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[Digital Hellhound]

The Elves are gone, mate. The Magic Goes Away's the name of the game.

There's some material about the next Age, IIRC.  Can't remember what happens, but I faintly recall some new rising of evil. Or possibly just human-on-human wars. Hmh. Anyway, those ideas wouldn't really make sense.

[Trif]

Or maybe some new, fresh adventure using the Middle Earth as a background?

Yeah, because the new, fresh Jackson's-imagination-parts of the Hobbit movies were clearly the best parts.

Seriously though, for more Middle-earth movies they'd need the Tolkien estate's cooperation. And that ship has sailed.

[XXSockXX]

There's some material about the next Age, IIRC.  Can't remember what happens, but I faintly recall some new rising of evil. Or possibly just human-on-human wars. Hmh. Anyway, those ideas wouldn't really make sense.

IIRC it was called The Return of the Shadow, it's just a few page fragment. It was about youths in Gondor starting Ork-cults a few centuries after LOTR (always sounded like grumpy old man reacts to the student movements of the 60s to me). But yeah, the non-human creatures are all gone and human-on-human wars would be pretty uninteresting, which is also the reason the idea was abandoned quickly.

[SalmonGod]

I don't doubt at all that Jackson is a huge fanboy who has put a lot of thought and work into his adaptions.

I don't buy that he's a fan of Tolkien at all.  If he respected the man's work, he wouldn't make alterations to the story with no other excuse than 'I like it this way better', which is pretty much all he's had to say on many points when asked in interviews and such.  It doesn't sit right with me when someone claims to be a devoted fan of someone's work, but superior at the same time.

Or maybe some new, fresh adventure using the Middle Earth as a background?

I'd be okay with this, but if there was this much rage over a bad adaptation, imagine the hatred of anything new Jackson comes up with. Even if it's at least passable, the rage would boil oceans.

Honestly, I wouldn't have nearly as much problem with it.  Tolkien wanted people to expand on his work, and deliberately wrote most of the mythology undetailed, so that others would have something to work with after him.  He wanted it to be a cultural heritage in the same vein as Nordic myth or something, to bring the same uniting factor and enrichment as those did in the past, because he thought such a thing was lacking in the modern day.  And he sort of succeeded.  He's been the main inspiration for an entire genre of fiction.  Just probably not how he expected.

So people writing original stories fitting within Tolkien's mythology would be great, I think.  Just don't be stupid about it.  Bend canon a bit here and there, but don't shatter it.  Don't be excessive with tying-in popular characters and re-hashing the same sequences over and over to please the masses who just want more of the same.  That's probably asking for too much, but in theory, as a rather purist Tolkien fan, I would be cool with it.

[XXSockXX]

I don't buy that he's a fan of Tolkien at all.  If he respected the man's work, he wouldn't make alterations to the story with no other excuse than 'I like it this way better', which is pretty much all he's had to say on many points when asked in interviews and such.  It doesn't sit right with me when someone claims to be a devoted fan of someone's work, but superior at the same time.

No, you have to change quite a lot to make LOTR work as a live action movie. There are many changes I don't like too, but many are explainable with production issues and - of course - commercial appeal.

Tolkien wanted people to expand on his work, and deliberately wrote most of the mythology undetailed, so that others would have something to work with after him.  He wanted it to be a cultural heritage in the same vein as Nordic myth or something, to bring the same uniting factor and enrichment as those did in the past, because he thought such a thing was lacking in the modern day.

From what I understand Tolkien really really hated fan fiction. In his letters he always complained about people trying to write sequels to LOTR and I think he even sued some of them. That many of his unfinished works were completed by his son seems okay, because he was his father's editor anyway, but anything else he'd probably object to.
You're completely right on the cultural heritage part, but it was very important to Tolkien that the whole thing was "his" creation.
I'd scream "blasphemy" at any attempts to make "new" Middle Earth stories.

[Bauglir]

I don't buy that he's a fan of Tolkien at all.  If he respected the man's work, he wouldn't make alterations to the story with no other excuse than 'I like it this way better', which is pretty much all he's had to say on many points when asked in interviews and such.  It doesn't sit right with me when someone claims to be a devoted fan of someone's work, but superior at the same time.

I really don't know about that. I'm a huge fan of, say, FF6, but that doesn't mean I think it's an entirely flawless masterpiece that could never be improved. Certainly, it seems strange to me to accuse modding communities, for instance, of not being genuine fans of the things they work on.

[WillowLuman]

Peter Jackson says time and time again in interviews that he only makes movies for himself. It's his author appeal and tastes that get in the way some times. He probably liked LOTR more, and tried to make the Hobbit more like it.

This is a man who started off doing home-made monster movies with home-made rubber masks. His dream has always been to film a WWII epic. So, it makes sense that he's big on action and darker moods, but also bits of goofiness.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I suspect Tolkien left a lot vague so he wouldn't write himself into a corner. If you have sections where a character is off doing something elsewhere, you can use that time in another book. Creating languages and genealogies isn't restrictive, it's the framework upon which you build everything else. Besides you can always add illegitimate children and lost princes later.

Look at the map in LOTR or The Hobbit. Were all the ruins mentioned? I figure the Fellowship passed by like six dozen dungeons because they didn't notice them or they weren't part of the Quest.

[Helgoland]

Don't even mention Eragon.
Just ... no. No that wasn't a movie. No.

Two of my most beloved franchises when I was younger were Eragon and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I am perhaps somewhat desensitized to mistakes in adaptations because of this.

I don't get everyone's beef with Eragon - it's a very good fantasy book for teenagers, isn't it? At least loads better than most of the others that I've read...

[10ebbor10]

Don't even mention Eragon.
Just ... no. No that wasn't a movie. No.

Two of my most beloved franchises when I was younger were Eragon and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I am perhaps somewhat desensitized to mistakes in adaptations because of this.

I don't get everyone's beef with Eragon - it's a very good fantasy book for teenagers, isn't it? At least loads better than most of the others that I've read...

I think he was talking about the movie, not the book. I saw it once on a bus, can't remember much of it.

[Mephansteras]

Don't even mention Eragon.
Just ... no. No that wasn't a movie. No.

Two of my most beloved franchises when I was younger were Eragon and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I am perhaps somewhat desensitized to mistakes in adaptations because of this.

I don't get everyone's beef with Eragon - it's a very good fantasy book for teenagers, isn't it? At least loads better than most of the others that I've read...

I think he was talking about the movie, not the book. I saw it once on a bus, can't remember much of it.

Yeah, the books are fairly generic but fun fantasy. The movie was just a miserable adaptation that ended up horrible through no fault of the source material.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

It's not so much that the book is awful. It's that all the books it's blatantly plagiarizing are so much better. It's a world where great stories get shafted so that poor stories can be made into stupid movies, and there's only going to be so much movie-making money in the year. You start looking at the movies that do come out and all the great movies that could have been, and it's like feeding the most worthless child and letting the other three starve to death.

Same goes for video games. Can we please skip every other sports game and COD clone and instead put those resources into something good? I'm not saying stop making the crappy games, because some people love them and they sometimes innovate, but you really don't need a new game for every sport every single year. Not when wonderful ideas are languishing in unfunded kickstarters.

[kaijyuu]

Eragon was a pretty blatant ripoff of Star Wars, just with a fantasy flavor.


IIRC it's also the book series with vegan, self righteous elves who wear skimpy leather outfits. Yes, vegans who don't like hurting animals wear leather. Because it's sexy.

[SalmonGod]

I don't buy that he's a fan of Tolkien at all.  If he respected the man's work, he wouldn't make alterations to the story with no other excuse than 'I like it this way better', which is pretty much all he's had to say on many points when asked in interviews and such.  It doesn't sit right with me when someone claims to be a devoted fan of someone's work, but superior at the same time.

I really don't know about that. I'm a huge fan of, say, FF6, but that doesn't mean I think it's an entirely flawless masterpiece that could never be improved. Certainly, it seems strange to me to accuse modding communities, for instance, of not being genuine fans of the things they work on.

I think we're on different levels here. 

You're talking about finding the inevitable flawed details in any work, no matter how great, that become apparent over time and study.  Or in the case of modding communities, that's mostly about keeping up to date with technology or just wanting more content to go with a beloved formula.

And that's a far cry from appreciating an idea as a base to work from, but flat out believing that you can make something better, which is my strong impression of Jackson's attitude towards Tolkien. 

To put it in perspective, imagine Square hires someone to do a modern update of FF6 to a next gen console.  This guy makes Edgar a total asshole who kicked Sabin out of Figaro so he could be king, adds 10 hours devoted to a romance between Terra and Captain Leo, has Shadow abandon the party at the floating island scene, and adds one more scene involving another floating island almost identical to the first one except this time Kain from FFIV shows up to have a kung fu fight with Atma Weapon because it's cool looking.  (Note:  I've intentionally made these hypothetical changes roughly analogous to those made by Jackson)  When interviewed about these changes, the writer says he's a devoted fan of the original game, but made the changes because he simply thinks it's better his way.  Do you believe this guy?

[LeoLeonardoIII]

This is why I think the movie would have been fine as long as they didn't call it The Hobbit. Call it "Dwarf Fortress: Reclamation", or "Peter Jackson's Hobbit Fanfic".

It's like if I say I'm having a game of D&D at my place, and people show up, and I say "Oh right, sorry I forgot to mention, it's not actually D&D but it's a game that I wrote that's a lot better than D&D and hey why are you guys all leaving?" You set up an expectation and you better fulfill that expectation. I think it's fine to say "I made a game do you guys wanna try it?" because then people know what they're getting into. Or more accurately I guess, they know that they don't know.