CT participate in HOBBIT films?

[Sauron the White]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[davem]

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

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

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

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

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

[William Cloud Hicklin]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sauron the White]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

[davem]

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

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

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

[Sauron the White]

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

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

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

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

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

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