This is making me retroactively like the LOTR movies less every time a new step is taken. We can make new things. I promise you we can. I love Tolkien’s writing and his legendarium, but I don’t need diminishing returns on what is essentially corporate IP being treated like fanfic, but without love - ThreadSky

wolter.bsky.social • 1 day ago

This is making me retroactively like the LOTR movies less every time a new step is taken. We can make new things. I promise you we can.

I love Tolkien’s writing and his legendarium, but I don’t need diminishing returns on what is essentially corporate IP being treated like fanfic, but without love

Reposted from Jason

Fuck this. Stop humping the Jackson movies (and using terrible tech to do it) and just make a new thing with a new vision for Middle Earth.

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zhinxy.bsky.social•17 hours ago

We must do whatever is necessary to ensure IP stays IP fifty years after the creator's death

prankster36.bsky.social•1 day ago

It really is joyless, isn't it? If you love Tolkien you're unlikely to enjoy this crass milking and if you just like fantasy there's more room to explore cinematically in other fantasy series

prankster36.bsky.social•1 day ago

Ironically the one thing people might give a shit about at this point, the Silmarillion, is apparently out of reach legally

wolter.bsky.social•23 hours ago

And in some ways I’m glad. I’d be willing to be proven wrong but I’m not sure it’s a work that needs that kind of adaptation.

Maybe some of the major stories like Túrin or Beren/Luthien?

prankster36.bsky.social•23 hours ago

I like the sweep and the interlocking stories. But it would need a specific artistic eye that the blockbuster machine wouldn't care for

wolter.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Yeah. It would need to be something artistic in a way that a for profit system simply could not justify

apophis426.bsky.social•23 hours ago

copyleft/share-alike licence

nataliereed84.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Ian McKellan must be like 123 by now.

filbi.bsky.social•1 day ago

I pray that when The Hobbit enters public domain next decade, something good comes of it

zhinxy.bsky.social•17 hours ago

It will! The inevitable rushed horror movies are just cute little celebratory baptisms. Like good natured hazing for freeing the common heritage of mankind.

filbi.bsky.social•17 hours ago

My main concern is that Middle-earth Enterprises and/or Warner Bros. will sue the pants off of other creators regardless of legality, like we've seen with the Doyle and Burroughs estates.

zhinxy.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Yeah

filbi.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Also I just learned that 7% of Middle-earth Enterprises is owned by the Saudi crown, which is... fucking wild.

zhinxy.bsky.social•17 hours ago

People love to jaw your ear off about "what about the creator's FAMILY!" when you dare to say life of the author plus 10 or 20 years is plenty of time and itself a generous compromise...

filbi.bsky.social•1 day ago

(hot take? a little person with a ring of invisibility and a sword named Sting is uniquely suited to crappy low-budget slasher cash-ins, far more so than Winnie-the-Pooh, Mickey Mouse, or Popeye)

apophis426.bsky.social•23 hours ago

i would love to see a horror movie from the orcs' point of view where they're fighting over the mithril shirt while there's rumours of some eldritch ancient immortal serial killer somewhere loose on the base

espanolbot.bsky.social•11 hours ago

I mean, a survival horror game about those Dwarves who die in the mines of Moria whose diary the Fellowship find could be neat.

espanolbot.bsky.social•11 hours ago

If they're just going to make stuff in the world in the cynical pursuit of franchising, I kind of want them to make something based on the New Shadow idea Tolkien started. As while he abandoned the idea after 13 pages because it wasn't his style of story, there is interesting ideas there still.

espanolbot.bsky.social•11 hours ago

If you're going to do a cynical cash grab, at least try something new instead of trying to make it fit retroactively in the existing story.

revdrdrphill.bsky.social•16 hours ago

i wonder if it'd be like this if peter jackson had made a good movie since 2003

colonelnemo.bsky.social•1 day ago

LOTR is the opposite of Star Wars to me where I feel like the less you do with the text the better it is actually.

And yeah there’s so many other fantasy series out there inspired by LOTR that haven’t got the same level of treatment.

wolter.bsky.social•1 day ago

Also, the themes in the original are so oppositional to how Hollywood makes movies. Quiet courage. Melancholy. Violence and war mostly treated as horror to be avoided…

kuriva.im•1 day ago

The "Battle of the Five Armies" was one chapter in the book THE HOBBIT, so naturally the movies inflated it to be 1/3 of the entire story

colonelnemo.bsky.social•1 day ago

Almost nothing from Battle of the Five Armies and the back third of Desolation of Smaug is even Tolkien

revdrdrphill.bsky.social•15 hours ago

i knew it was gonna be like that when i was walking out of the first hobbit. never went back.

apophis426.bsky.social•23 hours ago

"star wars is the opposite of lotr"
when i typed "kill all the entire hero's journey shit and add more focus on temptation and corruption of power" here https://bsky.app/profile/apophis426.bsky.social/post/3lj73takxpk2j lotr immediately came to mind - and my suggestion was intended to just negate everything that makes SW SW and star over

colonelnemo.bsky.social•1 day ago

There’s a lot to love about the Jackson films (and hell even the Nelvana/Bakshi stuff) but the well’s been dry for awhile now.

isakglaser.bsky.social•1 day ago

Outside of the Silmarillion/First and Second Age stuff, I've got very little interest in seeing the IP-holders' "new vision for Middle Earth". I guess there'll be new LOTR & Hobbit films in my life-time, those could be good, but I'm deeply skeptical of IP-mining ME, at least until it's Public Domain

talestoenrage.bsky.social•1 day ago

If they want to do more LotR content, they can stop being cowards and do the Scouring of the Shire.

apophis426.bsky.social•23 hours ago

faved and reposted, thought about what the likes of your typical modern billionairefash-owned media conglomerate would make of it, and undid the repost

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