Amazon to make multiple Lord of the Rings prequel TV series

Re: Running up stairways of falling rocks

You won't have to. The books are all used up, time to get some writers in here and brainstorm some new plots!

Okay, the Silmarillion is rather dry base material, but hey, that never stopped them before! I foresee an endless string of mini-plots revolving around elf-dwarf sex scandals, fear-mongering about new wyrms from the north, and all those swarthy eastern immigrants showing up unbidden.

Many episodes can be built around such mundane things as Gandalf's annoying pipe weed snobbery, Gimli's out-of-control quaffing habit, Aragorn's racy past coming back to bite him, and Sam's unrequited hobbit-love for Frodo. And let's not even talk about Tom Bombadil!

Re: Running up stairways of falling rocks

"The Peter Jackson series of movies were popular because they were entertainingly terrible on an epic level never seen before."

I enjoyed it. Maybe it's because it's over 40 years since I read LOTR or maybe I just accept you can't always do book to film 100% accurately for many, many reasons.

Re: Running up stairways of falling rocks

I agree that The Hobbit films had too many ludicrous over-extended scenes that felt a little too much as though they were really just set-ups for tie-in computer games (Escape from the Goblins’ Dungeon, Barrel Rider II, Molten Caramel Tea-Tray Racer, …), and it was certainly too much stretched out by at least one film, but The Hobbit was always intended to be more of a younger children’s story, so *perhaps* some of the silliness can be at least slightly forgivable.

On the other hand, The Lord of The Rings films were pretty much almost everything that I had hoped they would be (although the omission of the Scouring of The Shire was inexcusable).

Re: Best script

Oh God, I now have this awful mental image of an ageing David Schwimmer as Saruman and Lisa Kudrow playing Galadriel. Please ... stop.

Mind you - a perfect vehicle for Matt LeBlanc as Sauron: no lines!

Re: Best script

As a TV series, Galadriel's opening monologue will be a little different though.

Low(er) budget is not necessarily bad

The significantly low(er) budget Dune miniseries done by the sci-fi channel are light years ahead of the 1984 David Lynch idiocy which had an order of magnitude higher budget. Similarly, a season of Babylon5, Stargate, etc was created on a fraction of the money used on a StarTrek Deep Space 9 or Star Trek NG per-season budget. Huge Budget does not necessarily make a good movie. Rogue one had only 3 quarters of the budget used by The Force Awakens delivering a significantly better film in the process.

All of which has huge potential for fine television.

Whilst simultaneously having huge potential for being an absolute crock of expensive shit.

Is there any way to harness JRRT's spinning body to generate electricity?

Re: Turin Turambar Dagnir Glaurunga

There's also lots of deeply-depressing^W ^W moody TV to be made with the rise of the Witch-King and the Fall of Arnor.

Or the story of Beren and Luthien.

Or the stories of Numenor (and it's fall).

The rise of Rohan

The backstory of Galadriel and the fall of the Noldor.

The Fall of Gondolin

They would probably have to stay away from the sections concerning Eru Iluvatar and all the vala/maia stuff in order to stop various US fundies frothing at the mouth.. They would also require very, very good scriptwriters to make the most of things without downgrading them into unwatchable pap.

Re: Turin Turambar Dagnir Glaurunga

Hasn't the BBC already done this? There's definitely stuff in Unfinished Tales that could be done. But it would be difficult not to repeat what's already been done. Think of what an awful mess Jackson made of The Hobbit by turning it into an extended prequel of Lord of the Rings.

Re: a lot of potential for setting it in Numenor

I think you could probably even set it in some of the footnotes in Book of Lost Tales 1 ... :-)

Re: Numenor

A tale about a small island nation that once had a great empire allowing a weak prime minister, sorry King, to be corrupted, splitting from its friends to the East and looking towards unobtainable riches to the West only to be destroyed as a result of its own greed.