# How long till a remake?



## Firawyn (Aug 30, 2013)

I have been watching the Game of Thrones series on HBO, having already read the books as they came out. I was surprisingly impressed at how well the Song of Ice and Fire was translated to film, in the form of a show. It did get me thinking back at when Lord of the Rings came out and many of us were disappointed with things that were missed (Scouring of the Shire, etc). I was wondering what some of you thought about sometime in the future, a remake of Lord of the Rings being done int he form of a show, rather than a movie or movies. 

Would it be better?

Would it be worse?

How soon is too soon after PJ's movies? 

Between the Hobbit, LotR, and Tolkien's other works, how many seasons could you envision a "Middle Earth" series having?


Thoughts?


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## Eledhwen (Aug 30, 2013)

By 'a show', do you mean a TV series? It might work, if the viewing public's attention span hasn't waned to the extent that the producers would have to add more 'spice' in the form of battles and relationship issues. Even condensed into a 3-part film, they had to up the battle frequency and change people's characters to make them more 'interesting'.

After the books are released from copyright, I expect there will be something of a free for all.


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## Starbrow (Aug 30, 2013)

I think a TV show would allow them to include Bombadil, the Scouring of the Shire, etc. and maybe focus more on the character's motivations and growth and less on action. But it would really depend on who directed the show.


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## Eledhwen (Aug 30, 2013)

Starbrow said:


> I think a TV show would allow them to include Bombadil, the Scouring of the Shire, etc. and maybe focus more on the character's motivations and growth and less on action. But it would really depend on who directed the show.


If only! It could happen, if being faithful to the book became a desirable trait in films, to the extent that it attracted more subscribers.


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## Firawyn (Aug 30, 2013)

Eledhwen said:


> If only! It could happen, if being faithful to the book became a desirable trait in films, to the extent that it attracted more subscribers.



I think George R Martin's books are going a long way in establishing that as a good thing. The show (TV series) is almost word for word. Because Lord of the Rings was written for a different generation (when literature was actually appreciated), I do think that whoever did the script would have to rework it to accommodate a more steady action flow, as well as more character development. I think with the appendixes as a resource, a writer could easily come up with plausible conflicts that each character could go through, and while it would not be a direct quote from the books, it would still remain faithful to Tolkien's work.


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## Maiden_of Harad (Aug 31, 2013)

I have a horrible forboding that Disney will make a remake...one so bad that the anti-PJ club will come to love him.
But a tv series could be superb or terrible, depending upon the cast and crew. It could stary with the Silmarillion, continue through the appendixes, and end with LOTR.


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## Firawyn (Aug 31, 2013)

Disney picks it up, I'm going to flip out. I have still not forgiven them for doing what they did to Narnia. :*mad:


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## Bucky (Sep 19, 2013)

A remake?

A REMAKE?

Can't we get through two more years of PJ reinventing The Hobbit first?


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## Firawyn (Sep 19, 2013)

Bucky said:


> A remake?
> 
> A REMAKE?
> 
> Can't we get through two more years of PJ reinventing The Hobbit first?



After the first part of the Hobbit, I've decided to just save myself another ten years of angst by simply ignoring its very existence. ;*)


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## Halasían (Sep 20, 2013)

Firawyn said:


> After the first part of the Hobbit, I've decided to just save myself another ten years of angst by simply ignoring its very existence. ;*)



:*up Yes.... quite. The ONLY redeeming factor I could see from that horrid Hobbit part 1 was it made the earlier film look half-way not bad.


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## Firawyn (Sep 21, 2013)

Very, very true. 

Why is it so bloody hard to actually follow a plot line when translating book to film. A SIMPLE plot line...it's the Hobbit for crying out loud. 

On the upside, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Narnia movies. :*eek: Talk about ruining a perfectly good story.


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## jallan (Sep 21, 2013)

Firawyn said:


> Why is it so bloody hard to actually follow a plot line when translating book to film. A SIMPLE plot line...it's the Hobbit for crying out loud.



Generally film directors of screen writers are creative people, and think that they are creating something new when working on a film, not simply translating a book to film media. A common question they ask is “What can I do with this?”, not “How can I adapt this book with minimal changes?” They are usually not trying to simply _translate_ the original book, but to _adapt_ it.

Most the watchers of a film won’t have read the original book on which it is based, or have only read it once, months before the film was released or even years before the film was released. Usually the book is much too long in any case to be only simply translated.

Now you surely know this, from seeing many films that were based on books, some of which you had previously read. And some of these films which were only loosely based on a book have been _very_ successful. For example, the very successful comic film _Cat Ballou_ was based on a book which was a serious western. The MGM film _The Wizard of Oz_ was also rather different from the book on which it was based. So was the film _Mary Poppins_.

And this is not something new. For example Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_ and _King Lear_ were _very_ different from the stories on which they were based.

This is not to say that following the book more closely would not work, but looking at films based on books as a whole, it does not appear that the success of a film depends on how faithful the film is to its source. So film adapters are often not over-concerned with how close their adaptations are to their source, but whether, looked at independently, it is a good film.

And that is not always obvious either. The same film may be loved by some viewer and hated by others. Whether a film is really good many not become obvious for ten years when viewers begin to realize how much they like reviewing that particular film. And even then some may still dislike that particular film.


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