is 2 -3 hours enough?

we've all seen how books get adapted into movies most don't make it.i just hope something good comes out in all. this effort.

basically, everything made so far is lousy even the cartoons(they weren't serious to the story or watered down).


MaRS ezOp

Welcome to the board. 2-3 hours is not enough, but what can we do? If they made them any longer no one who wasn't a LOTR fan would watch them (not that that's a problem.)

Again I'll make another comparison between LOTR and Gone With The Wind. GWTW the film is roughly four hours, with some parts cut from the book and some minor characters eliminated, but keeping everything else almost entirely intact - just like the LOTR project. LOTR the book is about 75% longer than GWTW the book. If the percentage cut is similar (also keeping in mind that the two are of similar depth in description), LOTR would optimally be about 4*1.75 or rather 7 hours in length. So with the cuts being made, it will come to around two hours, twenty minutes per film. (Keep in mind these figures are very approximate estimates.)

No, it's not enough, but who ever said this was a complete adaptation of the novel?

A very good example of a movie full adapting a book is the Oscar winner Babette's Feast, based on a story from Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). That film had a standard duration, but the original book was only of 30 or 40 pages.

I´m more and more convinced that to do a faithful film requires a great amount of time. And i´ve heard that Tolkien himself was of the same opinion (perhaps our letter searcher Eruve could confirm this point )

The Maltese Falcon was almost line-by-line and scene-by-scene an exact adaptation of the Hammett novel, with minimal liberties taken here and there, which was around a hundred pages but resulted in a film an hour and a half in length.

There's a brittish version of Silas Marner that's almost a perfect addaption of the book, but again it's a short book.

its easy to adapt short books. the director can have more freedom to visualize the scenes.

one problem if this movie flops is we won't see the second or third books for a while at least. how long did it take after bakshi's?

so far, i doubt that it would flop with a big production (miramax and new line)behind it.

i'm glad ents will be included treebeard is something else.


hobbit from MaRS
"...where the fear has gone there will be nothing, only i shall remain."

Bakshi is the Supreme Slacker.....he never did finish LOTR.

That always bothered me too, Anduin. The Lord of the Rings animated movie was not bad, as movies go, although they cut things that I thought should have been left alone. To top it all off, they end it at Helm's Deep. When I finally found The Return of the King, all I could really do was jeer at it. It didn't look the same. Had all that dratted singing. Was even less true to the story than the 1st one.
I was so disappointed in it. I couldn't even bring myself to buy it for my collection, it was so bad.

Singing: that was always my chief objection to Disney movies. Sort of like the Dinosaur movie. Good, and then they spoke, lol. I hated that about the Hobbit movie too.

I don't seem to think that they can put even one book in 2 hours! In the star wars trilogy they had 3 movies all about 3 hours long. They should do that with LOTR. Make the Fellowship of the Ring 2 or so hours, Then the Two Towers 2 or so hours, etc. 2 hours for all three is prepostorous.

Yeah, that's what we're talking about. 2-3 per installment. And that's what they're doing.

the homevideo might be a director's cut who knows it could be three-four hours.
to make things clear the first movie is the fellowship of the ring. the other two follows.

Ok.

Naturally, the movies will not have the depth of the books. I agreed with the GONE WITH THE WIND analogy. It can be done well, but sacrifices are inevitable.

Right now, it seems that simply reading the text aloud is a 48-50 hour job! Or more!

At least we will not have to wait years between installments. Think of the original readers who wanted more after THE HOBBIT! They had to wait many, many years!

At least Peter's doing them all at once...

Just imagine if he followed Bakshi steps and do one at a time. Then if the movie is not as successful as thought and we never get to see the two others! That would be horrible!