New Fan film ideas?

[Elmo]

Something exciting, that can be done on a shoestring and of course is Tolkien! Might be a good idea to take it a bit away the LOTR era to avoid too many comparisons with Peter Jackson's effort so you have space to be original. But you have to keep it close enough to try and draw in people only familiar with the film. I'm not sure maybe a story about one of the hobbits who went on an adventure with Gandalf before Bilbo? One of the Took's children? Maybe too difficult to get the size of the hobbit right without it looking stupid. It would probably be difficult to do without the solid basis Tolkien would provide in extant writing.

There are probably far more better ideas than this, there are a lot of folk cleverer than me on this forum.

[Macalaure]

The thing that would come to my mind first is Frodo's youth in Buckland, the tragic death of his parents, and his adoption by Bilbo.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

There is a German fan film called "Lúthiens Traum" (Lúthien's Dream). It tells a part of Beren and Luthien's story, with additional characters. I haven't discovered any way to see it online yet, but information and pictures can be found here. Several of the people involved are members of the German Tolkien Society.

Do take a look at Lúthien - I think she has the appearance of ageless beauty that goes well with the character.

[Mnemosyne]

Personally I'd like to see once and for all a comprehensive treatment of "The Scouring of the Shire," maybe half an hour to an hour long? Though it might be difficult to keep the landscape from resembling the Jacksonverse, I think that with sufficient adherence to the plot and characterizations it could be a worthwhile adaptation.

I'd be more thrilled with Mac's idea if Frodo's youth hadn't been the subject of countless pieces of fan fiction. Unless your ideas as to what exactly happened are simultaneously breathtakingly new and wholly consistent with what we know of his character at age fifty, I don't think this would be a worthwhile project if only because it's been treated with so many times (although in a different medium).

And of course there's this, which I think is far beyond the scope of an amateur production but I'd nonetheless really really really like to see.

Fun thread!

[Elmo]

I love that Numenor film idea, I think the guy's dad is ill or something so he didn't complete it.

I don't read fan fiction and far more people surely would see the film (especially if it made the bbc's website like THFG) than read fan fiction so they wouldn't, like me, come with your weariness about tales of Frodo's background. I for one would love to see a film about it.

[Mnemosyne]

I'm still holding out hope that Westernesse will be completed (the author's father fell ill I think three years ago now; I think maybe two years ago he explained that he was now receiving paying projects which were taking up most of his time), but it's more estel than amdir at this point.

You're absolutely right that Young Master Frodo, The Scamp of Buckland (working title) would be a lot more accessible than the troves of fanfic lurking on the internet, but there would still have to be points of comparison, just as you can see that Jackson borrowed some of his screenshots from Bakshi and some of the plot-workings from Sibley/Bakewell. What I would be most interested in is whether the people involved in writing the project would come to the same conclusions as most of the fanauthors (who are often very derivative of one another and are thus prone to create "fanons" which take on the appearance of canon-friendliness simply because so many people adhere to them) independently.

I don't know if Mac had any actual ideas about the project or was just expressing a wish as a potential viewer, but despite my fanfic fatigue I do think that most of the fanons surrounding Young Frodo actually have a pretty good basis grounded in logic and canon (I'd be more appreciative of them if authors wouldn't stick to them all the time, but that's another story) and that a filmmaker would, absent other information, derive them on his or her own. But then you run into the problem of plagiarism (Dissertation Student: WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S BEEN DONE ALREADY?), and do authors of fan fiction who post things publicly and not-for-profit and often derive their work from one another have the same intellectual property rights as, say, academic writers?

Which is why I'd personally avoid the whole kettle of worms. Though if someone else were to make the movie, I'd definitely go and see it--especially if Frodo looks nothing at all like that Pretty Boy who played him in Jackson's films.

[Gwathagor]

Hmmm. I can think of some cool ideas, but the budget is invariably an obstacle. Isildur stealing the fruit from the tree in Numenor, for example, would be great but much too expensive. I think the way to go is to deal with either Gandalf's or Aragorn's earlier travels and adventures. Or something similar from the Silmarillion. That way, you're mostly shooting in the outdoors rather than trying to green screen in castles and cities.

How about the ride of the Dunedain to Aragorn's aid? Or something to do with Elladan and Elrohir running around in the wilderness killing orcs?

[Morthoron]

How about a murder mystery that involves the strange deaths of writers of bad Tolkien fan-fiction? We can call it "Who Killed Mary Sue?" In the end, the critic-murderer is found not guilty and given the Congressional Medal of Honor for outstanding service to the literary world. Eventually, bad fan-fiction writers are put to sleep to put the rest of us out of their misery. The medical term for the procedure will be called Mary-Suethenasia.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

[sassyfriend]

I'd loved a film involveing Aragorn and Legolas friendship like if they take the Mellon chronicles and turned them into movies