The White Council

Re: Filming mistakes for LotR

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : : Being the helpful, wise folk we are at the White Council, let us help Mr. Jackson with the films he is making. Here is a tounge-in-cheek list. Please Wise Council Members, assist me in making this list more complete! :^)

: : -Steve S.

: : Mistakes we hope Peter Jackson will avoid in filming Lord of the Rings

: : : Confuse plot with Lord of the Flies. : : Gender benders - Gandalf or Sam is female. : : Gratuitous chase scenes inserted. : : Exploding helicopters. : : Galadriel looks like she came out of a Boris Vallejo painting. : : Keanu Reeves as Strider. : : Muppets used for Orcs. : : Frank Oz does Gollum's voice. : : Give Frodo fairy wings to escape the exploding volcano. : : Use the approach for the first Star Trek movie - long hours of slow special effects wrapped around a minimal plot. : : Casting the southern sheriff from the Bond movies as the Captain of the Nazgul. : : Pamella Lee as anyone. : : The Knights who say "Ni" as Ents. : : Saruman of Many Colors wearing Tie-dye. : : Gimli armed with chain saw. : : Elves with very pointy shoes and/or halos. : : Sound track by Ice T, Zamphir, Wayne Newton, or ABBA. : : Sauron is Frodo's evil twin & the climax is their fight. : : Gollum is undercover spy for Valar. : : Merry & Pippin gay. : : Sauron is CEO of evil, polluting multinational corporation. : : Hobbits wear Nike. : : Smoking pipes replaced with chewing gum for health reasons.

: I laugh at your list...ha, ha, ha! An excellent job of verbalizing all our worst nightmares of what the film should NOT be. But what's wrong with ABBA? Just kidding. It's hard to imagine any modern group being used in LOTR. Tolkien's poetry and songs don't exactly fit modern expectations. Many years ago I had a friend of mine play the music from Donald Swan's "The Road Goes Ever On." He wrote it with guidance from JRRT, and in all honesty, I wasn't impressed by some of the tunes. But to this day I can't be sure if I was disappointed because I didn't care for the tunes, or because my friend played them badly. Perhaps it was a little of both. At any rate, I've never had the opportunity to hear them again, and even my hard bound copy of the book is long gone. Had I known it would go out of print I would never have parted with it. And I foolishly gave my collectors edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to my English professor. Never saw another copy of it. Such is life.

Actually I had to stop myself from listing almost every band in existence when I wrote that! Nothing particularly wrong with ABBA as a group (though I admit I don't prefer their music) - it's just that their style doesn't seem right for Middle Earth (though it certainly comes galaxies closer than rap would). I think finding the right style of music may give Jackson more of a challenge than getting visual effects right.