It’s inevitable that when a movie not only makes as much money but captures as much attention as Lord of the Rings that movies just like it follow two years later. And as we’ve seen time and time again the result is more often then not garbage. On the rare occasion someone can use the success of a film to springboard their own pet project they’ve been trying to get made for years and it’s watchable, but how many of the Star Wars or Jaws knock offs captured people’s attention?
Now in these days we can expect two types of knock-offs, the low budget direct to video crap (as seen on the SciFi Channel) and the big budget pile of garbage. I’m going to side step the cheapy films since while it’s a given that we’ll be seeing a lot of national parks from them over the next few years it’s impossible to guess what they’ll do (“Alien Terminator of the Ring Cycle Bloodbath” perhaps?), but what big budget films do you think are going to result?
My guesses:
Another Conan film - Fresh from the “success” of Terminator 3 Arnold continues stepping back in his career to do another Conan.
The Ring Cycle - “I heard that Token guy who wrote the Twin Towers stole from this Swiss Opera.” “Perfect! We don’t even have to license it! Get Jerry Bruckheimer on the phone!”
Sword of Shannara - As long as they’re ripping off Jackson they might as well go with someone experience in ripping off Tolkien.
Just to play contrarian to this view, one of my guilty pleasures is reading fantasy and sci-fi books and I’ve been looking forward for years to the day when technology had moved far enough forward so that we could see a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi films that looked believable.
You think we are only going to get cheesy knockoffs, but I’ll refer you to Sturgeon’s Law which states: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” So even if we get a ninety bad films, we’ll have ten good fantasy films, which is ten more than we’ll have now. I don’t think there is anything particularly awful about fantasy films, per se. There are just as many cheesy comedies, for instance as bad fantasy flicks.
There’ll be a bunch of clunkers in there, but mixed in will be some good stuff.
Oh yeah, don’t forget about the inevitable He-Man and the Masters of the Universe film.
And, thanks to the magic of the Internet, we’ll have adequate warning as to which ripoffs are pretty good, which ones are to be avoided at all costs, and which ones are good for a cheap laugh…
And not too long before Lord of the Rings, there was the godawful Dungeons and Dragons movie. All the special effects in the world couldn’t make that watchable.
Actually, I think a series of movies based on Wagner’s Das Ring des Nibelungen would be interesting if done well. I think it’d be tricky, but not as tricky as a book adaptation as opera is relatively close to film.
I’m not one to point out typos unless they’re funny, and I couldn’t pass this one up. Imagine if you will the Token Ring LAN Cycle.
You’re such an optimist! I think it will be more like this:
Big-budget fantasy films are popular - we’ll see around 30 big-budget fantasy films before the trend disappears; of those 30, the 10% that aren’t crap will be the LOTR series. So get ready for 27 terrible productions.
Actually I agree with you that the Ring Cycle (I hate typing out Nibelungen) could make a great set of films. But then so could Beowulf and we got 13th Warrior out of that. And the typos were supposed to be humorous…
Well…I am an optimist. One of the reasons I like LotR so much, is because it was such a huge success that it paved the way for a bunch more fantasy films. Once Hollywood sees they have a hit on their hands, especially one of this size, there will be a rush to knock off the formula. And the formula that works so far is: Big Fantasy Book = Big Movie = Success. Granted we only have Harry Potter and LotR to go on so far, but think of the huge number of untapped stories and series out there.
I think the phenomenon will be much like the current rush to make movies out of comic books. Especially becaue fantasy books tend to have lots of sequels, which is perfect as everyone in Hollywood wants to develop franchises right now. I’m also a fan of comic book movies, but that is neither here nor there.
Granted there will be a bunch of bad ones made, but the OP basically generalized all fantasy films as direct to video, which I’m not concerned about, or as a “big budget pile of crap”. Which shows a prejudice against big budget films, which is what I dispute.
Now, the question becomes, which fantasy series’ are ready for the leap to film?
Ooh ooh! Song of Ice and Fire! Song of Ice and Fire!
[sub]Actually, they’d probably butcher it and kill all the complexity, but if it were done right, it’s be gold. Plus, it’s going to be at least five books, so that’s a strike against it, too. Ah well, let me have my fantasy about fantasy.[/sub]
The Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber would be fun. Or Moorcock’s Elric.
And, borderline fantasy (but what else would you call it?) but I would kill to see a decent adaptation of Zelazny’s Amber series. Probably no way it could be done without being butchered though…
Come to think of it, either Lord of Light or Creatures of Light and Darkness would probably be loads of fun too…
Well, if they’re looking for big, epic fantasy, they couldn’t go wrong with Tad Williams’ “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn” series. It’s not as “rich” as Tolkien, but it’s practically begging for a filme treatment.
I don’t know that there’s really an effective way to show the multiple viewpoints in Song of Ice and Fire. The audience would get irritated with the frequent shifts, and the intriguing changes of points of view, which subtly alter the readers’ ideas of who is good and who is bad, would probably not translate well to film. People would be furious that after two movies showing Jaime is a villain, we’re supposed to be sympathetic to him in the third movie. And movies don’t like characters as conflicted and complicated as Tyrion.
I think Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn would translate well. It’s obviously in the mold of Tolkein - unlikely hero on an impossible quest - but unlike most of these works, it’s actually well-written and has an exciting story of its own. Plus, there are more women characters. I’ve also just been rereading Katya Reimann’s trilogy, too (argh, why is the name of the series escaping me?; the first book is titled Wind From a Foreign Sky), and I was struck even as I was reading at how well most of it would work on film. The magic used is very simple, and is also visible, which is nice.
