What the title says. How would you tell the story in movie format. Would it be broken into multiple movies? Who would you cast for what roles (link to pictures if possible)? What sort of CGI would you see needed? (And other questions as they come up.)
Story line, for those who may need it.
The whole thing just couldn’t be done. Even if you tried to do it as a miniseries or the like, it’s too non-uniform. The Tale of Thingol and Melian is about two pages, for example, but the Tale of Beren and Luthien is over a hundred. And I doubt there’s a composer alive who could really do justice to the Ainulindule.
But you probably could make movies out of a few of the individual tales, like Beren and Luthien, or the Children of Hurin.
The Silmarillion was, for years, the book I used to put me to sleep when I couldn’t fall asleep on my own. It was guaranteed I’d be out in two pages. I’m amazed to find out there WAS a storyline.
Different strokes for different folks. I found Sil quite profound, and a lot more fun to read than, say, William Shatner’s autobiography. (Nothing against Bill, he’s my favorite scenery chewer.)
The Fall of Gondolin would be awesome to see on film.
Of course, JRRT never really updated that story much from his early 1920’s draft. :mad:
And I think this is a major problem. A lot of the Silmarillion is just, basically, unfinished. Christopher Tolkien tried to polish up the Professor’s notes but the man is a natural editor, not a natural writer. A lot of what was published as the Sil is not much more than first drafts, and Tolkien was never one to write first drafts that were even close to the final product.
Adapting the Sil to screenplay would involve actually writing most of the stories from bare bones. The Children of Hurin would probably be a better bet, since it was recently fleshed out and published as a full novel proper. But it still suffers from a fatal flaw.
A Silmarillion film (or series of films) would be absolutely fascinating…to me. And a very small segment of potential movie-goers. LOTR and the Hobbit are pretty well-known…in the 60s and 70s, huge numbers of college students in the US read them. They’re cultural touchstones to a couple of generations. But the Silmarillion isn’t. I doubt you could find 1 in 1000 people off the street who could pronounce the title, let alone know what it was.
“Ainulindale” would be an animated musical with no dialog. Similar to the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment of Fantasia.
Agreed. The story of Beren and Luthien has some potential. But most of the Silmarillion is simultaneously hugely complex and not terribly engrossing. Then there is the story of (I think) Turin, which is a tragedy along the lines of Medea, but with less likable characters. Come to think of it, if it weren’t for the fantasy elements, that might make a perfectly good contemporary art film - one of those serious movies where you hate (or are indifferent to) all the characters and the only actual things that happen are terrible or boring and there is no point to any of it - you know, the kind that win at Cannes or Sundance and get great reviews in the Times.
Given the Middle-Earth production standard set by Peter Jackson and Weta, I don’t think we’re going to see any Silmarillion films soon, with the possible exception of Luthien and Beren. But even that would be a hard sell to a production company. It could only be marketed as a prequel to LotR, and the connection there is so tenuous that I don’t think it would draw many casual fans.
And then let’s think about actually putting it on film. The villain in Luthien and Beren is Morgoth, Sauron’s boss, way more powerful and evil than Sauron. Yet Luthien (having virtually brushed Sauron aside) escapes Morgoth by singing him to sleep? Or let’s think about that seminal moment, when Beren comes across Luthien dancing in the forest. How are you going to film that so that the viewer understands that he irrevocably falls in love with her in the moment? Is she doing ballet? Clog dancing? Interpretive jazz? And how do you justify her returning his love? He’s practically a vagabond and a mortal Man. Elves view Men at that time with about as much respect as humans view chimpanzees, and Luthien is about as high-ranking an Elf as exists at that point. It’s the kind of thing that makes a great folk tale, but nailing it down more concretely for an audience doesn’t work very well. Kind of like the “single hair from your golden head” gift requested from Galadriel by Gimli; you can describe it touchingly, but showing it just ain’t gonna fly.
The whole story is absurdly complex. You could probably only do it by ending the story when Beren and Luthien marry, and yet that leaves out some of the most important aspects of the story, such as Luthien’s choice to become mortal, not to mention both her and Beren’s deaths and return to life. And yet this is the most filmable story line of the Silmarillion.
Don’t think it’s gonna happen.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective. The Silmarillion is, for all intents and purposes, the Middle-Earth/Eru-faith equivalent of the Bible. Just like Biblical epics, the only real way to film the Sil would be to seriously dicker with the details…DeMille’s dancing girls and orgies and all that, for instance. Add to that a story that’s MUCH less familiar to the public than most of the Bible, and we’re unfortunately looking at a film that fanboy (and girls) will be furious at for just existing and the general public won’t go to because it’s completely alien.
LOL…I read Shatner’s autobiography a few months ago, cover to cover…it was great! How funny! As you say, different strokes. While I love LOTR and The Hobbit and all that, I just could not get into Silmarrilion. But my fella gave me Children of Hurin a few months back…I guess I should move it into the pile o’ books by the bed and give it a try,.
with judicious editing, and generous “revisions” the overall story could definitely be commercially viable. even if people aren’t immediately familiar with The Silmarillion, the tagline of “the prequel to the LOTR” would be enough to get butts into seats. smack peter jackson’s name into producing credits and you’ve got a movie that would probably outearn Jonah Hex
See, though, that’s kind of like calling Genesis the prequel to Saving Private Ryan.
I’m not sure you can pull that off with movies. My strategy would be to make it an HBO period-type series (like Rome.) Simply call it something like “Tales from Middle Earth (from the producers of LOtR or somesuch)” and run a 12 episode season. That way, you can delve into the long range arc of the first age over the course of a bunch of hours rather than try to somehow make a movie to cover bits of it. When you get to the more epic tales, you can devote 2 or 3 episodes to them. If it’s good, we can get a second season that takes us to the War of Wrath. If that works, season 3 could cover the Second Age & the fall of Númenor.
No season 4 I’m afraid…unless The Hobbit movie gets canned & that’s how we get that story committed to film.
I’m sure to be lynched for suggesting this…
I think the best way to adapt the Silmarillion to the screen is to follow the format of the Hercules and Xena tv series. That is, develop a few characters and follow them through the mythic setting. Each episode can be inspired by some small snippet of the book. The complexity of the background would be introduced over many episodes. The screenwriters will fill in as much detail as needed to make it viewable.
The strength of the Silmarillion isn’t the specific details of the story (though they are good), but the grand vision of the world.
It wouldn’t work. The Silmarillion is essentially a spiritual work, and that doesn’t translate into film. What do I mean by that? Well, the music of Eru, for one, is supposed to be tremendously complex. It’s essentially the entire fabric, including the future, of reality woven in song. The motives of the characters, especially the Valar, are very inscrutable. Melkor may well be the most relateable character in the bunch(well, maybe Tulkas).
How do you film the otherworldly quality of the light of the trees? How do you draw the audience into a setting where people are content to sit silently and let their souls expand in the light for time uncounted(the first age)? Remember one of the great romances, Melian and Thingol, consisted of them seeing each other and then “long years passed”. Real romantic stuff there. I guess you could fill in the blanks with nonstop boot-knocking, but that is as unsupported by the text as anything else. Feanor would be like the Tony Stark of Valinor, refusing to give up his property to the state and getting royally pissed off when someone else takes his tech.
Once the trees are darkened, and men awaken, the story starts to be a little more relatable, moving from the world of the trees, which was largely a spiritual one, to the world we’re more familiar with, a sun and a moon etc. but it’s still very fractured. Lots of subtle magic, without explosions. The kinslaying would be incomprehensible, as would the hiding of Gondolin. These just aren’t human actions with human motives.
I just don’t see a faithful adaptation working because the Silmarillion is pretty much about elves and the gods they are in spiritual accord with, and we’re not elves, and one of our longest-standing complaints about Middle-Earth is about the Valar and why they were inactive during the War of the Ring or before. Seeing them in their prime, in their homeland, they’d still be alien.
I’d say more people would know what it was than could pronounce it. 
Enjoy
Steven
There is enough amazing story and depth to mine a dozen movies. Bland? Are you kidding me?
Masses of armies, love, intrigue, incest, despair, hope, and hordes of balrogs (plural!) and werewolves and dragons captained by demi-gods going stompy-stompy against terminator-elves that make Legolas look like a wimp, and I didn’t even mention the huge-ass god-spider that trampled a kingdom and sucked the life out of freakin’ trees, man! Trees!
catches breath
Sauron’s Blog: The Movie might be amusing.
Quoth mbh:
I agree in principle, but again, who could actually do it? “The music of Creation” is a pretty tall order for any composer to fill.
Like “Crash” but with Elves.
The Cronenberg “Crash” or the other one? Because I just can’t see Galadriel and Celeborn doin’ it while watching people trip over each others’ feet.