Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

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The Amazon Prime adaptation Rings of Power was an interesting (see: bad) case-study on what happens when you try to write Tolkien without him. It's perpetually insipid, like watching a puppet show try to adapt Shakespeare. So much is stripped off the bone that no story exists anymore, and all the characters and their motives blend into one another or aren't shown at all.

> If Disney were to adapt The Lord of the Rings in 100 years to reflect new "lessons," I would be relieved to no longer be around to see it.

What's funny is, these adaptations don't even do that. Peter Jackson's films are fun because they're essentially a "Spielbergian" take on what these books should be. They're still pared-back, but they have enough of the throughlines with the original story that you still get the big takeaways at the end. They're reductive films, but powerful.

Rings of Power just, exists. It doesn't want to adapt Tolkien's original themes of death and transcendence, it doesn't want to embrace a new theme, so it's stories feel incidental and pointless. There are no conflicting plots or overarching adventures. You're just watching people in costume do pretend-errands so we can point at the TV like Leonardo Decaprio when we see our favorite character. It has no intention to conserve the original narrative or puppet it's corpse for something new. It's just a cruel mockery of an IP that can be bought out for the highest bid.

A completely faithful film adaptation of Tolkien's books would make for a terrible movie.

Which isn't to say that all the adaptations are good, of course. But the changes that were made in Peter Jackson's LOTR or the Rankin/Bass adaptation of The Hobbit were well-intentioned and generally made sense for their respective media.

Probably Tolkien wouldn't like either, but that doesn't automatically make them bad. A good example here would be Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, which was an excellent film regardless of what Stephen King thinks about it.

Which isn't to say that all adaptations are good, of course. But ragging on artistic license in general just because some works of art fail is a depressing, philistine conclusion to draw.

A terrible action movie, maybe. I think Studio Ghibli could pull it off (not that that's what they do).

I think (even though it isn't well reviewed) Tales of Earthsea shows that they do sometimes make adaptations.

Not faithful adaptations, to my knowledge. They tell their own stories, and they do a good job of it, but they don't tell other people's.

The Earthsea adaptation was more of an action film than the books were action books, which happens to Tolkien adaptations too.

Funny you should mention Studio Ghibli right after I cited the animated version of The Hobbit. ;)

Speaking of Stephen King, The Mist is another great example. The film adaptation completely changed the ending, and people almost unanimously agree for the better.

The ending of IT's adaptation is also almost universally agreed to be better (the original ending involves group sex).

> It's perpetually insipid, like watching a puppet show try to adapt Shakespeare.

I don’t know about you but I would absolutely watch a Muppets adaptation of a Shakespeare play.

When it comes to adapting classic literature they’ve given us the best adaptations of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island.

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