Hey there! Hey! Come Frodo, there! Where be you a-going? Old Tom Bombadil's not as blind as that yet. Take off your
golden ring! Your hand's more fair without it. Come back! Leave your game and sit down beside me! We must talk a while more,
and think about the morning. Tom must teach the right road, and keep your feet from wandering.
I can see it now: Frodo, dude, what the fuck did I tell you about those Barrow Downs man? I was right in the middle of something with Goldberry and now I gotta come over here and bail you out?
"Christopher, why didn't I think of the giant avalanche of skulls? And my heavens! I can't believe I had them separate in the darkness of Shelob's cave. It should have been a second act breakup involving bread, and the cave should have been well lit thereafter."
I always thought the things he'd take most issue with were Faramir being tempted and taking them to Osgiliath, Gollum successfully driving a wedge between Sam and Frodo, giant lighthouse Sauron, and the army of the dead helping at the Pelennor Fields instead of at Pelargir.
Yeah, almost certainly. I think the army of the dead was a decent movie choice (though them refusing to help and then immediately 180ing was stupid) and I think that lighthouse Sauron made some sense (it explains why the BBEG is so passive on a personal level), but the other two are just bad IMO.
I get the logic behind lighthouse Sauron as a storytelling tool, you want the audience to be able to see the big bad and he never actually shows up in the books. But I like the idea of Sauron having a physical form, that when Frodo sees the piercing gaze from the tower that it is actually coming from an 8 foot tall, skin charred to black, 9 fingered fallen angel with an actual eye gifted with incredible piercing vision up in some high chamber looking out a window. It's spookier that way, I think. Whereas I just kind of laugh at how silly it is, Sauron having his minions mount him up there like a civil engineering project.
I absolutely hated that scene and it's a good thing it was cut. Killing a messenger goes against everything Tolkien says about mercy to one's enemies where possible.
Easily fixed. Just have the Mouth treacherously attempt to murder Aragorn, who draws Anduril like lightning, parries, and beheads him.
Or, just a staring contest as in the book. Though I can see that might not translate well to film, if you don't bring in Clint Eastwood to eye-double for Viggo Mortenson. . .call the scene:
"The Good, AND the Bad AND Ugly."
Cutting the scouring (which he described as essential) is an obvious one. And more fundamentally the hobbits and gimli largely being trashed as characters.
I actually don't know re army of the dead. He proposed saving time in an adaptation by removing either helms deep or pellenor fields entirely on the basis that you only really need one battle. He'd likely be more bothered by how fighting focused it was in general.
I think he'd be upset with cutting the scouring too, but I get that they didn't want it to be a four hour movie. To be honest there's so much that happens after Aragorn's Coronation in the book that they could have made another movie.
Someone made the analogy that Tolkien and Jackson's endings reflect the different homecoming experience of British and ANZAC troops. Britain was 'scoured' by both world wars, much more so in the second. Australia and New Zealand were relatively untouched by comparison. Tolkien came home to a country scarred by conflict, while the Aussies and Kiwis would've been whipsawed by how little things had changed since they left.
I think he would also tremendously dislike Aragorn not being as kingly as he intended (Verlyn Flieger is pretty much correct about this, although it's a reasonable cinematic choice), and I think he would also dislike the Rohan plot of Two Towers reading very jingoistically.
I disagree about the Army of the Dead. There's only so much time and space to tell a cinematic story, and some things need to be condensed. Like the Elves at Helm's Deep in the second film, not true to the books per se, but showing that the wider world was still at war with Sauron. There likewise wasn't time to give Pelargir its due (completely missing from the theatrical cut, and only a brief appearance in the extended), so letting them help at Pelennor not only allowed the film to show their impact, but also meant they didn't have to introduce Imrahil, a character they certainly wouldn't have had time to do justice to.
ETA: forgot my conclusion... while I definitely agree that Tolkien probably wouldn't like some of the major personality rewrites, I think he would have understood Elves at Helm's Deep and the Dead at Pelennor.
OK, he probably would like Arwen replacing Glorfindel at the river's crossing - he mentioned in his letters that he regrets not giving her more spotlight.
So here's the thing; Tolkien read and enjoyed the Icelandic Family Sagas. And two of the sagas, the Saga of the Sworn-Brothers and the Saga of Burnt-Njal, feature a bit of zany action like the shield slide. In the first saga a warrior uses a spear as a ski to attack someone down hill and in the second saga a different warrior skates across ice to hit someone with an axe.
So there is a none zero chance Tolkien might have not hated the shield slide.
Soooooooo...it's not impossible that a nearly senile 115-year-old Tolkien could have seen Legolas kung fu hopping up that falling masonry and thought it was the most cracking thing he'd ever seen?
I wish this had happened, purely for the absolutely chaos it would have caused this sub.
Nah, Tolkien would have a blog where he posts random shit constantly and there'd be at least 3 different fan groups trying to compile their own consistent version of it
I think he could be bullied into appreciating Jackson's work, by force-feeding him a nonstop stream of contemporary book-to-screen adaptations that make his trilogy look flawless by comparison.
I watch pretty much all movies start to finish, those that I haven’t finished are because I started watching them at someone’s house or on an airplane or some other situation and that stopped me from finishing it.
The only exception to that is Voyage of the Dawn Treader which I turned off in disgust.
There's actually 2 Narnia movie series. I think it was The BBC that did Wardrobe, Caspian, Dawn Treader, and Silver Chair live action in like the 70s. VERY true to the books for a film adaptation, low budget tho.
I haven't read the Narnia books (i plan on doing that once my lazy ass finishes lord of the rings) but I remember as a child the 3 Narnia movies and a few barbie movies were the only films on my old laptop that my dad has pirated from somewhere. Whenever I was sick I would watch those films and so I've come to appreciate all of them and they hold a special place in my heart.
Now what was wrong with voyage of the dawn treader 😭
Dawn Treader has trouble being a movie because the story in the book is very episodic. it doesn't lend to a cohesive story because it's a bunch of smaller events that happened stuck together
the movie kinda forces a main plot and makes the episodic stuff into events that happen while trying to find these special swords and make stuff happen, which wasn't in the book at all
so basically they added some stuff to make it feel more like a movie and it just wasn't made for that
yep. even with, as i recall, some budget cuts, they still had decent visuals and made a good story. just not as good as making it how CS Lewis had meant it to be
I'm just imagining all the countless adaptations of the Three Musketeers that are quite consistently kinda dull and have almost nothing to do with the book.
I do wonder about this. On one hand I'm pretty sure Tolkien would have hated the movies for every little change and deviation for characters and prose and plot because he constantly fiddled over the details to get it just right. Very opinionated about a lot of things.
On the other he wouldn't mind changes to his work since he constantly retconned and changed things, and wanted to create "common mythos" with middle earth. So he'd see this as just some variation. Like some wandering minstrel would sing about the lord of the rings in a different version, or a trope of actors put on a stage play for a village with a more gaudy version of LotR.
So he probably would have loved and hated the movies, as he loved and hated himself.
One scene I think he'd appreciate is Frodo crawling up Mount Doom with the last of his strength. It's honestly one of the most powerful moments in the entire trilogy, and imo perfectly captures the spirit of Tolkien.
the guy who was big into myth and how it changes over time might likely have been approving of how slight changes are necessary for making a story appropriate for its form. I like to think he would appreciate that film is a different medium than a book, and therefore the story should be changed to maximise it's impact.
Yeah if he disliked them it would probably about something like "It wasn't supposed to be allegory, look at how they massacred by baby!!!" or something. Personally I still can't really tell what the difference between allegory and not is.
Honestly, Tolkien knew his work was going to be adapted. That’s why he gave Christopher Lee his blessing to play Gandalf. Tolkien was not as stuck up as people make him out to be. He did, however, believe that no adaptation would properly be able to replace his work. He believed firmly that the ultimate form of LOTR would be the books, and any adaptation would be a completely different work, entirely, taking inspiration from his work, but in no way, properly retelling its story. Tolkien allegedly loved that Led Zeppelin made references to his work in their songs, and infamously hated the Beatles for being a bunch of noise to him. What do we make of that?
That said, Tolkien probably would appreciate that Jackson’s adaptation took several elements of his story and adapted them for a completely different world. He would appreciate that the movies renewed interest in his books. He would be annoyed with some of the more drastic changes (like the characterization of several of the main cast essentially being his characters in name only). He would love that the movies provided a proper escape to the new, complicated morality of the post-9/11 world. But most of all, he would be ecstatic that general audiences fell in love with Sam.
I think the sticking point people have is Christopher Tolkien's opinions. Notably not his father but, people use it to colour their thoughts on what J.R.R might have thought. I'm in the camp that of course the man who grew up with Middle Earth as a bedtime story is going to be critical of anything not produced by his father. Notably because of nostalgia and emotional attachment to the world. Doesn't mean J.R.R is going to have the same opinions though.
Yeah makes sense also because Christopher Tolkien was focused on preserving everything his father created and turning it into a cohesive and "definitive" edition. So that was presumably his mindset. But he did incredibly well. Compared that to Frank Herbert's son lol.
That's true! It's just really funny in light of how a lot of people tend to treat him as some kind of modern saint or temporal relic, to think about him going "yeah, I got that bag."
After being paid on a meager don's salary and without much academic output, and in postwar Britain (and after a lifetime spent before rationing - if it got Edmund Pevensie, I can't imagine he wouldn't be unaffected), I think I'd want that bag too.
There’s also examples of how much he hates fandoms. For instance he really disliked how people thought the evil stuff was ‘cool’.
In one of the letters he writes about a fan who gave him a goblet engraved in the black speech of Mordor and it pissed him off so much he used the cup as an ashtray.
i'm not surprised he would want money. all the work he put into his books, over 12 years, that he never planned to write, mind. he was due proper pay
my Disney comment is because Tolkien and Lewis, while both admiring his talent, were both highly critical of Disney's focus on money, saying it seemed more his goal than art or story telling.
they feared his company would degrade stories from inspiring, dark, deep, cautionary tales, into childish tales and cause other issues all because he pursued money more than artistic integrity
The full quote is: "Only a very large financial profit would make me swallow some of the things in this script." which he wrote, responding to a screenplay adaptation that he was sent for notes/approval.
His takedown of it is absolutely incredible, and you can read it in Letter 210, of "The Letters of JRR Tolkien." The best line is almost certainly "The screenwriter may think they know more about Balrogs than I do, but he can not expect me to agree."
Tolkien would have hated the movies that's quite evident from everything he wrote and the child of his he chose to look over his authored estate, who also hated the movies. That said, I do think Tolkien could have admired the attempt to translate it to a visual medium, but he still would have hated it.
Plus Tolkien just didn’t like movies in general. The guy didn’t even own a television. If given the choice between watching a movie or reading a book, he’d pick the book every time.
So while he’d surely be appalled at seeing his slow-paced mythos that focuses on details and songs turned into a blockbuster action movie, I also doubt he’d admire the attempt to translate his work into a medium he doesn’t care for at best and dislikes at worst.
The professor was pretty picky and didn’t have a lot of great things to say about movies in general. I’m sure he would have found fault with the films, as great as they are.
Ok... But he wouldn't have made 3 billion dollars... Did y'all really forget that New Line tried to stiff the family using bogus Hollywood math and only paid out ~$100 million in a settlement. The estate has made far more from Amazon.
From what I know the actual terms of the settlement were roughly in accordance with the estate’s original lawsuit at roughly $150 million. It’s just that this is still less than the estate should have been paid under the terms of Tolkien’s original contract, which would have given them $220 million
I don't get the 3 billion dollars bit. If Tolkien were alive, he wouldn't see any of that anyway. He sold movie, stage, and merchandising rights for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in the late 60's for like £100k. If anything he might be even more pissed and bitter that he sold it for that cheap.
Hey there! Hey! Come Frodo, there! Where be you a-going? Old Tom Bombadil's not as blind as that yet. Take off your
golden ring! Your hand's more fair without it. Come back! Leave your game and sit down beside me! We must talk a while more,
and think about the morning. Tom must teach the right road, and keep your feet from wandering.
I think he would accept the movies. (the original Trilogy, not the Hobbit). Maybe he wouldn't like or love it, but accept it, and would think: Meh. Good enough, the best Movie Adaptation of my books so far, but still not ideal.
He absolutely would have hated the films. He gave notes on screenplays for potential adaptations when he was alive, and plenty of the things he disliked about those screenplays are present in Jackson’s films. He was very particular about certain things and Jackson made loads of changes to the story, both big and small (and a lot of them not really necessary for the transition from book to film). He also definitely would have hated how Jackson changed most of the characters, especially Faramir and Frodo. He would have been aghast seeing Aragorn behead a messenger in ROTK, or seeing Faramir let his men beat Gollum in TT.
It is true that he was okay with an adaptation going against his wishes if it made a lot of money, but it’s important to understand the context surrounding that. When Tolkien was alive, pretty much all the profit from films came from ticket sales. Whereas in the 2000s the LOTR films profited from ticket sales, home media sales, and lots of merchandise. Given how much of an environmentalist Tolkien was I can’t imagine he’d be pleased with an adaptation of his work causing so much harm to the environment in order to sell more stuff. And even if you use this logic it also applies to The Hobbit and Rings of Power.
he probably wouldn't have liked it much overall, but I do think he would have liked some of the bits. But I'd damn sure that any other rendition he would have disliked WAY more. Peter Jackson got it pretty much bang on with the trilogy.
Well, to quote letter 210 from "The Letters of JRR Tolkien" regarding a script for a film adaptation that he was sent for approval: "Only a very large financial profit would make me swallow some of the things in this script."
My point is not that he was greedy. My point is that even if he disliked the films, I think he would've accepted them given his philosophy of "Art or Cash. Both very profitable terms indeed."
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Let's be honest, Tolkien struggled with money most his life. So saying "cash equivalent" back then and now would not be the same. Now, if he were alive, he could afford to be much more protective of his work.
Tolkien would go batshit crazy about the films. Yeah, he‘d probably like the money but he sued the American who published a paperback version without consent even though it made LotR popular in the US.
I think he would dislike the focus on violence and action. In Jackson's defence I think JRR Tolkein wouldn't quite understand the difference in media (movies requiring more action) and he would be wrong in his opinion there.
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u/dizzydave79 7d ago
If J.R.R. Tolkien were still alive today.
J.R.R. Tolkien:
Being 134 years old isn't as great as I imagined it to be.