Ten, and twenty and thirty years on.....

[Neurion]

Do you suppose that another film of The Lord of the Rings will be made in the future, and if so, how do you think it would be changed? Would you like to see a remake, if well done?

(This is, of course, assuming I don't manage to finagle my way into helming such a project in the next couple of decades )

[Kath]

I'm not sure that I would like a remake, the films are like the books, a one time only thing. Any remakes would be continually compared to the originals and to my mind they wouldn't be any better because the reason the films were so fantastic was because they were the first real, good attempt at bringing Tolkien's creation to life.

Also if too many years go past then any new filmmakers will no longer have people like Alan Lee or John Howard to work with to keep their film close to the vision of Tolkien.

The only thing I can see someone doing is either doing a film exactly to the storyline of the books or doing something so completely different it's barely recognisable.

[the guy who be short]

Originally Posted by Kath

The only thing I can see someone doing is either doing a film exactly to the storyline of the books or doing something so completely different it's barely recognisable.

Lord of the Rings 3000! When the futuristic Orcings of Planet Mudda attack Earth under the orders of their foul leader, The Sour One, it is up to a young human, Fred Bags, to rescue humanity. Together with his faithful servant Sam Jam, he must take the Digital-Ring of Power to Planet Mudda itself, where it must be cast into the open core of the planet, thus destroying it and deprogramming all the Orcings spaceships...

Actually, that sounds quite interesting. No, I don't know where it came from either, but I'd like to see that version of it.

[narfforc]

The way the Tekromancers are advancing the next Lotr films will most probably be wholly CGI. They can already use famous actors who have shed the mortal coil, or are now too old, this may well be a chance to use Brigitte Bardot as Galadriel or Errol Flynn in green tights as Legolas (I jest). Think of the actors/actresses who could play the parts, choose, the world is your oyster.

[Neurion]

For myself, I'd like to see a trilogy more accurate to the books made. The problem with my own particular vision of the story though is that the PJ films come extremely close to my conception of what Middle-Earth should look like, and to re-use a great many of the design elements and even props from the PJ trilogy would no doubt spark off controversy, as well as accusations regarding imagination or lack of imitation

However, changing things like the time Aragorn's taking up Anduril occurs, inserting characters like Galdor, Imrahil, Elladan, Elrohir and Beregond, leaving out the superfluous bits like the drinking game, re-inserting the Scouring of the Shire and cutting back on the amount of screen-time Arwen gets, as well as making the Gondorian soldiers more realistically tough versus the orcs and giving Aragorn the war-crown helm of the King of Gondor rather than that little tiara, just to name ahandful of hundreds of possible examples, would, I think, differentiate a second trilogy enough from the currently existing one.

[Durelin]

In ten or twenty years I'm expecting a re-release with the films *digitally* (or something...maybe 'holographically'?) remastered.

And then we'll all go to conventions and talk about the good ol' days when they were first released and there was nothing like 'em out there.

[Kitanna]

Originally Posted by Neurion

For myself, I'd like to see a trilogy more accurate to the books made...However, changing things like the time Aragorn's taking up Anduril occurs, inserting characters like Galdor, Imrahil, Elladan, Elrohir and Beregond, leaving out the superfluous bits like the drinking game, re-inserting the Scouring of the Shire and cutting back on the amount of screen-time Arwen gets, etc.

I think in order to get a vision of such a thing LOTR should be a mini-series. That is the only way to get many things in (such as Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Fatty helping Frodo move, Scouring of the Shire, Erkenbrand at Helm's Deep, Tom Bombadil, and so on). If the books were made into movies again and things added that many books fans wanted to see then the movies would never end.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Neurion

Do you suppose that another film of The Lord of the Rings will be made in the future, and if so, how do you think it would be changed? Would you like to see a remake, if well done?

Me and the Mrs. had a rare 'childless' night last night, and so went out to see the movie "Avatar" in 3D by James Cameron.

Wow!

Okay, so the story isn't Tolkien, but I had to continually remind myself that Pandora (the planet on which the story takes place) and all of its inhabitants - flora and fauna - weren't real.

Wow!

Seeing that, there are no limits. We could actually see Lothlorien as it was meant to be, or any other place or creature that Tolkien imagined.

Hope someone takes this new technology and uses it to film, once again, LotR.

[davem]

Seems PJ is aiming to have a 3d version of LotR out in (possibly) 2012 http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6982297.ece

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, said last spring that he wanted to reissue the trilogy in 3-D if Avatar persuaded enough cinemas to put in new 3-D projectors. Last week technicians at Weta, the production company that had worked on the trilogy, said they had experimented with 3-D battle scenes and proclaimed them to be “gob-smacking”.

The Lord of the Rings is expected to be re-released after Jackson has finished producing the two-part version of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit over the next two years. This would mean that a 3-D version of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the trilogy, could be in cinemas by Christmas 2012.

so those so inclined will soon be able to experience a nazgul flying into their face, or Gollum dumping a couple of coneys in their lap.....

[alatar]

Originally Posted by davem

Seems PJ is aiming to have a 3d version of LotR out in (possibly) 2012 http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle6982297.ece

so those so inclined will soon be able to experience a nazgul flying into their face, or Gollum dumping a couple of coneys in their lap.....

Thanks, davem, for the link.

The 3D, to me, is secondary to the other technology, such as mocap and the digital (yet real-seeming) worlds.

Maybe PJ will take a moment and put a big 3D smile this time on prone Gandalf's face when the Wizard faces the Witch-King.

[Thinlómien]

3D version of the movies? Huh.

As for the original question, I would definitely love to see a different version of LotR on screen, just for the sake of it. Now Mith's suggestion of starting with Faramir's dream really made my imagination race... *almost runs away to start writing a script*

[davem]

Don't know how many of you have seen this article via the link on ToRn http://www.salon.com/entertainment/m...otr/index.html but there are some interesting comments on what PJ got wrong - this analysis in particular (I'll quote it in full here as some of the other points in the piece include some 'adult' language):

In Tolkien's storytelling, every character lives in relation to the background myths. It is in relation to those -- the tales contained in the almost immemorially ancient Silmarillion, and the many others that Tolkien had already spent a lifetime defining by the time he started working on LOTR -- that every character in LOTR -- elf, dwarf, wizard, human, defines himself.

But Jackson's script destroys this. The destruction isn't all that apparent in "Fellowship of the Ring," but with each of the next two films it encroaches further and further on the story as originally told. Characters such as Elrond, Gimli, Denethor, and Treebeard, as the film defines them, are pathetic travesties of those Tolkien gave us in his three volumes.

One way of seeing Tolkien's achievement is that he gave us real, presumably complex persons, with extensive interior lives, acting in a moral universe defined by the huge expanse of their cultural myths. Every significant choice that Aragorn makes, he makes against a historical background: he knows the history of the Rangers, the Dunedain, stretching back to Gondor and the Numenoreans. He knows his heritage.

The same is true of the other participants in the attempt to destroy the One Ring. None of them has any private motive apart from those provided by their cultures.

Except for the hobbits. They, common little people, have no such history. In their folktales, the memorable items are the blizzard of '78, or somebody's great-grandfather who was big enough to ride a horse. They did not participate in any of the world-defining and world-transforming events that constrain the other members of the Fellowship. They have no prior cultural commitments regarding any of the large issues that are involved for anyone else. So Sam and Frodo, and even Merry and Pippin, as Tolkien tells the story, have plenty of reason to wonder to each other why they are doing this. None of the other members of the Fellowship ever talk about their motives.

Jackson's script wipes out this distinction. Completely. Everybody in the Fellowship, it turns out, has some personal axe to grind.

That may have been innocent enough at first. It's not unreasonable, perhaps, to say to oneself, "Well, viewers need something to identify with, some little idiosyncrasy or weakness in their heroes. One can't expect them to watch abstract principles in action." But then, by the last film, we have Denethor presented as a pathetic, self-centered fool rather than as the tragically misguided figure, heroically sacrificing himself to an empty model of quasi-roman heroism. We have Gollum, free of his mindless obsession with the precious, enacting a preposterous plot to turn Frodo and Sam against each other. We have Gimli become one of the three stooges. We have Elrond and Arwen acting out petulant parent/child arguments.

And the biggest howler of all, Frodo, at Mount Doom, announcing his inability to free himself from the Ring in words and gestures that might be lifted straight from an old Fu Manchu movie. Yuk and double-yuk.

Oh, and the Ents. Don't get me started on what Jackson did to them. In the film, they are comic figures and they are stupid. They are dumbed down to where, in just two sentences, Merry can persuade Treebeard to completely reverse his course and take them near Isengard.

In order to provide this endearing touch, Jackson had to rewrite the Entmoot so that it turns out exactly the opposite of Tolkien's Entmoot: the ents decide to have nothing to do with the coming battle. Jackson's cinematic requirement for the endearing weakness has conquered all: myths, legends, and finally even Middle-Earth common-sense. None of these characters has any heroic resonance at all. If Jackson wanted viewers to feel as though his characters could have come off the street, as though we could sit down and have a beer with Boromir -- well, unhappily, he succeeded all too well. (my bolding)

Now, this isn't (honestly) intended to start the whole 'let's slag off the movies' debate again, but to point out that the real challenge in bringing Tolkien's story to the screen is not about technology, but about insight into the meaning of the story. Jackson just didn't get the point of the story - & his desire to turn it into 3D confirms for me that he has always been incapable of understanding what Tolkien was doing (China Mieville's comment on Jackson's omission of the Scouring is worth quoting again http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...on_Tolkien.php

Unlike so many of those he begat, Tolkien's vision, never mind any Hail-fellow-well-met-ery, no matter the coziness of the shire, despite even the remorseless sylvan bonheur of Tom Bombadil, is tragic. The final tears in characters' and readers' eyes are not uncomplicatedly of happiness. On the one hand, yay, the goodies win: on the other, shame that the entire epoch is slipping from Glory. The magic goes west, of course, but there's also the peculiar abjuring of narrative form, in the strange echo after the final battle, the Lord of the Rings's post-end end, the Harrowing of the Shire--so criminally neglected by Jackson. In an alternate reality, this piece of scripting would have earned talented young tattooed hipster video-game designer Johnno Tolkien a slapped wrist from his studio: since when do you put a lesser villain straight after the final Boss Battle? But that's the point. The episode concludes 'well', of course, so far as it goes, but in its very pettiness relative to what's just been, it is brilliantly unsatisfying, ushering in an era of degraded parodies of epics, where it's not just the elves that are going: you can't even get a proper Dark Lord any more. Whatever we see as the drive behind Tolkien's tragic vision, and however we relate to its politics and aesthetics, the tragedy of the creeping tawdry quotidian gives Middle Earth a powerful melancholia lamentably missing from too much of what followed. It deserves celebrating and reclaiming.

Its not about 'mocap' or 3D, or even holographic technology - all that's needed is a director who understands the story & has the ability to put that understanding on screen (or whatever medium).

[Galadriel]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

3D version of the movies?

Oh no. I think that would kill the magic and make it too technically constipated.

[Galadriel]

Not really. Lord of the Rings is a very hard film to make. I think only PJ and his team could have done the task. In any case, they did what was necessary, even though I found a lot of the changes annoying.