# It could have been worse



## Rivendell_librarian (Jan 18, 2020)

Having recently watched Rise of Skywalker, it struck me, that despite all the criticism PJ receives here (much of it justified) the film trilogy of the LOTR could have been worse.

Imagine a map of Middle Earth with a Star Wars scrolling intro over it "It was a dark time for Middle Earth. The powerful traitorous wizard Saruman had broken up the heroic Fellowship of the Ring with his band of vicious Uruk Hai orcs. The hobbits, Merry and Pippin had been captured and were being taken back to Isengard ..."

I was wondering which director/producer would have done better than PJ?

Kubrick? His perfectionism would mean the project would never have been finished.
David Lean - even more romanticising
David Lynch - too dour?

One director who I think would make a fair fist of it is Luc Besson

From a different era I think Powell/Pressburger would elicit the underlying messages of the story well but would think it's not their kind of film.

What do others think?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 18, 2020)

I always thought Terry Gilliam could have made an interesting take, if he could control his anarchic tendencies.


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## Rivendell_librarian (Jan 21, 2020)

I find Gilliam a bit too uneven: good in parts. Even my favourite, Time Bandits, has weak sections


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## Olorgando (Jan 21, 2020)

The only film that made some vague nagging noises at the back of my head about possible alternative directors was the 1981 "Excalibur".
Director, producer and co-writer of that was John Boorman, 87 by now, whose name did not ring a bell. But two of his other films definitely did, "Deliverance" from 1972 and "Zardoz" from 1974. Now when shooting started on PJ's films, Boorman was 66, He did direct some three films post RoTK, but seems to often have had longer spells between films. In his filmography, only "Excalibur" would qualify as strictly as "High Fantasy", while "Zardoz" and "Exorcist II: The Heretic" (!!!) from 1977 would tend more to the broader definition of the fantastic. Just by the way, he directed and produced these three in a row, also doing scriptwriting for the first and last of this trio, but not for "Exorcist II".

So would he have been able to do LoTR justice? From my dim memory of "Excalibur" I would think yes, and some of what I (also dimly) remember of "Zardoz" tends in the same direction. If you consider what PJ had done pre LoTR, heavily in the direction of horror / splatter / thriller, Boorman at least had one serious High Fantasy film to his credit, and done well, as far as I remember. But *if* he had read enough of the "wrong" criticisms of LoTR the book(s) when they were published (when he himself was 21 or 22), he might not have been sympathetic enough to them to do them justice (or in the extreme might have rejected the job outright).


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 21, 2020)

My memories of Excaliber are of a bad movie -- really bad.

As for Zardoz, Best Bad Shaggy Dog Story Movie Ever!


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## Olorgando (Jan 21, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> As for Zardoz, Best Bad Shaggy Dog Story Movie Ever!
> 
> View attachment 6404


As I said memories are dim. It was one of Connery's first roles after his supposed "retirement" as James Bond after 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever" (being replaced by the *older* Roger Moore!). He certainly didn't wear the Toupet that he had to in his six (to that time) JB films. On the plus side, in the female lead role it featured Charlotte Rampling, then all of 28. Might be one of those films that was tuned in too strongly to a given era's "sensibilities" (perhaps even considered by some as "avant-garde", the surest way for anything to fall into irrelevance very quickly), the total opposite of things (becoming) considered "timeless". Best described by the term "aging badly".


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## Rivendell_librarian (Jan 22, 2020)

Thinking of a similar type of film/programme there is the1980s ITV series Robin of Sherwood devised by Richard Carpenter and directed by Ian Sharp, Robert Young et al
Not big names but they created probalbly the most innovative take on the Robin Hood myth with well rounded characters, music by Clannad etc.


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## Elthir (Jan 22, 2020)

Well, the Black Death could have been worse too.

Oh. Do you_ want _me back Galin? This attitude is borderline bannable! Ando


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## Olorgando (Jan 22, 2020)

Galin said:


> Well, the Black Death could have been worse too.
> 
> Oh. Do you_ want _me back Galin? This attitude is borderline bannable! Ando


Like that 1918-20 Influenza pandemic, colloquially known as the Spanish Flu? It killed far more people than there were casualties in WW I, apparently at least 50 million, with estimates ranging up to 100 million. Of the world-wide population of the time, that was still "only" three to five percent. The Black Death in Europe from 1347-53 killed at least as many, but that meant something between *30 and 60* percent of the population then (and about 25 percent world-wide).
Ebola and a couple of other African killer plagues have death rates from 23 to 90 percent, averaging 50 percent. There has been some progress in alleviating its effects recently, but that needs some intensive medical care often not available, at least not initially, in the Sub-Saharan African regions usually affected.
But then consider the following: the Ebola epidemic in the "Democratic Republic" of the Congo, mainly in the Kivu province, has caused a bit over 2200 deaths to date, from late 2018 onwards. At the same time, the was an out break of the measles (in 2019) which has killed about* 5000*! As a percentage of the 250 000 infections, that comes to "only" 2 percent (the Ebola "kill rate" there is closer to 66 percent), but then the infections had spread to all parts of the Congo, as the measles are *extremely* infectious. Inoculation can do so much to prevent measles from spreading, so those numbers should give inoculation "skeptics" pause for thought!
The number one killer world-wide, meanwhile, remains malaria, with a toll of about 400 000 a year world-wide.

So we now have quite a list of "plagues" to choose from in describing the Amazon TV series when it does finally appear.


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## Rivendell_librarian (Jan 25, 2020)

The Black Death isn't able to produce or direct a film.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 26, 2020)

I'm not too sure about that -- you _did _see the Hobbit movies, didn't you?


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## Olorgando (Jan 27, 2020)

OK, I just tried to reply to a post of "Elthir / Galin / Ando" but got an error message. Seems our "multiple personality" member decided to delete it.
Too late! I managed to check out "The Seventh Seal" in Wiki, then got sidetracked to that film's director Ingmar Bergman.

I've seen too little of his work to be able to judge, but might he have made a useful LoTR? Or would The Sil have been more appealing to him?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 27, 2020)

It would certainly have been "different".


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## Olorgando (Jan 27, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> It would certainly have been "different".


Erm … yes … as would an Akira Kurosawa version along the lines of "Seven Samurai". Just think of it, Toshiro Mifune as Aragorn!

I was hoping for more detail … 🥺


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 27, 2020)




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## Olorgando (Jan 27, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> View attachment 6434
> 
> View attachment 6435
> 
> View attachment 6436


Seems to point more to The Sil - though the last one ha something of the (EE?) Gimli-Legolas drinking contest from TTT.
A central question might be: could Bergman "do" Hobbits? Having a touch for comedy would be helpful, again no idea how Bergman was with that genre.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 27, 2020)

That WAS the comedy!


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## Olorgando (Jan 28, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> That WAS the comedy!


Seems my knowledge of Ingmar Bergman's filmography approaches the subatomic … 😬


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jan 28, 2020)

I'm joking, of course! 

But Bergman's dreary outlook became the object of parody way back, most famously in this short film from 1968:





Another filmmaker, Werner Herzog, comes to mind; the mind reels, contemplating what _his _take would look like -- Bruno S. as Frodo? Klaus Kinski as Aragorn? 

His approach to things is also ripe for parody, most recently here:


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## Olorgando (Jan 28, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Another filmmaker, Werner Herzog, comes to mind


Seen more of his stuff than Bergman's, including his 1978 remake of "Nosferatu", originally a silent film from 1922. Herzog's film starred Klaus Kinski as the Vampire, perhaps the only time in filmmaking that a "monster" portrayed on-screen was less evil than the actor portraying it. I definitely saw their 1982 "collaboration" "Fitzcarraldo" in the cinema, describing (sort of) historic events surrounding the rubber boom in Brazil of the 19th century, and an attempt to cross the Orinoko (Venezuela) and Amazon tributary (Brazil) divide by dubious methods. Urban legend has it that the chief of an indigenous tribe portraying extras for the film offered Herzog to kill Kinski, whom these "uncivilized" (in the sense of "unpolluted by Orwellian doublespeak") people had swiftly recognized as being very evil.


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## Rivendell_librarian (Dec 23, 2020)

Having got drawn into watching John Ford's The Searchers again this week I wonder if he may have made a good attempt.

Now that film has weaknesses. Not so much the racism, which was typical of the age, but the handling of the battle scenes - they don't convince.

But where Ford does score in spades is how he uses subtle visual clues to the underlying plot and character themes.

This link explains it well
100 seconds of greatness

There are other visual clues or cues as well. The two older children of Aaron and Martha both have sandy hair and look like siblings, but the younger 8-y-o Debbie has dark hair and looks different. Is she Ethan's child?
Also in the closing scene Mrs Jorgensen puts her hand on the wooden pillar in the same way Martha did in the opening scene. I don't think that was mere coincidence!

Bergman would have made more of the moral message that lies behind Tolkien's stories and the inner conflicts of the main characters, and there would have been less CGI dominated battle scenes - but humour? Maybe The Silmarillion would have been more up his street. In contrast, John Ford did humour well


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