onthetrail wrote:

What is wrong with encouraging the Asian Market to interact with Tolkien’s works?

Tens of millions of people came to Tolkien through the movies and drive sales and opportunities. I really don't get your argument here to be honest.

Nothing wrong. The problem is that there'll be a lot of disappointed and hurt people expecting something different out of books once they finally decide to leaf through the works of Tolkien. And that's when accusations of various isms and baseless criticism comes in. Doing stuff like Amazon series and this War film will only serve to alienate fans of the original work. It'll also produce a whole lotta new people who will be insulted by a work written by a devout Catholic, an Englishman, who died nearly 50 years ago at a time when world was really different. The aforementioned people have a worldview that is very different, some might even say constrained, prescribed to certain outlooks - be it gender, sex, religion, politics or race. They usually represent an agenda that offers little to no place in terms of reasonable discussion.

I don't see any harm in this. I mean all the "new" stuff is just fan fiction, and I don't personally need that (If I'm watching TV and movies, I'd rather it wasn't "fantasy", tbh). No one is making me watch it.

The last animation I paid attention to was "Tron Legacy", and I absolutely loved that. A real shame that Disney cancelled it because it didn't fit their target audience.

gobbledygook wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

What is wrong with encouraging the Asian Market to interact with Tolkien’s works?

Tens of millions of people came to Tolkien through the movies and drive sales and opportunities. I really don't get your argument here to be honest.

Nothing wrong. The problem is that there'll be a lot of disappointed and hurt people expecting something different out of books once they finally decide to leaf through the works of Tolkien. And that's when accusations of various isms and baseless criticism comes in. Doing stuff like Amazon series and this War film will only serve to alienate fans of the original work. It'll also produce a whole lotta new people who will be insulted by a work written by a devout Catholic, an Englishman, who died nearly 50 years ago at a time when world was really different. The aforementioned people have a worldview that is very different, some might even say constrained, prescribed to certain outlooks - be it gender, sex, religion, politics or race. They usually represent an agenda that offers little to no place in terms of reasonable discussion.

With the greatest respect that just is not the case. There will of course be those who will argue certain things about Tolkien but adaptations don't cause that. The movies brought people to Tolkien and some very exciting and refreshing viewpoints came from it. The 'woke' thing is here with or without adaptations.

gobbledygook wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

What is wrong with encouraging the Asian Market to interact with Tolkien’s works?

Tens of millions of people came to Tolkien through the movies and drive sales and opportunities. I really don't get your argument here to be honest.

Nothing wrong. The problem is that there'll be a lot of disappointed and hurt people expecting something different out of books once they finally decide to leaf through the works of Tolkien. And that's when accusations of various isms and baseless criticism comes in. Doing stuff like Amazon series and this War film will only serve to alienate fans of the original work. It'll also produce a whole lotta new people who will be insulted by a work written by a devout Catholic, an Englishman, who died nearly 50 years ago at a time when world was really different. The aforementioned people have a worldview that is very different, some might even say constrained, prescribed to certain outlooks - be it gender, sex, religion, politics or race. They usually represent an agenda that offers little to no place in terms of reasonable discussion.

I am sure all of the Shakespeare play fans threw out their book collections and stopped attending theatre productions when Hollywood released "Clueless" and "Ten Things I Hate About You" and all the other innumerable remakes, right? Because those remakes invalidated the source material just by their existence, of course.

If it's an artistic expression close to the source, then I have no problem with it.

But if it's just a blatant way to make money, such as The Hobbit movies, then I do. Seems to me this project is the latter.

Of course, just my opinion .

Ligandil wrote:

If it's an artistic expression close to the source, then I have no problem with it.

But if it's just a blatant way to make money, such as The Hobbit movies, then I do. Seems to me this project is the latter.

Of course, just my opinion .

Bakshi, Rankin/Bass, PJ's Lord of the Rings, all were blatant ways to make money. None of these are art-house small budget "doing it for the love of the source material" projects. That's the business model.

Edit to add: there's no source material for The War of the Rohirrim, other than a few sentences in the appendices, so I guess that go either way. ? Either it automatically is "close to the source" because just about anything they do couldn't possibly contradict what was written, or one could equally feel that there is no source and therefore it cannot possibly be close to it. I can see both sides.

Ligandil wrote:

If it's an artistic expression close to the source, then I have no problem with it.

But if it's just a blatant way to make money, such as The Hobbit movies, then I do. Seems to me this project is the latter.

Of course, just my opinion .

Close to the source based on who's say so? We all see Tolkien, and any art through our own eyes. What I see as absolutely essential to an adaptation could be entirely different to what you think. Why not just take a movie like this for what it is intended for, to entertain instead of getting preocciupied and worked up over a business using the content they have rights to, to make money and give work and opportunity to thousands.

Publishing books is also a way to make money. I doubt Tolkien would have worked so hard as an author if there wasn't going to be at least some possibility of profit, he couldn't really afford to.

The license(s) for the LotRs movies (followed by the Jackson H films) would, you'd think, have expired. Would these have been re-licensed (by Zaentz's Middle-earth Enterprises) do we think?

Berelach wrote:

Publishing books is also a way to make money. I doubt Tolkien would have worked so hard as an author if there wasn't going to be at least some possibility of profit, he couldn't really afford to.

I am constantly amazed how offended some people get when a business tries to make money. I have not seen much in the way of complaint about Tolkien making money through selling his books, or in fact from selling the rights to his greatest assets. It is OK to sell the rights but the buyer making money from those assets? Tut tut...