If you were forced to do a trilogy based on the silmarillion how would you do it?

If you were forced to do a trilogy based on the silmarillion how would you do it?

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I'm about to squander a billion fucking dollars.

I'd embezzle most of the money and then use shitty CGI to pretend that I made a movie.
Like Jackson did in the Hobbit.

Get Terrence Malick to do a 2hour intro on the creation of the universe, then tell the producers who are forcing me to make it to fuck off, make a 3 season series, each with 10 one hour episodes, because you can't cram The Silmarillion in to three fucking movies.

The book is only 400 pages long compared to lotr which is over 1000 pages. I think one could do an adequate adaptaion based upon silmarillon under 150 min. It wouldn't be great ofc, but thats more cuz the source/tolkiens universe is kinda shitty and stupid to adapt. Ya'd be better doin ya own fantasyversion ww1 instead...

Mockumentary

its shorter because of the way its written - like history or mythology

the events described are on a much bigger scale than anything lotr did

the number of pages is irrelevant, it covers massive time periods and loads of major events in the world, most of then aren't set out in long narratives.

children of hurin has been released as a full novel but is only a very small part of the silmarillion.

It's written like the Bible; the book of Matthew is like a hundred pages yet the Jesus of Nazareth film is 6.5 hours long and still cuts things out

>ywn see Morgoth on screen
I'm gonna pull the trigger

I'd just make the entire movie CGI and have lots of wacky slapsitck.

>hire five people do to casting
>tell them all to cast all the young girls they can find, while they all think the other for are doing the adults
>end up with thousands of young girls on a set
>hose them down with a cocktail of LSD and ecstasy

This is as far as I've gotten.

All jokes aside.

Movie 1 - The Children of Húrin
Movie 2 - "Of Tuor and The Fall of Gondolin"
Movie 3 - Akallabêth

And then smile as I would make 3 great, depressing films

easy, three short films

1: Creation of Arda, the two trees, the sun and the moon, Melkor -> Morgoth
2: Awakening of the Elves, creation of the silmarils, (Quenta Silmarillion) war between the Noldor and Morgoth
3: The fall of Gondolin, the War of Wrath, and the destruction of Númenor

Túrin and Beren and Lúthien stories should be short stand-alones or span across the second/third

Id do everything in my power to change the 'trilogy' into maybe 3 season or 4 seasons of a great show covering only some of the better/more interesting events in the silmarillion.

Once that fails and my contract has me in a bind, i would proceed to make the shittiest trilogy i can intentionally create. And just when the third movie is about to release, BAM, id an hero, causing the movie(and the trilogy) to recieve universal acclaim, billions in box office, and the threads here would be absolutely poo poo

Morgan Freeman sitting in a studio and reading the book, and having spliced foto over of graphic designs based on the scenes in the book

>The Silmarrillion: The Tale of Fëanor
>The Silmarillion: The Ballad of Beren and Lutthien
>The Silmarillion: The Tragedy of Turin

Best marketable movies based on the novel.

You know, that might not be a awful idea

youtube.com/watch?v=bN1_h_eGitE

Reminds me of one of the better parts of the later potter films.

Those three, and Tuor and Akallabeth are the five areas that could be made into marketable films.

if i really had to, i would make it an artsy fartsy biopic of tolkien with very abstract visual interpretations of events from the book intercut with scenes from his life. it would be bad because i don't actually care about tolkien.

and fuck actually filming that book, it's just shit he wrote for his own benefit because he was too spergy to actually write fiction without first doing fake "research" into fake "history". what's next, filming the d&d monster manual? filming video game design documents? let's steal a teenage dork's notebook and film the margins.

Fund this.

yeah just imagine if Radcliff or that Ginger boy had been narrating that scene

i dont see how the lotr is made out to be that big a deal when you have the shit thats happened before it lore wise, what is so significant about sauron when in reality hes low tier on the power scale

because the other books are litterly a bore to read trough

this but replace morgan freeman by like kanye west or something and he can't pronounce any of the words and is just perplexed about it all

i wouldn't watch it but i would be happy for it to exist

pleb

>pleb
so is the general population, which means the other books are more popular because they are easier to get trough, which is why they got made

it doesnt need to be a trilogy it should be a miniseries. like 7 or so hour long episodes.

LOL

Or Morgan Freeman ! :^)

>pleb
>so is the general population
Yeah thats the fucking idea dipshit

We can all agree that it should be animated right?

youtube.com/watch?v=AF_fldVFbpU

first post best post

You already did because Jackson is a hack.

I'd use The Cottage of Lost Play as the framing device.

>yfn see Feanor fighting against dozens of Balrogs in a Jacksonesque CGI mess

>Yeah
then stop being a bitch

Really? When?

At the start of Fellowship of the Ring.
"Sauron" was clearly Morgoth. And it's not like if we'd get a Jackson trilogy of the Silmarillion he'd give enough of a shit to establish any more about Morgoth than what he looks like, same as he did with Sauron, so there. You've got your Morgoth in an adaptation.

and all that money would go towards the Jews after your death rather than towards the funding of a "Sup Forums makes the best movie in the world foundation". Get your contracts straight user

>"Sauron" was clearly Morgoth
Uh-huh.

Well.. what are you saying, that Morgoth looks similar to Sauron? That's established in the Silmarillion, he's basically a bigger version with a slightly different outfit, but he's still a big black suit of armor. Don't think he ever had a helmet though.

Depending on which stories of the Silmarillon would be adapted, Morgoth could be more than just a suit of armor, there are many stories where he talks, usually to someone he hates or to himself.

And then, as in pic related, you have the early Melkor, god of fire, back when Aule was making Almaren, but if they show that, it would probably be in the prologue of the movie.

No helmet, he had a crown that was made of iron and uncomfortably heavy but he was too vain to ever take it off.

I change my mind and make a whole movie about the shire with concerning hobbits playing in the background

You are working off of the assumption that anyone who'd adapt Tolkien's work at this point, would give a single shit about what Tolkien's work is about.

The entirety of Peter Jackson's work, was to make big action setpieces interlaced with borrowed material that is given grandeur with no other purpose than to make the audience feel like they're experiencing a grand and epic tale, while really they're getting the bare minimum you can keep from the originals without losing the story's consistency. Almost all the meaning in Lord of the Rings is gone from Jackson's work, leaving behind nothing but the skeleton, the plot that allowed Tolkien to talk about greater things.

At this point, if we get a Silmarillion movie, it will be built around the threat of Ancalagon the Black, or something else easily exploitable for big action set pieces and grand but pointless imagery.

its heavy because the silmarils weigh down upon him

>Ancalagon the Black
>a threat so big Tolkien had no idea how to actually deal with it so he just eagled

That's a big dragon

I think many people overestimate the moral or philosophical depth of the LOTR and Hobbit books. I've read both, and I don't see what is so lacking from the LOTR movies. The Hobbit trilogy was horrid shit, but LOTR was okay.

Now for the Silmarillion, of course it would suck, that book just isn't movie material without needing a lot of non-canon shit, details to the relationships between characters, etc. They had to do it for the Hobbit too. Maybe they could get away with an okay Children of Hurin, but.. yeah.

for you

That's also a meme picture. Ancalagon is like 1.5x Smaug, don't listen to what they will tell you.

Sup Forums cant even make the best thread in the board, letalone make anything that isnt 90% baneposting and 10% every other meme.

>Just 1.5x Smaug
>The Dragon which was slain by being thrown onto 3 mountain peaks simultaneously.

Idris Elba

>eagled
don't forget spaceshipped
and his death partly lead to the sinking of an entire continent

12 part ken burns style documentary.

>spaceshipped
I somehow forgot that one, but now I remember the illustration from one of the guidebooks.

>Before the rising of the sun Earendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin.

It's a way of saying things, obviously it means he fell on some peak or even a tower and broke some chip of it. Smaug would do the same. Dragons still have to exit the fucking door of Angband without wrecking the whole shit.

Even the Glaurung from is retardely big. Glaurung was like a Hummer limousine, and most dragons are of similar size, only with wings. Turin was able to stab him from underneath him, and hurt him lethally on the spot. Also he was able to enter Nargothrond.

>what is so significant about sauron when in reality hes low tier on the power scale
Hes slightly below the valar, but the problem is that the west wont get directly involved since the men of numenor broke the ban of the valar at saurons urging.

Also the elves are leaving the land in droves which means theyre in no position to fight an open war leaving only the ruined kingdoms of men to stand against sauron and the east.

Its also a big deal because the return of the king was prophecied to happen. The future of the free peoples of middle earth was hanging in the balance.

Also as the ages go on the world becomes less magic and more profane.

Honestly there's enough material to do nine movies:
>everything with the valar and their first war against melkor
>making of silmarils and noldor vs morgoth
>beren and luthien
>Hurin and Huor adventures ending in Nirnaeth Arnoediad
>Turin and Nienor
>Tuor and fall of gondolin
>Ëarendil and war of wrath
>Sinking of Numenor
>Forging of the rings and first war against sauron

>everything with the valar and their first war against melkor
>one movie
Hello CGI, my old friend.

>tolkien is boring, only good vs evil, white vs black
>tfw kinslaying of alqualonde

...

>Beren and Luthien
>The Children of Hurin
>Feanor or Earendil's story

Although, the Silmarillion would work better as a tv miniseries than as a series of movies. And it would probably have to be an animated miniseries rather than a live-action one.

>his death partly lead to the sinking of an entire continent
No, just to the smiting of thangorodrim. The far west of middle earth sank because the valar marched to open war. Based Tulkas powerbombed morgoth from the top of the turnbuckle and accidentally the whole continent.

The last time the valar fought morgoth they broke the symmetry of the world, so there is precedent.

Speaking of white vs black, I read the Book of Lost Tales and it had some neat moral ambiguity when compared to the Silmarillion. There were two valar who didn't oppose Melkor directly and refused to live in Valinor because it was a boring place, so they set up this Valhalla style place in the north where they and their servants fought and feasted like berserkers all the time.

>There were two valar who didn't oppose Melkor directly and refused to live in Valinor because it was a boring place, so they set up this Valhalla style place in the north where they and their servants fought and feasted like berserkers all the time.
The fuck are you talking about? Source? Which lost tale was it?

I don't think you get it.
Thangorodrim wasn't just a castle. It wasn't the size of Isengard. It was literally the collection of 3 volcanic mountains in the Iron Mountains.

Also, the way Ancalagon's birth is described, it's unclear if he was "whole" before he left Angband, or simply took form once he rose. He's described similarly to a Balrog in his first moments.

animation son, that's where it's at
>alqualonde
I can already imagine the waters running red, fires burning, the screams, the screams
I wonder if Blizzard tried to mimic that with Arthas in reign of chaos.

That picture is dumb as all hell, yes, but he was a lot bigger than 1,5 smaug. He was probably somewhere around 3× Glaurung.

I don't remember it by heart, but it was in History of Middle-Earth part 1, Book of Lost Tales 1. There were footnotes noting the difference and wondering about it and everything, I can't give you chapter or page number off the top of my head but it was there.

Alright I'll check that again, I've got those books on my e-reader, but I don't remember if I read them all, among Christopher's ramblings.

I don't remember reading anything about that. I imagine it would've been Tulkas and maybe his wife. Ulmo also didn't live in Valinor.

Glaurung is small as fuck though. Movie Smaug was ridiculously big too, to the point where the Iron Arrow scene was hard to believe and looked asinine.

No, it was not Tulkas and his wife, and it was not Ulmo. These were characters who were removed in the Silmarillion to make things more black and white.

hmm, this would be my choice as well
those seem like the most movie-able tales/stories
sadly you lose out on the mythology and creation but i cannot see those being made into movies easily

Where did that idea that dragons are giant godzilla-tier beasts came from? Did D&D started that?

Dragons in medieval stories and paintings looks like they can usually be fought with a sword, like they are still somewhat on the scale of the rest of the animal world.

That's because "dragons" were monitor lizards.

Look at the picture in .
Ancalagon fell on those volcanoes and smashed them.
I'm fairly certain that's where it started.

>you will never seen the hosts of numenor that made even Saurons armies too afraid to fight them

let christopher nolan direct it

Nah have Snoop Dog do it so he can call it the Silmarizzle.

you just KNOW that they would make manwe black

>Feanor kick-flips off a blade of grass and knocks out a balrog, landing and giving Fingolfin a relaxed shrug.


Fingolfin looks angry and says "That doesn't fulfill your Oath!!"

>wanting to see feanor getting shrekt by balrogs
>not fingolfin literally 1v1ing a god

In one of Tolkien's letters, he talked about Sauron being a larger threat than Morgoth, because Sauron was less powerful, but was more sly and could potentially create larger problems (like creating civil wars and kin-slaying)

A mockumentary about a disastrous attempt to adapt it is the only choice.

Yeah, Morgoth was really powerful but he didn't have any real ideas on what to do with it, and he had no clear goal in mind either.

sauron did fuck the numenorians up

I would love to see a film version of Akallabeth. The entire reason is I want to see how Sauron is depicted when the Numenoreans roll up on his fortress in full force and Sauron gives up IMMEDIATELY.

Was he honestly afraid and knew he was beat, or was it all his plan to be taken prisoner and corrupt them from the moment they landed?

>was getting caught part of his plan

Getting caught WAS a part of his plan. The fire rises from Mount Doom.

What about the oath of feanor?
Also, beren and luthien?

>we deserve immortality too!
>this gives you power over me?

no oaths, pls

Yes. Rubbing hands killed more people than angering the gods,

what do you faggots think of this cast?
youtube.com/watch?v=KdtNWPpw14Q
>based Keanu as Manwe

have sir ian mc kellen read it with visual drawings accompanying it and make it a direct to dvd thing

Kek

that is for me the most epic moment of all the Tolkien stories..I mean c'mon, one elf fighting multiple balrogs ?!

you absolutely nailed it

My sides