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What has been tried before There was the Rankin/Bass cartoon of The Hobbit on television in 1977, which my children liked and I tolerated. There was Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings in 1978, which I went to see on opening weekend with high hopes. It stops halfway, at Helm's Deep, and the second half was never made. Rankin/Bass finished the story on television in 1980 with The Return of the King, in its own peculiar way. The only adaptation I truly love is the BBC radio version, which is mentioned on the other page. For forty years people have said the book could not be filmed. I have mostly agreed with them. |
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What we know now Last year New Line Cinema took on the project, and they intend to make three pictures, not one or two, all to be filmed at once in New Zealand by a New Zealand director, Peter Jackson. I confess I knew his name only from Heavenly Creatures, a strange and very fine film about two girls in Christchurch, which my wife and I saw at the art house here in 1994. Filming is said to begin this autumn. It will be a long while yet before any of it reaches a theater. The word among readers on the Tolkien newsgroup is that the young actor Elijah Wood will play Frodo, and that Ian McKellen, the Shakespearean, will play Gandalf. If the second is true, I'm delighted. I saw him on public television years ago and he has exactly the voice for it. Other names go around every week, and I don't repeat anything I can't confirm. |
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An old reader's hopes • That they understand the story belongs to Sam as much as to Frodo. • That the Shire looks lived in: gardens, pubs, mud, and hobbits who are not played for laughs. • That the New Zealand country is as beautiful as my brother-in-law, who went there in 1987, insists it is. It might make a very good Middle-earth. • That someone in charge has read the Appendices. |
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And an old reader's worries • Tom Bombadil will almost certainly be cut. I will grumble, and then I will admit that I'd have cut him too. • The Scouring of the Shire, the chapter where the hobbits come home and find their own country spoiled, may be cut as well. That one I would mind. It is the point of the whole book: nobody comes home from a war unchanged, and home doesn't wait for you. • That Hollywood will add a romance that isn't there, or a battle that isn't there, because it doesn't trust the story. • Gollum. I cannot imagine how they will do Gollum. Perhaps with computers. I hope they find a way to make him pitiable, because he is. |
| My granddaughter says I should be excited, and I find that I am, a little, in spite of myself. Whatever they make, the books will still be on the shelf, and a good film will send a great many young people to them. That alone would be worth it. I'll add to this page as real news arrives. |