I want to use this piece to talk about the new Lord Of The Rings Movies that Warner Brothers Discovery are making and how this is good, bad and messy for the franchise as a whole as well as for the state of contemporary Hollywood.
So my immediate thought is why? Then I think well they are probably making them to keep hold of the rights, in some rights agreements films or shows based on the property have to be made every so often for the holder to keep them, put very simplistically, so it could of course be that. On the other hand modern Hollywood is going through something of a bad time recently as films which in the pre-pandemic times would be sure fire billion dollar grossers aren’t anymore and the box office as a whole is struggling to recover to its pre-pandemic strength. All of this is because of the cocktail of people not wanting to spend the money going to a cinema, the rise and common use of streaming platforms, and finally the fact that a lot of the films put out these days just aren’t very good, and whilst all of these factors have been around in one form or another in the past the combination of them all happening at the same time is why a lot of cinema chains are facing bankruptcy. Due to these issues Hollywood in recent years has been to become reliant on everything with even a scrap of brand recognition to try and milk it to prop itself up, more often than not this hasn’t worked.
So to get to the subject of new Lord Of The Rings films I think there many ways that this could go wrong and a lot of room for scepticism. One first has to ask what are they going to adapt, will they be a sequel to the original trilogy? Based on the writings of Tolkien himself and how those films end with most of the magic leaving the world that would seem to be a no. Will it be a reboot? This seems like a more likely idea but also one that would be met with anger and derision from the off, and with the Lord of the Rings fandom very split over The Rings Of Power this would seem to be probably one of the worst ideas they could do, likely it would see a similar effect to the sequel trilogy with Star Wars. Finally there is the idea of a prequel of some form, which to me seems the most logical and wise idea they could do. However, the big issue here would be how does this tie into the Amazon deal and the areas of Tolkien’s work they have access to. Which of course would be a very messy area rights wise and all of this.
To write somewhat as an optimist for a moment if you would indulge me, I think this new LOTR news isn’t inherently bad, as like I said before if they went into the area of the Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales and took their ques from that and adapted something more line with those stories or perhaps a fall of Númenor there could be fertile ground for some new content.
However, I think the very worst thing they could do which would almost guarantee these films to be high profile flops for WBD is to remake the original trilogy or I guess even the Hobbit and gender swap/race swap all of the characters in an idea to update these beloved films from not all that long ago. I think to do this, and putting politics to one side for the moment, would be stupid because though WBD could have the momentary bonus of saying ‘look at how progressive we are’ they would also alienate a huge number of fans and people who would show up for the film, and it wouldn’t actually of course be progressive because they would only be doing it as a shallow marketing move rather than as to actually help or champion representation in cinema.
I think right now it is very easy to be negative towards this news and to look at it through mistrusting eyes, modern Hollywood after all hasn’t given much reason for faith, however, the size and potential scope of the loss for WBD that this could represent will mean that their plans will change constantly and be updated so we really don’t know what form this will take.
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