Posted on 01/12/2021 8:36:06 PM PST by be-baw
Ironically, that was one of the lessens of Tolkien. When you secularize what was made in the image of God, you get poor replications. He was commenting on how socialism, trying to create an earthly copy of heaven, warps and twists what came from God. Orcs were twisted humans,changed from a noble sentiment to something much, much less.
Don’t be too hopeful. I’m guessing it will involve Frodo getting a sex-change, lesbian elves, and Orcs demanding the Rohirrim be charged with war crimes.
Isn’t that “Netflix?”
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Like a lot of Tolkien fans, I am indeed expecting what you describe, i.e., a G.o.T. clone set in Middle Earth with a smattering of Tolkien “characters,” and I use that term loosely as we’re likely just talking about a few names that appeared in the LOTR appendix. As much as I now love to boycott Amazon as much as possible, the 10-year-old Tolkien fan I once was will probably demand to check out an episode or three.
It’s a shame, as much of material in the Silmarillion and various Lost Tales collections might have worked as a sort of anthology series if Amazon had chosen to take the high road and challenge its viewers to do the same. But who am I kidding? Bezos and Amazon take a high road? Haha. So, yeah, I’m expecting the G.o.T. garbage truck to take a dump in Middle Earth.
Are you friggin' kidding!?
The first book - The Fellowship of the Ring - alone is, what, 600 pages long!
Your teacher - even if speaking very quickly, like JFK when delivering a speech hyped up on methamphetamines - would have needed roughly 60 hours to read just the first book aloud.
I call B.S.!
Regards,
Orc lives matter.
Great! 35 minutes of walking and five minutes of plot line. Not sarcasm.
Maybe it was the Reader’s Digest version! ;-)
It will be specifically designed to ruin the franchise as the Star Wars sequels were.
Chinese are destroying our cultural icons on purpose.
The fact that it is Amazon doing the production should have immediately struck it from your list.
SJW Middle Earth - you can bank on it. Watch at your own peril.
Probably means The Hobbit.
The backstory is only a mystery to people who were introduced to Middle Earth through the PJ movies and who have never read the books. PJ stuck with The Hobbit and LOTR, and even there he left a lot out. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle Earth and other miscellaneous items published by Christopher Tolkien after his father’s death remain to be mined.
Presumably the filmmakers know they have a huge, built-in audience if they stay close to the books. They must also know that this audience will savage the films if they deviate too far. PJ started well but, by the time he was done with The Hobbit, he had turned his films into comic book/video-game style adaptations for twelve year olds. The smart course for Amazon would be to bring artistic discipline back into the mix and do a faithful adaptation. Of course, smart and Hollywood are not always a natural mix.
I have been a Tolkien fan since Jr High when I read the books over and over. It has only been in later years the I realized Tolkien’s strong connection to his Christian roots.
I am remembering when Frodo said, “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replied, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
As we lament the situation of the world we are in today and wonder where we go from here, Gandalf’s advice rings true. Our responsibility as Christians is to follow Jesus’ command in His sermon on the mount to be “light” and “salt” to the world, not antagonistic and angry, yet at the same time not agreeing and conforming. To be distinct from the world not because we hate them, but because we love the lost sinners. Not compromising, but serving and loving not for our own praise but for the glory of God.
From my limited understanding of this Amazon series, I’m not sure it’s possible to “stay close to the books. The plan from what I’ve read is to flesh out the back story, i.e., the sort of stuff that appears in the appendices of Return of the King. Tolkien’s style in those sections is basically “summary.” Sure, there are character names of various kings, etc. but they’re not well-developed characters. The plot points are painted in very broad strokes much like “Chronicles” in the Old Testament. If you made a TV series about some of the obscure kings in Chronicles, there’d be a lot of room for “not staying close to the book” because, well, we’re talking about turning, say, 20 sentences of prose into 3 hours of television.
Be kind. He probably meant The Hobbit, which is fundamentally a children’s story.
Solo was really good. Followed the Marvel formula, don’t make the movie expected. It’s a heist movie in the Star Wars universe. And really with The Silmarilion, the Appendixes and other stuff the back story of LOTR is there’s just not in “normal” narrative form.
I’ve seen enough films based on Tolkien. I read all the books in college in the seventies, including The Silmarillion. I enjoyed Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy, but I barely could get through the overblown mess that was The Hobbit Trilogy. Besides, anything new will be so woke as to be vomit-inducing, and it’s from Amazon Post, so “pass”.
I wouldn’t have spoken if it were BS. We just had damned good teachers in St. Louis back in the day.
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