tolkien's original creation of LotR. Some are both, of course.
> New Line also had plans to make a second unnamed prequel to the Lord
> of the Rings trilogy after The Hobbit, and Jackson had been tabbed as
> director.
Like someone posting in the RABT-only thread (three different threads about
this story so far...), I'm confused about this. Someone suggested that the
prequel in question was Farmer Giles of Ham, and that Roverandom is also on
the cards, but I suspect that was a joke. Is it possible that the lawyers
have determined that it is possible to do a movie covering First Age and
Second Age material based solely on what is in the Appendices to LotR?
> But the decision may not be as open and shut as the director writes.
> For while New Line owns the rights to produce the film, the
> distribution rights are owned by MGM, which has said in recent weeks
> it is committed to The Hobbit with Jackson at the helm.
Ooh! Two competing /Hobbit/ films? :-)
> A spokesman told Variety on Monday "the matter of Peter Jackson
> directing The Hobbit films is far from closed."
Hang on! "Hobbit films"? More than one? Um. How? :-/
Christopher
Stan Brown
<spam...@blueyonder.co.uk>:
> [Removing most of the cross-posts to other newsgroups. I've left
> rec.arts.movies.current-films in - is anyone there interested in this?]
>
> Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
> > Jackson became revered among fans of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy for
> > managing to adapt the books for the screen.
>
> Aaaggh! :-) Jackson became revered by _some_ Tolkien fans.
Anyone who could write "Tolkien's fantasy trilogy" has already lost
me.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://users.telerama.com/~taliesen/tolkien/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
Harkness
Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
>
>
> Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
> Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
> CBC Arts
>
You can't be fired from a job that you were never hired for.
John Harkness
Troels Forchhammer
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these
staves:
>
<snip>
> Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
>> http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2006/11/21/jackson-hobbit.html
>>
<snip>
>> Jackson became revered among fans of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy
>> for managing to adapt the books for the screen.
>
> Aaaggh! :-) Jackson became revered by _some_ Tolkien fans.
And, since we're introducing a dose of realism into this, reviled by
others for his /in/ability to do just that adaptation ;-)
<snip>
>> New Line also had plans to make a second unnamed prequel
[...]
> Is it possible that the lawyers have determined that it is
> possible to do a movie covering First Age and Second Age
> material based solely on what is in the Appendices to LotR?
IANAL, but at a guess, I'd say that the stuff in the appendices is
included in the film-rights -- the question would probably be whether
'they' (those, probably not lawyers, who involved in that kind of
decisions) have decided that there is enough material in the
appendices to make a prequel: not that I think that part should be a
problem for script-writers as inventive as those who wrote the LotR
scripts (where the problem would, beforehand, have appeared rather to
cut in the available material than to come up with new stuff to fill
the gaps . . .).
The horror scenario would, to me, be a film based loosely on the
appendices, but inventing most of the narration (as it would,
obviously, have to invent nearly all the action).
<snip>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
It is the theory which decides what can be observed.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Derek Broughton
> [Removing most of the cross-posts to other newsgroups. I've left
> rec.arts.movies.current-films in - is anyone there interested in this?]
>
> Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
>> But the decision may not be as open and shut as the director writes.
>> For while New Line owns the rights to produce the film, the
>> distribution rights are owned by MGM, which has said in recent weeks
>> it is committed to The Hobbit with Jackson at the helm.
>
> Ooh! Two competing /Hobbit/ films? :-)
I don't think so - didn't exactly the same thing happen with FOTR? New Line
& the distributor had significant disagreements. Eventually they worked
them out. In the end, the distributor can only agree, or not, to
distribute the film that is made.
>
>> A spokesman told Variety on Monday "the matter of Peter Jackson
>> directing The Hobbit films is far from closed."
>
> Hang on! "Hobbit films"? More than one? Um. How? :-/
No, they'll threaten New Line - saying "we want Jackson, and if we don't get
him, we won't see any point in providing an advertising budget". New Line
will retaliate with "if we don't get started on it now, there won't be a
movie", and eventually I predict that everybody will agree to give Jackson
some of the money he claims to be owed from LOTR, and _more_ of the money
from /The Hobbit/ and he'll be back in.
--
derek
weretable and the undead chairs
>> A spokesman told Variety on Monday "the matter of Peter Jackson
>> directing The Hobbit films is far from closed."
>
>Hang on! "Hobbit films"? More than one? Um. How? :-/
Peter Jackson had stated that The Hobbit needed some spicing up and he
intended to bring additional characters from LotR into the story, add
new story material and make two movies out of it instead of one.
Considering how weird some of the additions were in LotR (the Elves at
Helms Deep for example) I can only imagine what he would do with a
whole lot of new material.
A five headed dragon, Arwen slaying him, the trolls become Balrogs...
Warchild
Um pardon me - but it is MGM/New Line who is planning on two films.
Even with Jackson off the project.
Find something else to complain about.
Warchild
"Harkness" <cali...@yahoo.com> wrote:
This is business as usual for Hollywood - f*ck you over and then make
you say 'thank you, can I have another please?'.
David E. Powell
That's raw, though I must ad,it that part of me wonders what Micahel
Bay could do with a Tolkien movie.
Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
josephm...@netzero.com
David E. Powell wrote:
> That's raw, though I must ad,it that part of me wonders what Micahel
> Bay could do with a Tolkien movie.
Bilbo and Gandalf stride directly toward the camera in slow motion,
tunics billowing and pipes held insouciantly, while Smaug explodes in a
giant fireball in the background, all to the tune of a hair band power
ballad.
Joe Ramirez
George Peatty
>> Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
>> Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
>> CBC Arts
>You can't be fired from a job that you were never hired for.
I'm one of those glad that Peter Jackson will not be involved in the Hobbit,
if it ever gets made. The Hobbit is a completely different story from the
Lord of the Rings, and those differences can best be maintained by having
someone other than Peter Jackson do this movie. My personal preference is
to see the Hobbit as an animated feature, but that's not going to happen ..
Derek Broughton
> I'm one of those glad that Peter Jackson will not be involved in the
> Hobbit,
> if it ever gets made. The Hobbit is a completely different story from the
> Lord of the Rings, and those differences can best be maintained by having
> someone other than Peter Jackson do this movie. My personal preference is
> to see the Hobbit as an animated feature, but that's not going to happen
> ..
It's already happened - or was that just a pipeweed induced delusion that I
had?
--
derek
BaJoRi
>
>> I'm one of those glad that Peter Jackson will not be involved in the
>> Hobbit,
>> if it ever gets made. The Hobbit is a completely different story from
>> the
>> Lord of the Rings, and those differences can best be maintained by having
>> someone other than Peter Jackson do this movie. My personal preference
>> is
>> to see the Hobbit as an animated feature, but that's not going to happen
>> ..
I agree that the LOTR trilogy is a much more mature story, compared to the
Hobbit. However, what I am worried about, is that they will completely
trivialize the story and go for the "Happy Feet" demographic. I can just
imagine Thorin Oakenshield, voiced in such a way as to make him seem like a
flashback of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Rockboy
> My personal preference is
> to see the Hobbit as an animated feature, but that's not going to happen ..
It was done. It sucked.
--
Rockboy
You think I'm out of my head
But I'm romantically dead
So come on I'll waste my life on you
weretable and the undead chairs
>Um pardon me - but it is MGM/New Line who is planning on two films.
>Even with Jackson off the project.
That may be and they might have intended to do it to begin with. But
the first time I heard about two Hobbit films was in a quote from PJ
and that is still the only article I have read giving any detail on
*how* it would be made into two films. It was at least a couple of
months later when I read a story about the studios planning on making
two films.
Also I doubt he will be "off the project" when the dust settles. The
LotR movies made too much money.
Michael O'Neill
> http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2006/11/21/jackson-hobbit.html
> Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
> Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
> CBC Arts
You know, I was one of "Jacksonfuckwits" most vitriolic critics,
and I still have serious reservations about the films, how
they will tend to usurp the seminal works in the minds of
future generations, but in the end I think the balance
tilted favourably towards Jackson's work, for his
undoubted commitment to his vision of the work
and his detailed follow through, using actors
of sufficient range and calibre to make his
dream a reality for a new generation.
I think his work on the "Tolkien Trilogy" <cough> has
merit enough to allow it to be judged as a story
told in another art form *based* on the seminal
works by Tolkien and for that I am satisfied.
I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
appendices and/or the silmarillion, and he has
shown in the scenes with Sméagol/Gollum and
Frodo that he can do "Hobbit" without
being unnecessarily "cute".
I do not think that a Hobbit aping the pacing and
"feel" of the "Tolkien Trilogy" <spew> would be
a good thing in principle, since the loss of
innocence is part of what the story covers,
and Bilbo's journey was earlier than
Frodo's and the seminal work was
slanted toward a different age
group in the telling of it.
I hope the participants come to their senses and
allow Jackson free rein to interpret the works
in his own inimitable style, because, like it
or loath it, the man has a talent for what
he does, and films by committee suck.
FWIW
M.
David Johnston
<o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>
>allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>
>appendices and/or the silmarillion,
Especially the Silmarillion. We never really got to see what Tolkien
might have done with it so there's no opportunity for invidious
comparisons.
BaJoRi
"Rockboy" <rockboy@rockboy..net> wrote in message
news:hta9h.347085$1T2.120231@pd7urf2no...
> George Peatty wrote:
>> My personal preference is
>> to see the Hobbit as an animated feature, but that's not going to happen
>> ..
>
> It was done. It sucked.
>
For what it was, the animated feautre really wasn't all that bad. It had
pretty decent voice characterizations and told the story fairly well,
without alot of added baggage.
The biggest issue with a Hobbit movie is that they will try to duplicate the
feel of the Rankin Bass version, or completely Disny-up the thing, in order
to make a theme park ride later.
It will all depend on the director. And my guess is that they will choose an
unknown, in order to try and avoid comparisons to Jackson.
Troels Forchhammer
David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> spoke these staves:
>
> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:12:09 +0000, Michael O'Neill
> <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>> I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>> allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>> appendices and/or the silmarillion,
Should any prequel arise, it would seem natural to let Jackson direct
it --it would, after all, be seen as an extension of the work he has
already done on LotR. /The Hobbit/ is another book altogether, and
with a very different tone and address -- but I don't think it will
matter one bit who gets to direct /The Hobbit/ with respect to that
-- the treatment will, in any case, follow in the path shown by
Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings'.
Incidentally, Sir Ian McKellen is now expressing regret that Jackson
shouldn't direct a film (loosely) based on /The Hobbit/:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6173178.stm>
> Especially the Silmarillion.
That is not going to happen while Christopher Tolkien is alive -- and
probably not as long as his copyright (which I suppose will go to the
Tolkien Estate when he dies) still applies (if he can stipulate that
no film should be made, then I'd expect the Estate to abide by that).
For my own part, I am happy that this is so: though I can enjoy
watching Jackson's films as mere entertainment (I'm not knowledgeable
enough about the medium to be able to appreciate the technical
skill), I don't really want more of it -- in particular in view of
the way he treated with Tolkien's ethical and philosophical themes.
> We never really got to see what Tolkien might have done with it
> so there's no opportunity for invidious comparisons.
That's nonsense. Not only do we have an actual book, which is 95%
J.R.R. Tolkien, but we also now have all the background material to
tell us in far more detail what it means.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the
world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Michael O'Neill
<snip>
> Should any prequel arise, it
> would seem natural to let Jackson
> direct it --it would, after all, be
> seen as an extension of the work he has
> already done on LotR.
And
> That [the Silmarillion] is not going to happen while Christopher Tolkien is alive
<snip>
I presume you mean by these apparently contradictory utterances that the
prequel will be limited to the Appendices and you see this is utterly
distinct from matters touched on by the Silmarillion and when you use the
title "Silmarillion" you are also referring to the Ainulindale and the
Akallabeth.
But you also state;-
> /The Hobbit/ is another book altogether.
Here you manage to lose even me.
Certainly the hobbit is different in *style*, that's a given.
But you if you countenance a prequel based on the Appendices you cannot
balk at him doing the Hobbit. BOTH are essentially prequels to the LotR,
the former more remote, the latter more intimately bound up with it.
In fact whatever about the Prequel, the Hobbit certainly must be done by
Jackson or else invidious comparisons will arise - heck, he has all of
Hobbitton built already!
As for the Silmarillion, certain items related in full in the
Silmarillion are already referred to both in the Appendices, the LotR
itself and in the Hobbit. A short list from the LotR might include; -
The Downfall of Numenor.
The Lay of Beren and Luthien.
The Lay of Earendil the Mariner.
I'm sure there are many other items touched on.
M.
Pat O'Connell
I owned a copy of the Silmarillion. IIRC Christopher Tolkien merely
edited the stories, rather than trying to fill them out from JRRT's notes.
--
Pat O'Connell
[note munged EMail address]
Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but footprints,
Kill nothing but vandals...
Troels Forchhammer
Michael O'Neill <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> spoke these staves:
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>> Should any prequel arise, it would seem natural to let Jackson
>> direct it --it would, after all, be seen as an extension of the
>> work he has already done on LotR.
>
> And
>
>> That [the Silmarillion] is not going to happen while Christopher
>> Tolkien is alive
>
> <snip>
>
> I presume you mean by these apparently contradictory utterances
Where is the apparent contradiction?
Do you think that a prequel (the 'prequel' is, as I had hoped was
clear, referring to the 'second unnamed prequel' discussed elsewhere
-- i.e. a film distinct from that based on /The Hobbit/) to LotR is
possible only by incorporating material found only in /The
Silmarillion/, /Unfinished Tales/ etc.? I'd disagree with that --
even if it would naturally involve the invention of a lot of
material.
> that the prequel will be limited to the Appendices and you see
> this is utterly distinct from matters touched on by the
> Silmarillion and when you use the title "Silmarillion" you are
> also referring to the Ainulindale and the Akallabeth.
By 'The Silmarillion' I might as well mean /anything/ that is not
published in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
Given Christopher Tolkien's attitude towards the film projects, as it
has been reported (I'm inclined to trust the reports on that, though
I can, naturally, not know for certain), I find it extremely unlikely
that he will permit the sale, lease or any use of any film rights
that are still in the control of the Tolkien Estate. That would, as
far as I am aware, mean that the only authentical Tolkien material
available for that 'second unnamed prequel' would have to be from the
appendices to LotR -- I believe that the rights to film /The Hobbit/
and /The Lord of the Rings/ are currently the only that are not
controlled by the Tolkien Estate?
Material covered in /The Lord of the Rings/ and in /The Hobbit/ is,
of course, available to the respective holders of film-rights
regardless of whether the same information can be found in books to
which they do not hold any rights -- I'm sorry if I left any
confusion about that point.
> But you also state;-
>
>> /The Hobbit/ is another book altogether.
>
> Here you manage to lose even me.
I thought it was pretty straight-forward ;-)
We are speaking of two books, /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the
Rings/.
The greater part, the main story, of the latter has already seen a
trilogy of films based upon it directed by Peter Jackson, but there
is still 'unfilmed' material in that book that could, presumably, be
turned into one or more prequel films in that series.
/The Hobbit/ is another book altogether. Both in the strictly
technical way, meaning that the rights to it are not associated with
the rights to LotR, but also in style, narrative mode, thematic
content etc. etc. /The Hobbit/ wasn't even originally set in Middle-
earth, but was brought into Middle-earth with some effort (and not
with complete success in all aspects, IMO).
> Certainly the hobbit is different in *style*, that's a given.
Precisely.
> But you if you countenance a prequel based on the Appendices you
> cannot balk at him doing the Hobbit.
Of course I can. The appendices are part of the same book that he has
already made his film-version of the main narrative of. The
appendices, though different in style, are far better suited to the
same cinematic mode of narration than is the Hobbit (considering its
own mode of narration).
> BOTH are essentially prequels to the LotR, the former more remote,
> the latter more intimately bound up with it.
Strictly speaking the appendices aren't a prequel, but an integral
part of LotR, so they are naturally the more intimately bound up with
the book: they are a part of it.
Looking at it as three distinct narratives, it is difficult to say
which are closest in subject matter -- parts of the appendices are no
less intimately bound up with the narrative of LotR than is /The
Hobbit/; and I expect a film to focus on those parts.
The main difference, however, is, IMO, one of style and narrative
mode rather than subject matter. But I don't think that anyone
making a film based on /The Hobbit/ (at this point in time) will take
that into consideration -- they will, under any circumstances, play
into the mode of narration employed by Jackson.
> In fact whatever about the Prequel, the Hobbit certainly must be
> done by Jackson or else invidious comparisons will arise - heck,
> he has all of Hobbitton built already!
Does anyone know who actually owns that set? I somehow doubt that
Peter Jackson owns it personally, so it might be available also for
others?
And as for invidious comparisons between the style of Peter Jackson
and some other director, I'll have to say, frankly, that I couldn't
care less -- though I think that Jackson's work is the best we could
have hoped for (to the extent that my hopes were higher, I have only
self-delusion and my own naiveté to blame for any disappointment), I
don't think that his work was unique in quality: I'd guess that
dozens of directors could have made equally good films based on LotR
(but, obviously, these would have been very different in contents).
> As for the Silmarillion, certain items related in full in the
> Silmarillion are already referred to both in the Appendices,
[...]
Certainly -- the problem is that the film-makers will (as far as I've
understood it) be unable to use anything which is /only/ in material
outside that to which they have the film-rights. That would basically
mean that they would be forced to invent new stuff that differ from
the tale in e.g. /The Silmarillion/.
If done as a prequel to LotR, however, I'd expect it to focus on the
Third Age stuff -- mostly the histories of Arnor, Gondor and Rohan,
so most of /The Silmarillion/ wouldn't matter. The film-makers would
have to make sure that they did not use anything that appear only in
'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age', or in the third-age
chapters of /Unfinished Tales/, either by circumventing it or by
inventing something that is inconsistent with it -- they'd probably
prefer the former solution wherever possible.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
My adversary's argument
is not alone malevolent
but ignorant to boot.
He hasn't even got the sense
to state his so-called evidence
in terms I can refute.
- Piet Hein, /The Untenable Argument/
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> Incidentally, Sir Ian McKellen is now expressing regret that Jackson
> shouldn't direct a film (loosely) based on /The Hobbit/:
> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6173178.stm>
That's cos he wants to be Gandalf again! :-)
Looking further down that article, I see Jackson has slimmed down again. He
really looks very different when he is slim like that. Smaller somehow. Like
a _real_ hobbit!
I see that the film fans still can't spell Tolkien:
"A user of fan site theonering.net has registered the domain name
boycottnewline.com, which links to another petition. "Something must happen
to get New Line and Jackson to talk about the [legal case], which has been
hanging over future Tolkein-related productions since 2005," the owner has
written."
I'm also glad to see that the media are reporting the reactions of the fans
who are pleased, or couldn't care less, that Jackon seems not to be the one
to direct the film now. Kudos to the journalist for being balanced in the
reporting.
Christopher
Rockboy
Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
David Johnston
wrote:
>David Johnston wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:12:09 +0000, Michael O'Neill
>> <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>>>
>>> allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>>>
>>> appendices and/or the silmarillion,
>>
>> Especially the Silmarillion. We never really got to see what Tolkien
>> might have done with it so there's no opportunity for invidious
>> comparisons.
>
>Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
Nonsense. There's material for a dozen films in there. What, you
thought I was talking about putting the whole thing into one film?
Rockboy
Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
David Johnston
wrote:
>David Johnston wrote:
>> rOn Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:26:26 GMT, Rockboy <rockboy@rockboy..net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> David Johnston wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:12:09 +0000, Michael O'Neill
>>>> <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>>>>>
>>>>> allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>>>>>
>>>>> appendices and/or the silmarillion,
>>>> Especially the Silmarillion. We never really got to see what Tolkien
>>>> might have done with it so there's no opportunity for invidious
>>>> comparisons.
>>> Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
>>
>> Nonsense. There's material for a dozen films in there. What, you
>> thought I was talking about putting the whole thing into one film?
>
>Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
Yes, one arising from the appendices or the Silmarillion. That
doesn't mean adapting the whole thing
Troels Forchhammer
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these
staves:
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>> Incidentally, Sir Ian McKellen is now expressing regret that
>> Jackson shouldn't direct a film (loosely) based on /The Hobbit/:
>> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6173178.stm>
>
> That's cos he wants to be Gandalf again! :-)
So do I -- that is, I want /him/ to be Gandalf again, not myself ;-)
<snip>
> I see that the film fans still can't spell Tolkien:
From the charter of rec.arts.books.tolkien:
Willful and/or repeated spelling of JRRT's name as "Tolkein" would
be punished by brutal sarcasm.
<http://tolkien.slimy.com/newsgroups/RABTcharter.txt>
Though it is possibly inappropriate to extend the jurisdiction of our
charter beyond that which is posted to the group, I wonder whether a
petition against misspelling would be appropriate ;-)
[...]
> Kudos to the journalist for being balanced in the reporting.
Indeed -- it was a pleasure to see a more balanced presentation after
the simplistic, 'Jackson became revered among fans of Tolkien's
fantasy trilogy', of the original article. A word in favour of the
public service tradition seems in order ;-)
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
"What're quantum mechanics?"
"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."
- /Eric/ (Terry Pratchett)
Splicer
>>Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
>
> Yes, one arising from the appendices or the Silmarillion. That
> doesn't mean adapting the whole thing
>
I suspect that given more time, The Silmarillion might have come out in a
different form than it did. That is, unless he always meant it to read
like the Bible of Middle Earth which is what it very much seems like to
me.
Dorothy J Heydt
David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 07:17:09 GMT, Rockboy <rockboy@rockboy..net>
>wrote:
>
>>David Johnston wrote:
>>> rOn Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:26:26 GMT, Rockboy <rockboy@rockboy..net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> David Johnston wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:12:09 +0000, Michael O'Neill
>>>>> <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>>>>>>
>>>>>> allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>>>>>>
>>>>>> appendices and/or the silmarillion,
>>>>> Especially the Silmarillion. We never really got to see what Tolkien
>>>>> might have done with it so there's no opportunity for invidious
>>>>> comparisons.
>>>> Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
>>>
>>> Nonsense. There's material for a dozen films in there. What, you
>>> thought I was talking about putting the whole thing into one film?
Never mind that: the Silmarillion is unfilmable for the very
simple reason that Christopher Tolkien still has the rights and
no way in hell will he sell them.
>>
>>Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
For somebody who has only seen the movies, _The Hobbit_ is a
"prequel" to _The Lord of the Rings._
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Derek Broughton
> I suspect that given more time, The Silmarillion might have come out in a
> different form than it did. That is, unless he always meant it to read
> like the Bible of Middle Earth which is what it very much seems like to
> me.
I suspect that given more time, /The Silmarillion/ would _still_ never have
come out. Tolkien was working on it all his life, and it was never ready.
--
derek
Pat O'Connell
> David Johnston wrote:
>> rOn Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:26:26 GMT, Rockboy <rockboy@rockboy..net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> David Johnston wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:12:09 +0000, Michael O'Neill
>>>> <o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I suspect it would perhaps be a pity if he were not
>>>>>
>>>>> allowed to attempt the "prequel" arising from the
>>>>>
>>>>> appendices and/or the silmarillion,
>>>> Especially the Silmarillion. We never really got to see what Tolkien
>>>> might have done with it so there's no opportunity for invidious
>>>> comparisons.
>>> Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
>>
>> Nonsense. There's material for a dozen films in there. What, you
>> thought I was talking about putting the whole thing into one film?
>
> Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
The story of Beren and Luthien versus Morgoth would be a movie all by
itself.
Don Bruder
Derek Broughton <ne...@pointerstop.ca> wrote:
My take on the Silmarillion was that it was to be (eventually...) the
middle earth equivalent of what "Bullfinch's Mythology" is to Greek
mythology here in "the real world" - A semi-historical account of the
doings of the various "powers that be", the heros they interacted with,
and so on, back in the dim mists of the first and second ages, based on
the fragments of myth and legend that survived from that period.
Part of the "he was working on it all his life" problem was the fact
that he was constantly revising and updating as new ideas came along -
it was truly a "living work" - "History" had to be revised and/or
expanded upon every time he came up with something, in order to have the
new "something" fit into the background that The Silmarillion was meant
to be.
If you go through his "main" published works - Hobbit, LOTR,
Silmarillion, and the first "unfinished tales", you'll find that almost
everything in the "third age" books hinges on some event that happened
in either The Sillmarilion or the Unfinished Tales, and you'll further
note that almost everything in The Unfinished Tales that isn't "not
middle earth" (only a couple of those pieces, if I remember right) is
material that would have fit (although perhaps not chronoligically) into
Silmarillion. It's my feeling the the Unfinished tales would have
eventually been integrated into The Silmarillion - an especially strong
feeling, since it strikes me that the UT's middle-earth based material
is almost all expansions of the history of the Silmarils as presented in
the Silmarillion - Some from different characters' views, some tales of
characters that only get a passing mention in The Silmarillion, and so
on.
I've not delved into the more recently published tomes, so I'm not sure
what has os hasn't been put out there, but one thing I'd like to see
addresed would be more of the dwarven history - The founding of
Kahzad-Dum, a deeper investigation of the origin of Durin's race, and
similar. There are many "tempting tidbits" scattered through the volumes
I have read, but so little, especially in comparison to the elves.
(hardly surprising, since the elves, and more specifically, their
languages, were the whole point of JRR's writing to begin with, but a
bit disappointing that what seems to me a massive quantity of intersting
potential never gets explored)
As far as the posiibility of making a movie...
God forbid they let Jackson butcher anything else of Tolkein's. While he
did a relatively decent job on ROTK, it's my opinion that he almost
totally destroyed both Fellowship and Two Towers, turning the first into
a comedy of errors and omissions, and the second into an excuse for
"let's make the biggest battle scene we can". And dropping the journey
home and the scouring of the Shire in ROTK was absolutely unforgivable,
as far as I'm concerned.
--
Don Bruder - dak...@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
Troels Forchhammer
Derek Broughton <ne...@pointerstop.ca> spoke these staves:
I strongly suspect that you are entirely right about that. Getting him
to finish /The Silmarillion/ would, in any case, have taken a good deal
of pressure on him to do just that; more than what was applied (which I
suspect was increasing steadily -- in particular after the revisions to
the Ballantine and Unwin paperbacks in 1965 and, IIRC, 1967).
Any version of the book would, however, have read pretty much as the
published in terms of literary mode -- the style would have been the
mythic and the legendary (mostly) very similar to that of Kalevala or a
combination of the Eddas and the Sagas. The biblical influence would, I
think, not have been lessened, but if anything strengthened (as I think
is exemplified in 'Athrabeth').
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
Troels Forchhammer
(Dorothy J Heydt) spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
> For somebody who has only seen the movies, _The Hobbit_ is a
> "prequel" to _The Lord of the Rings._
The article which inspired this thread mentioned a film based on /The
Hobbit/ as well as 'plans to make a second unnamed prequel to the Lord
of the Rings trilogy after The Hobbit'. In that context 'prequel', when
used in this thread, more likely than not refers to this unnamed film,
while the film based on /The Hobbit/ is referred to by that name . . .
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler.
- Albert Einstein
William Cloud Hicklin
Yep, that's exactly what JRRT intended. The biblical style is his,
traceable through the source-texts (in fact, the "Old Testament" part that
usually stymies unprepared readers, the Ainulindale, is essentially
unedited from Tolkien's manuscript.) Christopher Tolien wrote very
little- basically one well-known chapter. The notion that The
Silmarillion would ever have been a "novel" like The Lord of the Rings is
piffle. JRRT was writing a legendarium, like the Kalevala or the
Volsungasaga.
--
" I would even contend that a reaction against Tolkien's non-Modernist
prose style is just as influential in the rejection of Tolkien by
traditional literary scholars as is Modernist antipathy to the themes of
his work"
William Cloud Hicklin
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> In message <news:J98n0...@kithrup.com> djh...@kithrup.com
> (Dorothy J Heydt) spoke these staves:
>>
>
> <snip>
>
>> For somebody who has only seen the movies, _The Hobbit_ is a
>> "prequel" to _The Lord of the Rings._
>
> The article which inspired this thread mentioned a film based on /The
> Hobbit/ as well as 'plans to make a second unnamed prequel to the Lord
> of the Rings trilogy after The Hobbit'. In that context 'prequel', when
> used in this thread, more likely than not refers to this unnamed film,
> while the film based on /The Hobbit/ is referred to by that name . . .
>
The impression I get is that this (ill-conceived milking of the cash cow)
contemplates doing something with the 60 years between the books-
doubtless concentrating on the love story between Arviggorn and Arliv,
Warrior Princess. Special stunt guest appearance by Legorlas.
William Cloud Hicklin
<Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote:
> By 'The Silmarillion' I might as well mean /anything/ that is not
> published in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
> Given Christopher Tolkien's attitude towards the film projects, as it
> has been reported (I'm inclined to trust the reports on that, though
> I can, naturally, not know for certain), I find it extremely unlikely
> that he will permit the sale, lease or any use of any film rights
> that are still in the control of the Tolkien Estate.
Consider your knowledge certain. CRT will not sell any further film
rights, period. This was his position long before the PJ movies ever
began filming.
Pawel Dembowski
> The article which inspired this thread mentioned a film based on /The
> Hobbit/ as well as 'plans to make a second unnamed prequel to the Lord
> of the Rings trilogy after The Hobbit'. In that context 'prequel', when
> used in this thread, more likely than not refers to this unnamed film,
> while the film based on /The Hobbit/ is referred to by that name . . .
I think that the prequel will probably be based on the LotR appendices
- that is, a movie about Isildur, Elendil, Anarion, Gil-Galad, Fall of
Numenor, rise of Gondor and Arnor, the Ring etc. They even have parts
of it filmed already (flashbacks in LotR).
--
Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski
http://ksiazki.polter.pl
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> I suspect that given more time, The Silmarillion might have come out
> in a different form than it did. That is, unless he always meant it
> to read like the Bible of Middle Earth which is what it very much
> seems like to me.
Have you heard of /The History of Middle-earth/...? That might help if you
want an insight into the process by which /The Silmarillion/ writings came
into being (over a long time, written by J. R. R. Tolkien), and how
Christopher Tolkien edited them into publication after his father's death.
And Tolkien did intend for the tone to be Biblical.
Christopher
JXStern
wrote:
>The story of Beren and Luthien versus Morgoth would be a movie all by
>itself.
I want a pre-prequel that explains why Morgoth was so unhappy and
mean. I don't think Tolkien explored this sufficiently.
J.
JXStern
<o...@bwahahaha.indigo.ie> wrote:
>Gandalf's Li'l Buddy wrote:
>
>> http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2006/11/21/jackson-hobbit.html
>
>> Peter Jackson says he's off The Hobbit film
>> Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 | 10:18 AM ET
>> CBC Arts
>
>You know, I was one of "Jacksonfuckwits" most vitriolic critics,
So let David Lynch do it, I'm sure he still has mojo left over from
his version of "Dune".
<gag>
J.
Count Menelvagor
he was psychologically abused as a child (they forced him to read
usenet flame wars).
Lord Jubjub
Don Bruder <dak...@sonic.net> wrote:
> God forbid they let Jackson butcher anything else of Tolkein's. While he
> did a relatively decent job on ROTK, it's my opinion that he almost
> totally destroyed both Fellowship and Two Towers, turning the first into
> a comedy of errors and omissions, and the second into an excuse for
> "let's make the biggest battle scene we can". And dropping the journey
> home and the scouring of the Shire in ROTK was absolutely unforgivable,
> as far as I'm concerned.
I will say this in defense of Jackson, FOTR can NOT be filmed in any
detail within a 3-hour tale. I would reckon it would take 6 hours to do
it proper--and that would still not include Bombadil (the Downs could be
included with some creativity).
In further defense of Jackson, he had a script for two movies. I
believe the first movie was to end where the TTT ended. Asked to add a
third movie, his instinct was to put the expected ending to the first
movie in its proper place and pad the middle movie rather than to take
the considerable time to properly plot the the second and third movies
closer to the books.
Honestly, the Scouring is the kind of ending that only a book can get
away with.
--
Lord Jubjub
Keeper of the Jabberwock
Don Bruder
<bandersnatch-87DA...@news-server.houston.rr.com>,
Lord Jubjub <bander...@houston.rr.com> wrote:
Well, I guess if you say so...
But seriously... Letting the person responsible for "Meet The Feebles"
(Excuse me while I go soak my fingers in bleach after actually typing
the name of that festering pile... I feel dirty!) take on LOTR was just
plain *WRONG* from the git-go...
Alan Baker
Don Bruder <dak...@sonic.net> wrote:
I'm afraid I must disagree. I am a *huge* fan of the LOTR and I *love*
what Jackson did with it.
A movie -- even three movies -- is/are not a book.
--
'It is Mac OS X, not BSD.' -- 'From Mac OS to BSD Unix.'
"It's BSD Unix with Apple's APIs and GUI on top of it' -- 'nothing but BSD Unix'
(Edwin on Mac OS X)
'[The IBM PC] could boot multiple OS, such as DOS, C/PM, GEM, etc.' --
'I claimed nothing about GEM other than it was available software for the
IBM PC. (Edwin on GEM)
'Solaris is just a marketing rename of Sun OS.' -- 'Sun OS is not included
on the timeline of Solaris because it's a different OS.' (Edwin on Sun)
Justin Alexander
> God forbid they let Jackson butcher anything else of Tolkein's. While he
> did a relatively decent job on ROTK, it's my opinion that he almost
> totally destroyed both Fellowship and Two Towers, turning the first into
> a comedy of errors and omissions, and the second into an excuse for
> "let's make the biggest battle scene we can". And dropping the journey
> home and the scouring of the Shire in ROTK was absolutely unforgivable,
> as far as I'm concerned.
Interesting. Our opinions are almost directly inverted. I considered
FOTR to be almost perfect and arguably the finest fantasy film ever
made. I consider TTT to be bloated, ridden with continuity-errors, and
boring. I consider ROTK to be a laughing-stock (as exemplified by
"flaming Denethor" running the length of an entire city and then
plunging off a cliff).
(FOTR would be perfect, IMO, if (a) the race to the ford had been done
properly; and (b) the falling staircase bit was cut. Both show poor
pacing and a poor understanding of how to handle a chase sequence on
film. The race to the ford is anticlimactic and the falling staircase
shifts your focus from the far more important peril of the *Balrog* to
the relatively pedestrian threat of bad masonry. You can see this same
inability to handle the pacing of chase scenes effectively in Jackson's
KING KONG.)
(I should also note that I'm speaking of the theatrical cut of FOTR,
here. The extended edition includes all kinds of nifty scenes, but is a
bloated mess when considered as an actual film.)
--
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Michael Grosberg
Don Bruder wrote:
> But seriously... Letting the person responsible for "Meet The Feebles"
> (Excuse me while I go soak my fingers in bleach after actually typing
> the name of that festering pile... I feel dirty!) take on LOTR was just
> plain *WRONG* from the git-go...
He was also responsible for _Heavenly Creatures_, a tremendously good
film - if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to go right now
and rent the DVD.
William Cloud Hicklin
wrote:
I doubt it seriously. There's no "narrative" here: but, more to the
point, one couldn't do Numenor without overlapping the Akallabeth and UT-
which can't legally be done. Hollywood logic is based around "vehicles"
for stars and characters- the impulse is to come up with something
involving Aragorn Arwen Elrond, Gandalf, Galadriel, and if at all possible
their heatthrob Legorlando.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Alan Baker <alang...@telus.net> said
<snip>
>> But seriously... Letting the person responsible for "Meet The Feebles"
>> (Excuse me while I go soak my fingers in bleach after actually typing
>> the name of that festering pile... I feel dirty!) take on LOTR was just
>> plain *WRONG* from the git-go...
>
>I'm afraid I must disagree. I am a *huge* fan of the LOTR and I *love*
>what Jackson did with it.
>
>A movie -- even three movies -- is/are not a book.
I'd have to agree with Alan too. There were several thing left out and
altered that I disliked (less if you buy the director's cut full length
set of DVDs) but overall I thought Jackson did an excellent job of a
very difficult task, and it was clear throughout that he loved the
books, and at least UNDERSTOOD where he mutilated them. That's more than
you can say of a helluvalot of film adaptations.
He also produced 3 movies which were widely acclaimed even by people
who'd never heard the word 'Orc' before. Way to go. I still hope for the
20 hour full book CGI movie version, but It'll only sell well to people
who read the book, because (as someone said in the bit I snipped) a lot
of the stuff Tolkien wrote just wouldn't work on film. And Bombadil
(cute as he is) hardly works in the book.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
7,053 Km walked. 1,267Km PROWs surveyed. 23.0% complete.
Robert Shaw
>
> I doubt it seriously. There's no "narrative" here: but, more to the
> point, one couldn't do Numenor without overlapping the Akallabeth and UT-
> which can't legally be done. Hollywood logic is based around "vehicles"
> for stars and characters- the impulse is to come up with something
> involving Aragorn Arwen Elrond, Gandalf, Galadriel, and if at all possible
> their heatthrob Legorlando.
>
The attack on Dol Guldur during the Hobbit would get them Elrond,
Gandalf, Galadriel, and Saruman. Aragorn would be too young, but
Legolas and Arwen could conceivably have been present too.
Anything else which includes all the big names is going to be
even further removed from the books.
--
'It is a wise crow that knows which way the camel points' - Pratchett
Robert Shaw
Pawel Dembowski
> The attack on Dol Guldur during the Hobbit would get them Elrond,
> Gandalf, Galadriel, and Saruman. Aragorn would be too young, but
> Legolas and Arwen could conceivably have been present too.
Legolas could even be in The Hobbit - in his father's court in
Mirkwood and during the Battle of Five Armies.
Pawel Dembowski
>> I think that the prequel will probably be based on the LotR appendices
>> - that is, a movie about Isildur, Elendil, Anarion, Gil-Galad, Fall of
>> Numenor, rise of Gondor and Arnor, the Ring etc. They even have parts
>> of it filmed already (flashbacks in LotR).
> I doubt it seriously.
> There's no "narrative" here:
They can just make it up.
> but, more to the
> point, one couldn't do Numenor without overlapping the Akallabeth and UT-
> which can't legally be done.
There's enough about Numenor in the appendices to make a movie - they
can easily make up stuff to fill it. There's not really that much in
Akallabeth that isn't in the Annals of the Kings and Rulers and The
Tale of Years.
> Hollywood logic is based around "vehicles"
> for stars and characters- the impulse is to come up with something
> involving Aragorn Arwen Elrond, Gandalf, Galadriel, and if at all possible
> their heatthrob Legorlando.
Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as well.
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> And Bombadil (cute as he is) hardly works in the book.
Gah! Bombadil is NOT cute!!
Bombadil is a mystery, an enigma.
But he was not intended to be cute.
If you think that, you've missed the point.
Stan Brown
<bander...@houston.rr.com>:
> I will say this in defense of Jackson, FOTR can NOT be filmed in any
> detail within a 3-hour tale.
Of course not.
So with time so precious, where does he get off adding things? That's
my objection: not that he compressed the tale to fit within the
confines of a movie, but that he preferred his own story to
Tolkien's.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
http://users.telerama.com/~taliesen/tolkien/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm
Raven
news:Rd_9h.6717$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
Whatever the Professor's intention, Bombadil is both. Cute and
mysterious. His wife is attractive and mysterious.
Corb.
spiznet
Pawel Dembowski wrote:
> Robert Shaw wrote:
>
> > The attack on Dol Guldur during the Hobbit would get them Elrond,
> > Gandalf, Galadriel, and Saruman. Aragorn would be too young, but
> > Legolas and Arwen could conceivably have been present too.
>
> Legolas could even be in The Hobbit - in his father's court in
> Mirkwood and during the Battle of Five Armies.
>
>
> --
> http://ksiazki.polter.pl
I thought Aragorn was at least 100 yrs old. The Hobbit wasn't 100 years
before FotR.
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> I thought Aragorn was at least 100 yrs old. The Hobbit wasn't 100
> years before FotR.
Aragorn was born 2931 Third Age.
The events in /The Hobbit/ take place in 2941-2942 Third Age, when Aragorn
was a tender ten or eleven years old.
The events in /The Lord of the Rings/ start in 3001 Third Age with Bilbo's
farewell party, with most of the action taking place in the Great Years:
3018-3021, with the War of the Ring from 3018-3019.
Aragorn was around 87 years old at the Council of Elrond, and the events
shown in /The Hobbit/ were 77 years before the War of the Ring.
Christopher
George Peatty
>I want a pre-prequel that explains why Morgoth was so unhappy and
>mean. I don't think Tolkien explored this sufficiently.
No brainer. Morgoth sought to assert his will over that of Iluvatar, and
failed. He suffered from the same sin as Satan, after whom he is patterned:
pride ..
William Cloud Hicklin
wrote:
> they
> can easily make up stuff to fill it.
That's precisely what I'm afraid of. PJ and his co-conspirators have
already made up far too much stuff.
> Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as well.
Gawd help us all. What's next? "CSI: Minas Tirith"? Surely even studio
heads aren't coked up 24/7, so they might have observed that the only
decent parts of PJ's action-adventure spectaculars are the bits where he
actually stuck to the books.
With regard to Numenor: the problem here is that in filling out a
narrative from the very brief Appendices, any script would have to a)
borrow from Akallabeth, or b) contradict it. The first can't be done, and
the second would incur the well-deserved wrath even of "fans," as well as
readers. Except for the adolescent PJ-drones who can't appreciate the
difference between Tolkien and Star Wars.
William Cloud Hicklin
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:46:05 GMT from Lord Jubjub
> <bander...@houston.rr.com>:
>> I will say this in defense of Jackson, FOTR can NOT be filmed in any
>> detail within a 3-hour tale.
>
> Of course not.
>
> So with time so precious, where does he get off adding things? That's
> my objection: not that he compressed the tale to fit within the
> confines of a movie, but that he preferred his own story to
> Tolkien's.
>
Amen! If time was such a concern, why do we get fifteen minutes of
troll-fight and rocking staircase in Moria alone?
What absolutely flabbergasts me is that screenwriter Philippa Boyens is
familiar enough with Letters to turn to the page she wants from memory-
but brazenly repeated about half the sins Tolkien lambasted Zimmerman for.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Christopher Kreuzer <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> said
You don't find enigmas cute? (Hint:- Cute ｬ= Cuddly).
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Sea Wasp
> Amen! If time was such a concern, why do we get fifteen minutes of
> troll-fight and rocking staircase in Moria alone?
Five minutes, I suspect. Certainly not fifteen. The mind plays tricks
on you.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Don Bruder
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
IMO, at best, Bombadil could be called a handy plot device for rescuing
the short hairy-footed ones from Old Man Willow and the Barrow wights -
The whole Bombadil sequence always smacked of "I thought I was going
somewhere with this, but then when I got there, I realized it was mostly
crap, but the parts that weren't crap required the parts that were crap
to stay put or they'd turn to crap too, so I just left it there and had
him give some excuse about how he's bound to his land and can't/won't
leave it".
Is he even discussed elsewhere in Tolkein's writings? If so, I haven't
spotted it. I'd like to know a bit more about the guy, if only just out
of curiousity - it almost seems like he's a sort of "forgotten" part of
the original creation - an anomaly, kinda like Durin.
Don Bruder
<bandersnatch-87DA...@news-server.houston.rr.com>,
Lord Jubjub <bander...@houston.rr.com> wrote:
> In article <4567106f$0$82531$742e...@news.sonic.net>,
> Don Bruder <dak...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> > God forbid they let Jackson butcher anything else of Tolkein's. While he
> > did a relatively decent job on ROTK, it's my opinion that he almost
> > totally destroyed both Fellowship and Two Towers, turning the first into
> > a comedy of errors and omissions, and the second into an excuse for
> > "let's make the biggest battle scene we can". And dropping the journey
> > home and the scouring of the Shire in ROTK was absolutely unforgivable,
> > as far as I'm concerned.
>
> I will say this in defense of Jackson, FOTR can NOT be filmed in any
> detail within a 3-hour tale.
I don't dispute that, even a little. In fact, my preference would be to
have each of the "books" (two each in Fellowship, TT, and ROTK) be a
separate 2+ hour movie in and of itself, if only to actually be able to
cover everything that was going on.
> I would reckon it would take 6 hours to do
> it proper--and that would still not include Bombadil (the Downs could be
> included with some creativity).
I'm thinking much more than 6 hours to do it "properly". (And as an
aside, I could live without Bombadil, although it would have been
interesting to see him handled on-screen... Likely diasppointing, since
I've got my own mental picture of what the guy looks like, and so on,
but interesting anyway)
> Honestly, the Scouring is the kind of ending that only a book can get
> away with.
Eh... maybe... I don't really think so, though.
mark...@yahoo.com
> >>> Yeah, we'll just ignore the fact that the Silmarillion is unfilmable.
> >> Nonsense. There's material for a dozen films in there. What, you
> >> thought I was talking about putting the whole thing into one film?
> >Well the discussion was about a "prequel".
Akallabeth is perfect not only for the big screen, but for these times,
replete with the metaphor of a great power that tries to overreach.
And we most definitely need another Atlantis falling movie. The old
parting of the Red Sea scene has worn off after all these decades. The
parting of the Earth from the Blessed Realm will make the older
scenario look like a ripple in the bathtun in comparison.
Now ... with all that being said: imagine Charleton Heston in the role
as Sauron. "From my cold dead fingers...!"
>There was written material, also, on the
> Yes, one arising from the appendices or the Silmarillion. That
> doesn't mean adapting the whole thing
The idea behind the Akallabeth is that it may lead straight into the
first war of the Ring (sequel #1) and then to the Hobbit (sequel #2).
There is, in fact, an early prelude to the Hobbit that is little-known
that is tucked away in one of the appendices somewhere involving a
crossing of paths of Thorin and Gandalf in Bree. A lot of intrigue can
be built around the whole scenario and this serves as the first part of
the Hobbit.
David Johnston
<icelof...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:13:34 -0500, Stan Brown
><the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:46:05 GMT from Lord Jubjub
>> <bander...@houston.rr.com>:
>>> I will say this in defense of Jackson, FOTR can NOT be filmed in any
>>> detail within a 3-hour tale.
>>
>> Of course not.
>>
>> So with time so precious, where does he get off adding things? That's
>> my objection: not that he compressed the tale to fit within the
>> confines of a movie, but that he preferred his own story to
>> Tolkien's.
>>
>Amen! If time was such a concern, why do we get fifteen minutes of
>troll-fight and rocking staircase in Moria alone?
>
Because an action scene you can dismiss with a paragraph in prose
calls for much more on film.
David Johnston
<icelof...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as well.
>
>Gawd help us all. What's next? "CSI: Minas Tirith"? Surely even studio
>heads aren't coked up 24/7, so they might have observed that the only
>decent parts of PJ's action-adventure spectaculars are the bits where he
>actually stuck to the books.
Except that isn't true.
Splicer
> So with time so precious, where does he get off adding things? That's
> my objection: not that he compressed the tale to fit within the
> confines of a movie, but that he preferred his own story to
> Tolkien's.
>
In the end, regardless of the objections of fans of the books and
Christopher Tolkien, these "flawed" films put LotR back on the best seller
lists. I seriously doubt that a film for hardcore fans of the book would
be palatable for the average movie goer. In any book to film adaptation,
certain concessions must be made for the sake of the medium. Sometimes
that means adding something not in the original book because it works on
the screen. I was surprised that one of my favorite lines from John
Huston's adaptation of The Maltese Falcon wasn't in the book; the part
where Bogey tells Mary Astor that if "they stretch that pretty neck of
yours, I'll remember you". Great line, one of my favorites, but not in the
book at all.
Christopher Kreuzer
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:58:55 -0500, Pawel Dembowski
> <au...@lexx.eu.org> wrote:
<snip>
>> Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as well.
>
> Gawd help us all. What's next? "CSI: Minas Tirith"?
LOL! I'm a big fan of CSI. That would be funny! :-)
Christopher Kreuzer
> Bitstring <Rd_9h.6717$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, from the
> wonderful person Christopher Kreuzer <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> said
>> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> And Bombadil (cute as he is) hardly works in the book.
>>
>> Gah! Bombadil is NOT cute!!
>> Bombadil is a mystery, an enigma.
>> But he was not intended to be cute.
>> If you think that, you've missed the point.
>
> You don't find enigmas cute? (Hint:- Cute ｬ= Cuddly).
Ah. That meaning of cute. Clever-cute.
Christopher Kreuzer
> William Cloud Hicklin wrote:
>
>> Amen! If time was such a concern, why do we get fifteen minutes of
>> troll-fight and rocking staircase in Moria alone?
>
> Five minutes, I suspect. Certainly not fifteen. The mind plays tricks
> on you.
How long do you think the Helm's Deep battle scenes were.
No peeking at the answers!
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> IMO, at best, Bombadil could be called a handy plot device for
> rescuing the short hairy-footed ones from Old Man Willow and the
> Barrow wights - The whole Bombadil sequence always smacked of "I
> thought I was going somewhere with this, but then when I got there, I
> realized it was mostly crap, but the parts that weren't crap required
> the parts that were crap to stay put or they'd turn to crap too, so I
> just left it there and had him give some excuse about how he's bound
> to his land and can't/won't leave it".
Bombadil is one of the things that connects /The Lord of the Rings/ on a
deeper level to the history and the mythic aspects of Tolkien's world. When
the hobbits are listening to his stories, he carries on singing "out into
the ancient starlight when only the Elf-sires were awake". This would be
reason enough to leave Bombadil in there. The real origins of Bombadil lie
in a doll that the Tolkien children had.
Having said that, to a certain you are right to think that Tolkien was going
somewhere and then stopped and decided to go somewhere else. The whole story
before The Council of Elrond was a mostly unplanned series of adventures
that Tolkien wrote to get the hobbits and the Ring to Rivendell. It was
around that point (actually a fair way after that point) that he effectively
stopped and rewrote from the beginning. But the story after Rivendell was
more structured and planned, so the unplanned feeling of the story in the
Old Forest really is there, and Tolkien was fully aware of this, but he was
wise enough to know that the best stories are not those that are carefully
planned in advance by the author.
> Is he even discussed elsewhere in Tolkein's writings? If so, I haven't
> spotted it. I'd like to know a bit more about the guy, if only just
> out of curiousity - it almost seems like he's a sort of "forgotten"
> part of the original creation - an anomaly, kinda like Durin.
He is discussed by Tolkien in a collected volume of his letters. The title
of the collection is /The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien/ and it is edited by
Humphrey Carpenter.
Christopher
Larry Caldwell
(Don Bruder) says...
> Is he even discussed elsewhere in Tolkein's writings? If so, I haven't
> spotted it. I'd like to know a bit more about the guy, if only just out
> of curiousity - it almost seems like he's a sort of "forgotten" part of
> the original creation - an anomaly, kinda like Durin.
Bombadil is just one of those characters that the author loves too much
to cut, even though the story would flow better without him. In a
larger context, Bombadil is one of the Maiar, similar to the Istari but
not necessarily of the same rank, and with a different tune.
--
For email, replace firstnamelastinitial
with my first name and last initial.
Troels Forchhammer
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these staves:
>
> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>>
>> And Bombadil (cute as he is) hardly works in the book.
>
> Gah! Bombadil is NOT cute!!
I wonder, though -- wasn't it the name of one of Priscilla's dolls,
or something like that (I'm sure I remember a story of that kind, but
I can't find any clue of it) ;-)
Still, of course the Tom Bombadil of /LotR/ isn't cute.
> Bombadil is a mystery, an enigma.
and a location spirit, 'the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and
Berkshire countryside'.
As Garth puts it, commenting on an early poem of Tolkien's, about the
Oxford area:
Here is an early glimpse of the spirit of place that
pervades much of Tolkien's work: human variety is partly
shaped by geography, the work of a divine hand.
[John Garth, /Tolkien and the Great War/, ch. 1 'Before']
It is fitting that Tom Bombadil, in LotR, also represents some very
academic qualities -- 'He is in a way the answer to [the Entwives] in
the sense that he is almost the opposite, being say, Botany and
Zoology (as sciences) and Poetry as opposed to Cattle-breeding and
Agriculture and practicality.' -- Tom is representing an (idealized
and probably utopian) academic renouncement of control, the academic
who 'take your delight in things for themselves without reference to
yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, [...]'.
> But he was not intended to be cute.
> If you think that, you've missed the point.
Indeed.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The errors hardest
to condone
in other people
are one's own.
- Piet Hein, /Our Own Motes/
David Johnston
<spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>Don Bruder wrote:
>
>
><snip>
>
>> IMO, at best, Bombadil could be called a handy plot device for
>> rescuing the short hairy-footed ones from Old Man Willow and the
>> Barrow wights - The whole Bombadil sequence always smacked of "I
>> thought I was going somewhere with this, but then when I got there, I
>> realized it was mostly crap, but the parts that weren't crap required
>> the parts that were crap to stay put or they'd turn to crap too, so I
>> just left it there and had him give some excuse about how he's bound
>> to his land and can't/won't leave it".
>
>Bombadil is one of the things that connects /The Lord of the Rings/ on a
>deeper level to the history and the mythic aspects of Tolkien's world.
Well not to the history. Bombadil plays no role in it. And his only
real connection to the mythic aspects is his sheer failure to fit in
anywhere with them.
Troels Forchhammer
Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
For Jackson:
> So with time so precious,
'Time! My Precious!'
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The idea that time may vary from place to place is a
difficult one, but it is the idea Einstein used, and it is
correct - believe it or not.
- Richard Feynman
Troels Forchhammer
We'd get them to investigate a sinister killing in an secret orc-
playing society . . . >:->
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
- /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)
Sea Wasp
Besides, CSI: Minas Tirith sounds like fun.
Sea Wasp
That's a little harder because Helm's Deep isn't just a battle or
quick sequence but several sequences strung out. Do you mean each
individual battle, or all together, and do I count any of the lead-in
sequences, or just the actual charge-and-fight?
Sea Wasp
> In article <4568c812$0$82550$742e...@news.sonic.net>, dak...@sonic.net
> (Don Bruder) says...
>
>
>>Is he even discussed elsewhere in Tolkein's writings? If so, I haven't
>>spotted it. I'd like to know a bit more about the guy, if only just out
>>of curiousity - it almost seems like he's a sort of "forgotten" part of
>>the original creation - an anomaly, kinda like Durin.
>
>
> Bombadil is just one of those characters that the author loves too much
> to cut, even though the story would flow better without him. In a
> larger context, Bombadil is one of the Maiar, similar to the Istari but
> not necessarily of the same rank, and with a different tune.
>
That's one theory, and I have no doubt it was said later, but on the
evidence available, and on the statements of actual characters, he
cannot be Maia at all, as he was there BEFORE "The Dark Lord Came from
Outside", which refers, not to Sauron, but to MORGOTH.
Meaning he was there before the Valar arrived, which is before any
Maia were there, either.
My theory has always been that Tom was the Spirit of Middle-Earth - a
male version of Gaia.
Mike Schilling
"Don Bruder" <dak...@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:4568c812$0$82550$742e...@news.sonic.net...
> In article <Rd_9h.6717$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
> "Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> > And Bombadil (cute as he is) hardly works in the book.
>>
>> Gah! Bombadil is NOT cute!!
>> Bombadil is a mystery, an enigma.
>> But he was not intended to be cute.
>> If you think that, you've missed the point.
>>
>>
>>
>
> IMO, at best, Bombadil could be called a handy plot device for rescuing
> the short hairy-footed ones from Old Man Willow and the Barrow wights -
But it's easy enough to excise them too; the film did it, with nary a seam
showing.
Dorothy J Heydt
spiznet <ma...@spiznet.com> wrote:
>>
>
>I thought Aragorn was at least 100 yrs old. The Hobbit wasn't 100 years
>before FotR.
>
the time Bilbo and the Dwarves came to Rivendell, he was eight.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Troels Forchhammer
>>
<snip>
>> You don't find enigmas cute? (Hint:- Cute ｬ= Cuddly).
>
> Ah. That meaning of cute. Clever-cute.
Never knew about that until this moment (another thing learned
already -- this bids fair to be a fine day!)
Cambridge has, 'wishing to seem clever, sometimes in a rude or
unpleasant way:' and I'm certain that that is as wrong as the cuddly
sense.
Merriam-Webster says, '1 a : clever or shrewd often in an underhanded
manner b : IMPERTINENT, SMART-ALECKY <don't get cute with me>', and
here I could go part of the way with 1a (never 1b), although I
wouldn't agree to 'underhanded' (if I understand that phrase
correctly it would imply that Tom himself was trying to keep his
cleverness secret?).
<http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=19242&dict=CALD>
<http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=cute>
<http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/cute?view=uk>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another
profound truth.
- Niels Bohr
Christopher Kreuzer
> In article <1164476233.7...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
> spiznet <ma...@spiznet.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>> I thought Aragorn was at least 100 yrs old. The Hobbit wasn't 100
>> years before FotR.
>>
> Aragorn is something like 82 when the Hobbits first meet him. At
> the time Bilbo and the Dwarves came to Rivendell, he was eight.
These are different from the figures I came up with. I can't be bothered to
re-check. Did I get my calculations wrong?
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
> In message <news:SH4ah.6906$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>
> "Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these
> staves:
>>
>> William Cloud Hicklin wrote:
>>> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:58:55 -0500, Pawel Dembowski
>>> <au...@lexx.eu.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as
>>>> well.
>>>
>>> Gawd help us all. What's next? "CSI: Minas Tirith"?
>>
>> LOL! I'm a big fan of CSI. That would be funny! :-)
>
> We'd get them to investigate a sinister killing in an secret orc-
> playing society . . . >:->
Then we would have the spin-off series of:
CSI: Lothlorien and CSI: Rivendell.
Plus a Lost-style series set in Moria!
Or a Big Brother series in Shelob's Lair?
Troels Forchhammer
<icelof...@mindspring.com> spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
> Consider your knowledge certain. CRT will not sell any further
> film rights, period. This was his position long before the PJ
> movies ever began filming.
Thank you.
I also don't think that Jackson's films have done anything to
convince him otherwise. Even enjoying the films, and being generally
positive about them, I can still get upset (it's silly, I know, but
unfortunately I can't help it) about the treatment Jackson gave to
the thematic and ethical content of LotR: at best ignoring it, and at
worst implying Tolkien's answers to be false. Though I don't agree
with all Tolkien's answers myself, this was the changes that sat the
worst with me (I don't really mind warrior princesses or rotten
masonry).
My greatest fear about Jackson doing /The Hobbit/ is related to his
view on the Ring as an extremely powerfully corrupting influence --
that might be used to cast some doubt on Bilbo's actions at the
Mountain when he tried to prevent unnecessary fighting by handing the
Arkenstone to the Elves and Men. In Jackson's portrayal, I am afraid
that this action will be shown as cowardly and treasonous. I can only
hope to be wrong if Jackson does get the job in the end, but I think
that such a change would be completely consistent with the changes he
made to LotR.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the
world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Christopher Kreuzer
> Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
>> Sea Wasp wrote:
>>
>>> William Cloud Hicklin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Amen! If time was such a concern, why do we get fifteen minutes of
>>>> troll-fight and rocking staircase in Moria alone?
>>>
>>> Five minutes, I suspect. Certainly not fifteen. The mind plays
>>> tricks on you.
>>
>>
>> How long do you think the Helm's Deep battle scenes were.
>> No peeking at the answers!
>
> That's a little harder because Helm's Deep isn't just a battle or
> quick sequence but several sequences strung out. Do you mean each
> individual battle, or all together, and do I count any of the lead-in
> sequences, or just the actual charge-and-fight?
All of the above. :-)
Taki Kogoma
<spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
And then there's Aaron Sorkin's high-concept drama set among the
staffers of the White Council...
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
Troels Forchhammer
Splicer <nom...@nomail.com> spoke these staves:
>
<snip>
> In the end,
[...]
> these "flawed" films put LotR back on the best seller lists.
Something which has nothing to do with anything, and something which,
definitely, will never be the end of it.
> I seriously doubt that a film for hardcore fans of the book would
> be palatable for the average movie goer.
I don't know, though I'd be very surprised to see anyone willing to
back such a project with the money it'd need -- unfortunately the
reaction of most people will probably be the same as yours.
> In any book to film adaptation, certain concessions must be made
> for the sake of the medium.
That has never been an issue (for the vast majority of fans). That
any film based on the book would differ from the books, by additions,
subtractions and changes has always been obvious, and he project was
nevertheless regarded with great enthusiasm -- enthusiasm which
generally /grew/ after the release of the FotR film and didn't really
start to falter until after the TT film.
The 'big question' is not whether changes are necessary, but which
changes are acceptable? Does the end, financial success (the worship
of Mammon) justify any means? I don't think it does.
I can shrug off many of the changes to the plot -- even those that I
find merely pointless (the wolf-rider attack in TT, for instance),
but when the films, IMO, characterize the author's answers to some of
the ethical questions he raised in his book as gullible stupidity,
then I think it has gone too far.
Christopher Kreuzer
> In message <news:UJ4ah.6907$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>
> "Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these
> staves:
>>
>> GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> You don't find enigmas cute? (Hint:- Cute ｬ= Cuddly).
>>
>> Ah. That meaning of cute. Clever-cute.
>
> Never knew about that until this moment (another thing learned
> already -- this bids fair to be a fine day!)
>
> Cambridge has, 'wishing to seem clever, sometimes in a rude or
> unpleasant way:' and I'm certain that that is as wrong as the cuddly
> sense.
>
> Merriam-Webster says, '1 a : clever or shrewd often in an underhanded
> manner b : IMPERTINENT, SMART-ALECKY <don't get cute with me>', and
> here I could go part of the way with 1a (never 1b), although I
> wouldn't agree to 'underhanded' (if I understand that phrase
> correctly it would imply that Tom himself was trying to keep his
> cleverness secret?).
>
>
> <http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=19242&dict=CALD>
> <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=cute>
> <http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/cute?view=uk>
I think Three Minds in a Can meant that the author was being cute in putting
Tom in there, or that the concept of Tom was cute. Not that Tom himself was
being cute in any particular way. ie. "Wasn't it cute of Tolkien to put that
Tom enigma in there" = "Wasn't it clever of Tolkien to put that Tom enigma
in there". This is entirely in line with the Merriam-Webster 1b definition
"don't get cute with me" = "don't get clever with me", but where 'clever'
usually means being clever in a deceitful way. I think people also use it in
a more slangy sense of "Hey! That's really cool! Cute, man!" (or whatever
the latest hip slang expression is).
ie. Tom Bombadil is COOL! :-)
Come on! Don't tell me no-one here ever thought how cool it would be to be
Bombadil. Who wants to be a boring wizard like Gandalf, when you can be that
SUPER-COOL guy called Bombadil. Last as he was first. Eldest and fatherless.
Goldberry! Weird taste in clothes and music. Able to break spells and
whistle up ponies out of nowhere. Can't be controlled by the Ring.
Independent and not subservient to any authority. The perfect role model for
a teenager!
Christopher
Christopher Kreuzer
> In article <4568c812$0$82550$742e...@news.sonic.net>,
> dak...@sonic.net (Don Bruder) says...
>
>> Is he even discussed elsewhere in Tolkein's writings? If so, I
>> haven't spotted it. I'd like to know a bit more about the guy, if
>> only just out of curiousity - it almost seems like he's a sort of
>> "forgotten" part of the original creation - an anomaly, kinda like
>> Durin.
>
> Bombadil is just one of those characters that the author loves too
> much to cut, even though the story would flow better without him. In
> a larger context, Bombadil is one of the Maiar, similar to the Istari
> but not necessarily of the same rank, and with a different tune.
As others have said, there is no evidence to support the Maiar theory over
any other theory. There is a lot of room for many theories, but none of them
can be proven. Though some make more sense than others.
Christopher Kreuzer
> Stan Brown <the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote on 25 Nov 2006:
>
>> So with time so precious, where does he get off adding things? That's
>> my objection: not that he compressed the tale to fit within the
>> confines of a movie, but that he preferred his own story to
>> Tolkien's.
>
> In the end, regardless of the objections of fans of the books and
> Christopher Tolkien, these "flawed" films put LotR back on the best
> seller lists.
LotR is a classic. It was selling steadily before the films, and will
continue to do so long after the films have been forgotten.
johan....@comcast.net
Don Bruder wrote:
> God forbid they let Jackson butcher anything else of Tolkein's. While he
> did a relatively decent job on ROTK, it's my opinion that he almost
> totally destroyed both Fellowship and Two Towers, turning the first into
> a comedy of errors and omissions, and the second into an excuse for
> "let's make the biggest battle scene we can". And dropping the journey
> home and the scouring of the Shire in ROTK was absolutely unforgivable,
> as far as I'm concerned.
You wanted _more_ after the destruction of the ring? Huh. I wanted
less. Much less, in fact. It was time to wind things up as quickly as
possible. Four scenes would have sufficed for me after the eagles
picked up the hobbits:
1. Aragorn's coronation, with Arwen at his side, and the company in
attendance.
2. Farewells at Minas Tirith to the elves, hobbits, dwarves, and men
(with Faramir and Eowyn leaving together.)
3. The hobbits arriving at Hobbiton, overlooking the town.
4. Sam settling into his favorite chair with, "Well, I'm back."
More could be said of course. But does it need the saying? Particularly
when it will suffer by lying in the shadow of the towering climax that
already happened?
Johan Larson
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> My greatest fear about Jackson doing /The Hobbit/ is related to his
> view on the Ring as an extremely powerfully corrupting influence --
> that might be used to cast some doubt on Bilbo's actions at the
> Mountain when he tried to prevent unnecessary fighting by handing the
> Arkenstone to the Elves and Men. In Jackson's portrayal, I am afraid
> that this action will be shown as cowardly and treasonous. I can only
> hope to be wrong if Jackson does get the job in the end, but I think
> that such a change would be completely consistent with the changes he
> made to LotR.
Quick! Let's write the screenplay now. Here on the newsgroups.
/The Hobbit/ is shorter than LotR, and so we might actually be able to
produce something workable! :-)
Christopher Kreuzer
> On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 01:39:48 GMT, "Christopher Kreuzer"
> <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> allegedly declared to
> rec.arts.sf.written...
>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>> In message <news:SH4ah.6906$k74....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>
>>> "Christopher Kreuzer" <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> spoke these
>>> staves:
>>>> William Cloud Hicklin wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:58:55 -0500, Pawel Dembowski
>>>>> <au...@lexx.eu.org> wrote:
>>>>>> Elrond and Galadriel can appear in "LotR: The Last Alliance" as
>>>>>> well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Gawd help us all. What's next? "CSI: Minas Tirith"?
>>>>
>>>> LOL! I'm a big fan of CSI. That would be funny! :-)
>>>
>>> We'd get them to investigate a sinister killing in an secret orc-
>>> playing society . . . >:->
>>
>> Then we would have the spin-off series of:
>> CSI: Lothlorien and CSI: Rivendell.
>> Plus a Lost-style series set in Moria!
>> Or a Big Brother series in Shelob's Lair?
>
> And then there's Aaron Sorkin's high-concept drama set among the
> staffers of the White Council...
Is that /The West Wing/?
Troels Forchhammer
> bothered to re-check. Did I get my calculations wrong?
ToY has:
2931 Aragorn son of Arathorn II born on March 1st.
Bilbo's adventure started in the end of April 2941, when Aragorn was
close to 10 years and two months.
In LotR the hobbits meet Aragorn on the night of the 29th of September
3018. Aragorn was then 87 years (and nearly seven months).
In Shire reckoning Aragorn was born on the 1st of March 1331, and he
died, again accordign to ToY, on the same date in 1541 -- i.e. on his
birthday when he turned 210.
Christopher Kreuzer
I prefer the following.
After the Ring goes in the fire, the screen goes blank and the credits start
to roll. Five minutes later, after the "film fans" have left the room, the
film restarts and the ending plays out as filmed, for the "book fans" to
enjoy.
Christopher Kreuzer
"...It's a good day for long tales, for questions and for answers, so Tom
will start the talking.' He then told them many remarkable stories [...]
[The Old Forest] was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and
in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the
fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. [...] Suddenly Tom's
talk left the woods and went leaping [...] wandering at last up on to the
Downs. [...] Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the
heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone
like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory
and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into
the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds
covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all."
(In the House of Tom Bombadil)
That's the history bits. He might not play a role in it. But he is
performing a role of mediating the story to the reader, connecting them to
the history. He was there. He remembers the lady that wore the brooch they
find later. There is also the bit where Tom's words prompt a vision by the
hobbits of "a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall
and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow".
That is another example of Tolkien's technique of interweaving bits of
history with the mundane narrative.
The mythic parts come in the next bit, where Tom's thought wander out "into
ancient starlight", "when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight
to the western Shore".
Sure, Tom doesn't fit in, per se, with the taxonomy, but he follows the
spirit, if not the letter of the mythical atmosphere that Tolkien generates.
Christopher