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Post by geoffrey on Jul 23, 2011 8:50:39 GMT -6
Let's say you were offered a million dollars to write a screenplay for a film version of The Lord of the Rings, and the movie had to be no more than 2 hours long. Not 2 hours and 1 minute. Two hours (or less). How would you do it?
I would start with a 1 or 2-minute voice-over explaining A) who are these nine guys in the Fellowship, and B) what is their quest?
Then I'd start halfway through the chapter, "The Ring Goes South", right after the Fellowship left Rivendell. The movie would proceed right through to the end of the chapter "The Breaking of the Fellowship".
Frodo would be my man. If he didn't see it, it doesn't get on the screen. Thus, the entire first half of The Two Towers would be GONE. Whoosh! So we'd skip right over to the chapter "The Taming of Smeagol". We'd go as far as the first couple pages of "The Black Gate is Closed". And here we'd get to my one actual alteration (as opposed to abridgement):
They'd sneak in through the Black Gate somehow, losing Smeagol's guidance in the process. Thus the rest of The Two Towers is Gone with the Wind. So we skip directly to...
"The Land of Shadow" in The Return of the King. We trudge forward through the end of "Mount Doom", concluding with a few pages of "The Field of Cormallen", in which Frodo and Sam (and the film viewers!) find out that all the Fellowship (except Boromir) are alive. The End.
Thus these chapters:
"The Ring Goes South" (2nd half) "A Journey in the Dark" "The Bridge of Khazad-dum" "Lothlorien" "The Mirror of Galadriel" "Farewell to Lorien" "The Great River" "The Breaking of the Fellowship" "The Taming of Smeagol" "The Passage of the Marshes" "The Black Gate is Closed" (first few pages) "The Land of Shadow" "Mount Doom" "The Field of Cormallen" (a few pages)
Thus out of 62 chapters, I would include only 14, and only 11 chapters in their entirety. Two of the chapters would have only a couple of pages included. Bottom line: 11 and a half chapters. Of course, not every single line of dialogue from those chapters could be included. But I'd be sure not to write any NEW dialogue. If it's not said in the book, it wouldn't be said on the screen.
So how would YOU do it?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2011 8:54:10 GMT -6
Many years ago, Mad Magazine ran an article titled "Gone with the Wind, in 2 minutes" or similar. It was a one page script for the film.
The entire civil war portion of the film was summed up as "Bang!". I dropped the magazine I was laughing so hard.
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Post by Falconer on Jul 25, 2011 11:38:37 GMT -6
I agree that would be only the way to do it, Geoffrey. So let me take this in the opposite direction…
Give me 36 hours instead, please, for a TV adaptation of The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings!
It will have dialogue 100% faithful to the book (including as much as I possibly can; like you, not adding anything new).
All that time will be devoted to well-paced (not rushed) delivery of the dialogue by good, Shakespearean actors.
The budget will NOT go towards very much CGI and big battle scenes.
The budget WILL go towards the best possible composers to create beautiful and appropriate music, setting Tolkien’s songs as well as general soundtrack composed to cover every minute of the 36 hours. I.e., it won’t just be background music, but I hesitate to use the term “musical,” since that has cheesy connotations. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is the closest example I can think of for what I would like to see.
Two full hours will be devoted to the three Tom Bombadil chapters, incorporating also the two initial poems from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (as flashbacks/stories within the story) and they will be the greatest two hours of television ever.
The final two hours will map to the four final chapters, but the bulk of it will deal with the Scouring of the Shire, with the final half-hour covering “The Grey Havens” as well as Bilbo’s Last Song.
Alright, now let me take a shot at trying to map the books to the 36 episodes:
1. An Unexpected Party / Roast Mutton / A Short Rest 2. Over Hill and Under Hill / Riddles in the Dark 3. Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire / Queer Lodgings 4. Flies and Spiders / Barrels Out of Bond 5. A Warm Welcome / On the Doorstep / Inside Information, part 1 6. Inside Information, part 2 / Fire and Water 7. Not at Home / The Gathering of the Clouds / A Thief in the Night / The Clouds Burst, part 1 8. The Clouds Burst, part 2 / The Return Journey / The Last Stage 9. A Long-expected Party 10. The Shadow of the Past 11. Three is Company / A Short Cut to Mushrooms / A Conspiracy Unmasked 12. The Old Forest / In the House of Tom Bombadil, part 1 / The Adventures of Tom Bombadil 13. Bombadil Goes Boating / In the House of Tom Bombadil, part 2 / Fog on the Barrow-downs 14. At the Sign of the Prancing Pony / Strider 15. A Knife in the Dark / Flight to the Ford 16. Many Meetings / The Council of Elrond 17. The Ring Goes South / A Journey in the Dark, part 1 18. A Journey in the Dark, part 2 / The Bridge of Khazad-dûm 19. Lothlorien / The Mirror of Galadriel / Farewell to Lorien 20. The Great River / The Breaking of the Fellowship 21. The Departure of Boromir / The Riders of Rohan 22. The Uruk-hai / Treebeard 23. The White Rider / The King of the Golden Hall 24. Helm’s Deep 25. The Road to Isengard / Flotsam and Jetsam / The Voice of Saruman / The Palantir 26. The Taming of Smeagol / The Passage of the Marshes / The Black Gate is Closed 27. Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit / The Window on the West / The Forbidden Pool / Journey to the Cross-roads 28. The Stairs of Cirith Ungol / Shelob’s Lair / The Choices of Master Samwise 29. Minas Tirith / The Passing of the Grey Company / The Muster of Rohan 30. The Siege of Gondor / The Ride of the Rohirrim 31. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields / The Pyre of Denethor 32. The Houses of Healing / The Last Debate / The Black Gate Opens 33. The Tower of Cirith Ungol / The Land of Shadow / Mount Doom, part 1 34. Mount Doom, part 2 / The Field of Cormallen / The Steward and the King 35. Many Partings / Homeward Bound / The Scouring of the Shire, part 1 36. The Scouring of the Shire, part 2 / The Grey Havens / Bilbo’s Last Song
I’m not 100% happy with that pacing, but it’s a start!
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Post by kesher on Jul 25, 2011 12:00:09 GMT -6
I'd film nothing but their encounter with Tom Bombadill...
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Post by bluskreem on Jul 25, 2011 13:49:20 GMT -6
I'd film nothing but their encounter with Tom Bombadill... I'd see that movie.
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Post by badger2305 on Jul 31, 2011 9:57:06 GMT -6
I'd film nothing but their encounter with Tom Bombadill... I'd see that movie. Me, too.
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
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Post by oldkat on Oct 12, 2011 16:13:43 GMT -6
Everything PJ & writers left out, I'd put in. Everything they added, I'd drop. Problem solved.
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Post by talysman on Oct 12, 2011 19:19:34 GMT -6
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Post by kenmeister on Oct 12, 2011 19:55:58 GMT -6
I'd start with the Fellowship-to-be one by one coming to the aid of the hobbits fleeing Black Riders. Then the council meeting, then the journey through Moria. Instead of Frodo ditching the group, the Fellowship would carry on to the Black Gate. They'd break through and head for Mount Doom. Sauron would fortify Mount Doom to the teeth, and the end would be an epic battle against Sauron and the Nine vs. the Fellowship as it should have been, while Frodo struggles with Gollum to get rid of the Ring. I'll keep Gollum biting Frodo's finger off, but then Frodo pushes Gollum in, becoming more of an active hero than a passive one.
I was very disappointed that Sauron didn't make a personal appearance at the end. They kept talking about how he is close to taking physical form and stuff, and I was sure that was foreshadowing for the ending.
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Post by aldarron on Oct 13, 2011 8:13:16 GMT -6
Close to what you have there Geoffrey, except I'd make it a Samwise narrative (not unlike the way tolkien had Sam writing the story). I'd start it off with a very aged sam recounting a tale to a group of kids - fade in to young sam. The whole thing would be his perspective, so if he didn't see it, its not on screen. While I'm not a great fan of voiceover, it would be an effective way for Sam to briefly and occaisonally mention key events transpiring outside his personal experience, if and when that's necessary.
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Post by foxroe on Oct 13, 2011 13:00:06 GMT -6
Hmmm. I'd do it shorter... with bunnies. ;D I'm with Falconer on this one. I just couldn't see it working in two hours. It would have to be an epic HBO series or some such, and it would need the meeting with Bombadil, and Saruman's retreat to the Shire.
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jacar
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
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Post by jacar on Oct 13, 2011 13:49:36 GMT -6
There are 6 books in the lord of the rings. Each book of the trilogy is broken into two books. As each movie clocked in around 4 hours, these "books" would make good break points. I suspect each movie would eb and flow. The first three would build to the fight at helms deep. The last three would build to Pelinor Fields. Mind you, each movie would likely be more than 2 hours but it could be done in say 2-2.5 hour movies.
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Post by blackbarn on Oct 13, 2011 19:46:13 GMT -6
Interesting thought experiment. I'm tempted to say I'd ditch all the Hobbits and make it about Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir, Gimli and Legolas taking the ring to Mordor to destroy it. By the way, are you aware that John Boorman was set to make Lord of the Rings, and developed it quite a bit, before he went on to make Excalibur? Supposedly the wizard's word duel from that movie was originally conceived as taking place between Gandalf and Saruman. The Boorman LotR was very different from the books, however... you can find summaries of it online. If you are a purist you would likely have despised it. Personally, from all I heard about it, I wish it had been made. I think it would have been interesting, and had a strong director's vision, at least. If you're interested, here's a link to start with: forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=12786
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Post by kent on Oct 14, 2011 10:19:21 GMT -6
By the way, are you aware that John Boorman was set to make Lord of the Rings, and developed it quite a bit, before he went on to make Excalibur? Supposedly the wizard's word duel from that movie was originally conceived as taking place between Gandalf and Saruman. The Boorman LotR was very different from the books, however... you can find summaries of it online. If you are a purist you would likely have despised it. Personally, from all I heard about it, I wish it had been made. I think it would have been interesting, and had a strong director's vision, at least. If you're interested, here's a link to start with: forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=12786That was fascinating. Well done. Boorman is an artist and an artist should *interpret* material. Jackson did the best he could as a mediocre director and made a childishly literal film. Here are some of the radical ideas found there. ==== ==== I believe it was I who came up with idea where they bury Gimli in a hole, throw a cape on him, and beat him up to utter exhaustion to retrieve his unconscious ancestral memory." This ancient knowlege allows Gimli to know the word for entering Moria, and to find insights about the ancient dwarf kingdom. Pallenberg contributed another original idea to the Moria sequence. "I had a rather fanciful idea involving these orcs that are slumbering or in some kind of narcotic state. The fellowship runs over them, and the footsteps start up their hearts. John liked that a lot." He mentioned another change. "There's a duel between the magicians, Gandalf and Saruman. I was inspired by an African idea of how magicians duel with words, which I had read about. It was a way of one entrapping the other as a duel of words rather than special effects flashes, shaking staffs, and all that. I tried to keep away from that a lot, and Boorman did too. [Reads from script]: Boorman was simply too full of his own creative spark to limit himself to what was in Tolkien’s book. For example, consider this strange sequence of events. After the destruction of the Ringwraiths at the Fords of Bruinen, Frodo is carried into the sparkling palace of Rivendell, where in a vast amphitheatre full of chanting elves he is laid naked on a crystal table and covered with green leaves. A thirteen-year-old Arwen surgically removes the Morgul-blade fragment from his shoulder with a red-hot knife under the threatening axe of Gimli, while Gandalf dares Boromir to try to take the Ring (Boorman and Pallenberg 28-32). Here’s how each script handles Bilbo handing the Ring over to Gandalf after the party. The Bakshi film follows the book fairly closely, with Bilbo sealing the Ring in an envelope, and Gandalf catching the envelope as he drops it. Boorman, as expected, does his own thing and has Bilbo drop it in Gandalf’s hat.... Boorman followed his own vision: he strengthened and sexualized Galadriel’s role, turned Éowyn into Aragorn’s warrior-queen, and made Arwen an ethereal teenager. ==== ====
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Post by kent on Oct 14, 2011 10:50:01 GMT -6
Within the constraints of the thought experiment - allowed 20% of a minimal running time - here is what I would do:
I would use the the following chapters keeping the clownishly ineffective all-bark-no-bite Ringwraiths offstage at all times and start briskly with:
Three is Company The Old Forest In the House of Tom Bombadil Fog on the Barrow-downs At the Sign of the Prancing Pony Strider [ heavily cut: Flight to the Ford] [ heavily cut: Many Meetings] The Ring Goes South A Journey in the Dark The Bridge of Khazad-dûm
The End.
The Black armoured hero orc slays Aragorn and skewers Frodo through the head. Gandalf aghast is no longer a match for the Balrog and is utterly destroyed. Balrog takes ring.
Here I create a tragedy in the manner of The Children of Hurin - Tolkien's greatest work - and bask in the utter quiet of the cinema theatre as the curtain comes down on the premiere.
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Post by Falconer on Aug 6, 2016 0:01:24 GMT -6
Geoffrey, do you know about this?
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Post by tkdco2 on Aug 6, 2016 1:45:26 GMT -6
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Post by geoffrey on Aug 6, 2016 8:31:19 GMT -6
Geoffrey, do you know about this? Interesting! I'd never heard of that series before. Thanks for the link.
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Post by Red Baron on Aug 6, 2016 15:49:28 GMT -6
Material from Fellowship of the Ring only: A tragedy about the 9 walkers.
-Gandalf gets killed by the balrog -Boromir, the last hope of mankind, is shot full of arrows -Merry, pippin, and sam are captured by uruks and dragged off to a dungeon to rot -The rest of the party is hopelessly split up in enemy territory at the end of the movie. -Frodo is separated from the few other survivors and lost in enemy territory with gollum on his tail
FotR also reads more like the hobbit and has lots of good juicy bits: evil trees, ice-cold barrow wights, weathertop, a balrog.
Cut out lothlorien, because wood elves are mean bastards (see the hobbit)
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Post by kesher on Aug 8, 2016 11:18:25 GMT -6
Material from Fellowship of the Ring only: A tragedy about the 9 walkers. -Gandalf gets killed by the balrog -Boromir, the last hope of mankind, is shot full of arrows -Merry, pippin, and sam are captured by uruks and dragged off to a dungeon to rot -The rest of the party is hopelessly split up in enemy territory at the end of the movie. -Frodo is separated from the few other survivors and lost in enemy territory with gollum on his tail FotR also reads more like the hobbit and has lots of good juicy bits: evil trees, ice-cold barrow wights, weathertop, a balrog. Cut out lothlorien, because wood elves are mean bastards (see the hobbit) Well, THAT'S grim! At that point you may as well ditch LotR entirely, and simply film The Children of Hurin...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2016 9:15:19 GMT -6
Geoffrey, do you know about this? this is pretty awesome, actually - basically, the only way to film the books, pre-CGI. Did this get an international release of any sorts, by chance? I've been looking, but I couldn't find anything. - Or, could this be an unlicensed adaption, similar to the Russian Mordor novel that was released a few years back?
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Post by Falconer on Jul 5, 2023 16:32:22 GMT -6
Geoffrey, do you know about this? Interesting! I'd never heard of that series before. Thanks for the link. Thinking of watching it soon. I’ll bet the Finnish will sound cool and Tolkienish.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 6, 2023 15:18:57 GMT -6
There are 6 books in the lord of the rings. Each book of the trilogy is broken into two books. As each movie clocked in around 4 hours, these "books" would make good break points. I suspect each movie would eb and flow. The first three would build to the fight at helms deep. The last three would build to Pelinor Fields. Mind you, each movie would likely be more than 2 hours but it could be done in say 2-2.5 hour movies. I can't remember where I saw this, but my understanding is that each of the six books had its own title. The Fellowship of the Ring 1.The Ring Sets Out 2.The Ring Goes South The Two Towers 3.The Treason at Isengard 4.The Ring Goes East The Return of the King 5.The War of the Ring 6.The End of the Third Age I'm still trying to wrap my head around this, as I also understand that JRRT intended LotR to all be printed as a single volume, and not a trilogy. I'm not sure how "single volume" and "three parts with names" and "six parts with different names" all fit together.
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 6, 2023 16:01:41 GMT -6
Let's say you were offered a million dollars to write a screenplay for a film version of The Lord of the Rings, and the movie had to be no more than 2 hours long. Not 2 hours and 1 minute. Two hours (or less). How would you do it? I'd take the million and write a Cliff's notes version of LotR. But I think it needs to be made in at least six 3-hour movies to do it right. Or, even better, a 6 season Netflix or HBO style series where each season covers 1 of the sections within each of the books. I don't know that a better cast will ever be found than what Peter Jackson and co. put together.
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Post by geoffrey on Jul 6, 2023 16:45:19 GMT -6
I can't remember where I saw this, but my understanding is that each of the six books had its own title. The Fellowship of the Ring 1.The Ring Sets Out 2.The Ring Goes South The Two Towers 3.The Treason at Isengard 4.The Ring Goes East The Return of the King 5.The War of the Ring 6.The End of the Third Age I'm still trying to wrap my head around this, as I also understand that JRRT intended LotR to all be printed as a single volume, and not a trilogy. I'm not sure how "single volume" and "three parts with names" and "six parts with different names" all fit together. Marv, you are right. Here's the skinny: 1. Tolkien always intended for LotR to be published in a single volume. 2. Tolkien intended for the six books to be nothing more (and nothing less) than internal divisions of the single volume, not unlike the book's chapter divisions. 3. The publisher told Tolkien that economics forbade publishing in a single volume, but that they could publish it in three volumes. In short, being published as a "trilogy" is entirely artificial and had nothing to do with what Tolkien intended. I'm a little fuzzy as to the origins of the nine titles you provided above. Did Tolkien supply these? Did the publisher? Perhaps both working together? I simply can't remember, but I'm sure someone will.
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 6, 2023 17:28:41 GMT -6
Interestingly I just started rereading The Two Towers last night, I'd gotten so used to the Peter Jackson films that I almost forgot Two Towers opens with the death of Boromir [oops, spoiler alert!].
What a banger of a novel.
It does make me wish we could see a proper translation to film in a lengthy series that marinates in the details.
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Post by Falconer on Jul 6, 2023 19:31:48 GMT -6
When the publisher insisted on 3 volumes, Tolkien initially came up with titles for the 6 volumes, because he wanted the books to be titled, like, The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South, etc. That particular list of 6 titles is from one of the Letters, but there are some other lists. The publisher sensibly didn’t go with this!
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