![]() He thought “an abridgement by selection with some good picture-work would be pleasant… I am quite prepared to play ball, if they are open to advice.” He and his publisher Stanley Unwin had agreed on a policy of “ Art or Cash. (Arthur Rackham was an English artist famous for his illustrations of fairies and fairy tales.) Tolkien had more issues with the proposed synopsis, including an objection to Lothlórien being depicted as a “fairy castle” and the fact that “people gallop about on Eagles at the least provocation,” but overall, he was not against the concept. Tolkien wrote later that Ackerman had shown him some “astonishingly good pictures (Rackham rather than Disney)” of a proposed animated film. Tolkien replied, “I should welcome the idea of an animated motion picture, with all the risk of vulgarization… I think I should find vulgarization less painful than the sillification achieved by the BBC” (referring to a lost 1950s radio adaptation, not the acclaimed 1980s radio drama starring Ian Holm). Ackerman approached Tolkien via his publishers about a proposed animated film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He intensely disliked Walt Disney Studios, so he would have been glad they are not involved. ![]() He had clear views on what he did not want. In fact, Tolkien’s own attitude towards films based on The Lord of the Ringswithin his lifetime was fairly pragmatic. However, JRR Tolkien and his son were not the same person, and there is no guarantee that all of their opinions would have aligned. In 2012, Christopher Tolkien told Le Monde that, in his opinion, the Peter Jackson films had “eviscerated the book” to make “an action film for 15-26 year olds,” and that the films did not capture the beauty or seriousness of his father’s work. Tolkien’s own son, occasional typist, and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, who passed away in 2020, would not relish the current explosion of screen adaptations based on his father’s works. Some fans are both weary and wary of the ever-growing number of adaptations, which are increasingly distanced from the main story of The Lord of the Rings. ![]() But while Marvel fans have largely embraced the MCU, Tolkien fans are far more skeptical. All the screen adaptations are clearly designed to link to each other, creating an unofficial “Tolkien Cinematic Universe,” if you will. Announcements about the new films have even confirmed that the writers of the 2001-2003 films - Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens - have all been consulted, as the three put out a joint statement reported by Variety, saying they have been kept “in the loop every step of the way.” Amazon’s Rings of Power, in which Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens have not been involved, nevertheless makes frequent references to the films, from the first episode’s prologue, to the sweeping shots of New Zealand, to the costuming and character design. We can only speculate on what else WBD might have planned - the love story of Aragorn and Arwen, told in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, is surely ripe for a film adaptation and would probably be our first choice.Ī blockbuster Tolkien franchise incorporating various different stories and characters across different time periods and told in various media, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or the MCU, now seems very plausible. The first will be an animated movie called The War of the Rohirrim, set 183 years before The Lord of the Rings and telling the story of a legendary king of Rohan called Helm Hammerhand, owner of the great horn at Helm’s Deep, which was named after him. Discovery announced in February that new films are also in development. In addition to Amazon’s The Rings of Power, a prequel series set during the Second Age of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Warner Bros. More and more screen adaptations of the works of JRR Tolkien are in development these days.
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