DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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With the way you're arguing this topic, pretty much everything that has ever been made from a source has not been a faithful adaptation.
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The Lord of the Rings
- Thread starter Brahma
- Start date
Not even remotely accurate. I've said multiple times that I consider Jackson's LoTR reasonably faithful to the source material, despite a multitude of changes.
It really seems like most of you have never actually read The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc. That's all well and good, but if you haven't, you really don't know what you're talking about.
This is all tiresome as shit now and none of us have actually even watched this stupid thing yet, but one final attempt...
Imagine you are a skilled wood worker and you've been tasked with building a writing desk that's accurate to the Tudor period. You're provided with all of the wood, fasteners, adhesive, tools, etc, that are necessary to get going on the job. Because you are skilled and experienced, you can be expected to turn out a respectable product. Sure, it's not going to be 100% identical to an authentic writing desk from the period, as you'll be forced to take some liberties and are limited to modern materials, but it'll get reasonably close. This is akin to handing the LoTR books to a skilled filmmaker and tasking him to adapt them into movies.
Now imagine that you're that same skilled wood worker and you've been tasked with the same job, except this time, instead of wood and proper tools, you're provided with cotton balls, Elmer's glue, and brown spray paint. This is akin to handing The Silmarillion to a skilled filmmaker and tasking him to make a long-form TV show out of it. It's simply not suitable for the medium, unless you are okay with COLOSSAL liberties being taken that would reach well beyond whatever stupid diversity casting or other modern political motivations might be in play.
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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I know what you said, but that approval of LotR does not actually follow from the logic you're using with the changes for this show.
In fact, it should be easier to be faithful to a work of much more limited depth than one of great detail. There's simply far fewer things to have in conflict. So, when changes are made that are conflicting, they stand out even more.
Take Hemingway's six word short story "“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” You could adapt that into a film and it would be super easy to be faithful to it, even though to make an actual film you would have to add a ton of story to it. However, if in that story you decided that the baby shoes were worn and weren't for sale, well then you've been unfaithful to the source in a pretty dramatic way. Taking something that spans a thousand pages or more is far more difficult because of the various choices you'll have to make into condensing it into a different form of media.
To take your example, if you're tasked with the second set of materials and you decide to change the cotton balls to polished turds, well then you've already massively diverged from the source because you've changed a third of what was known. If you change the backstory of one character in a two thousand page source with three hundred characters, that's a far less dramatic change. Expanding on the given materials to make something does not make it unfaithful because you're still keeping all the things that were known about (or at least keeping them same in spirit).
There's clearly just a immense divide between what you consider being faithful and what others do. If there's no agreement on what being faithful is as terminology, the entire discussion is hopelessly pointless.
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Not really, because so far I have absolutely no idea what this show is actually changing beyond one obscure character from the lore who is apparently now brown instead of white. It's clear that they are adding a fuck ton of shit, and some (most?) of it will surely be stupid, but even if the show is 100% faithful to the text at the times that it intersects with it, that alone does not satisfy faithfulness to me in anything but the strictest sense, because by necessity, the vast majority of what we would be watching would be completely invented by the show writers. At the end of the day, it's Tolkein characters doing stuff in Tolkien lands and at best, within something sort of resembling a Tolkien story. For the record, I'd be fine with that IF it was done in a compelling way that was also respectful of Tolkien's work.
Clearly so for certain others, yes. And agreed.
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unless the initial reviews are it is god awful bad, i will give this 2 episodes to see if I like it, if i do, i will continue. i only made it thru 2 episodes of the wheel of time series.
for the record i have only watched 3? episodes of season 1 of game of thrones about 2-3 years ago.
(my wife has only watched those ~5 minute recaps of the episodes on youtube)
for the record i have only watched 3? episodes of season 1 of game of thrones about 2-3 years ago.
(my wife has only watched those ~5 minute recaps of the episodes on youtube)
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Daezuel
Potato del Grande
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So Galadriel, Celeborn, and Elrond are obscure characters now?
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No. What are they changing about them? I know virtually nothing about this show beyond some pictures and the trailers. Based strictly on those, Galadriel and Elrond largely look fine to me and I have no idea what Celeborn looks like in this so I don't know if I've even seen him yet, never mind what he's going to do in the show.
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popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
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Whatever they want and in any way they want, right? Because the source material isn't already written out in a way that could be faithfully adapted to a TV series. So they'll just have to provide a new imagining of those characters, and that's perfectly acceptable. If Tolkien didn't want his IP changed he would have written everything in a narrative format that lent itself to faithful adaptation!
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I'm pretty sure Tolkien never even conceived the idea of what we currently call intellectual property in this day and age. He just created a wonderful set of stories and the mythology to back them up.
Unfortunately, it's going to get pimped out by whoever owns the rights to said IP, that I'm sure if he was alive, he would probably be called a racist for castigating the changes of his life's work from someone taking creative liberties to change the fruits of his labor.
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Those characters have a pretty open canvas, as does quite a bit of what the show is aiming for. There are broad strokes that Tolkein covered, but this is a pretty open field for writers to play with. As long it doesn't go woke (and they don't go Wheel of Time on us) this show will be good.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Not at all.
From memory, you can do Beren & Luthien and Children of Hurin no problem. The narratives as complete with a beginning, middle and end - they may need some extra dialogue in places but I belive that Christopher Tolkien completed them.
Fall of Gondolin was in a much less complete state I think since I don't remember it as clearly, it had multiple versions I belive, but it's doable. That's 3 movies or seasons of TV.
The problem is the beginning and end.
The beginning is well developed as a history book but it doesn't really have a satisfying ending since it just sets up the rest of the stories. Dialogue would need to be written for almost all of it and a start/end point chosen (Elves migrating to Valinor up to the exile of the Noldor following the main elves with time skips?).
The end I remember was very poorly developed and was kind of sudden? Then you gotta bring back that narrative from the first movie and characters we haven't seen for a long time to close it all off.
I totally belive that it can be done though.
The second age which Amazon are adapting was just background for LotR and was back to being a history book. THAT is borderline unadaptable.
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I never got around to reading Children of Hurin, I just remember the Turin / Hurin stuff from The Silmarillion and UT. What exactly does Amazon even have the rights to? All of it now that Christopher is dead? I mentioned earlier that out of everything in the books, Turin's chapter and Beren / Luthien would be by far the most adaptable, but they'd still need to be done very skillfully to work well on-screen. Gondolin, eh...I mean it could be done and it could potentially be awesome, but again, you're back to the necessity of inventing a ton of stuff to adapt it into a coherent TV format.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Children of Hurin is some dark shit, it's the Empire Strikes Back of The Silmarillion.
Almost all of it is in The Silmarillion, I have the stand alone book but don't think I read it.
Well it's not every day that your pregnant wife suddenly realizes she fucked her brother and kills herself along with your son / nephew.
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Khalan
Trakanon Raider
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“The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.”
The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.
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Tarrant
<Prior Amod>
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Drinsic
privileged excrementlord
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"We made some casting changes based on modern day politics, but don't worry, our show isn't influenced by modern-day politics."
“The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.”
The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.www.gamespot.com
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Chukzombi
Millie's Staff Member
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“The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.”
The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power Won't Be Influenced By Modern-Day Politics, Showrunner Says
The show aspires to be "timeless" like the original books.
this is a straight up lie. the casting choices are with people who did not exist in middle earth before and are only there due to "modern day politics".
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