The early tales in Tolkien's world seem more epic than LOTR/later tales.

A movie featuring some of the earlier stories could be cool.

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the problem is that the early history (the silmarillion) spanned thousands of years

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The stories featured people that pretty much could live forever unless someone killed them. The timeframe could be shortened considerably and no one would really bat an eye.

Silmarillion doesn't really lend itself to movie form but individual stories could be taken from it. Would be cool to see the Valar vs Morgoth. The destruction of the lamps, or of the trees by Ungoliant.

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Not sure if this was meant to be or not, but anyone who reads all of tolkien's legendarium would notice how epic and huge the early history was. The dark lord was much more powerful than sauron, the elvish armies were much bigger and stronger. The cities and kingdoms were powerful, and the gods played a much more active role.

Just one example:


In the time of the LOTR, there was one balrog who was presented as an epic foe beyond the power of anyone but gandalf.

In the earlier history, there were thousands of Balrogs present at the battles, and they were fought by men and elves.

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I personally don't think the same "last battle for survival of humans / middle earth" type of pressure existed as much though. You need that for a story in the traditional epic fantasy sense where its the last chance effort to save everyone.

- Silmarillion however its spelled does rock though.

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Silmarillion doesn't really lend itself to movie form but individual stories could be taken from it.

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I wish that HBO or Netflix would make a series of the Silmarillion.

I could have sworn I read somewhere that there were 7 Balrogs at the most. The captain of the balrogs had an epic fight with glorfindel at the fall of gondolin. The offspring of Glaurung (Dragons) were more numerous.

But, yes, if they could pull it off a movie on the fall of Gondolin would be incredible.

That's kind of the point. Elves were much more powerful than men could ever be, especially the High Elves who had lived for centuries in the presence of the gods. Morgoth, their chief foe, was a god himself. Sauron was only one of his lieutenants. By the time of LotR, Elves have for the most part departed Middle Earth. Men have assumed the dominion that Eru, the Creator, intended them to have. That was what made the return of Sauron so dire. Had the Elves still remained, they could have defeated him, whether he recovered the Ring or not. But the Elves were almost all gone, and indeed, other than providing some shelter and advice when needed, they played almost no role in the War of the Ring. It was left to Men to defeat the Dark Lord, which proved to be a task completely beyond their power. Only the destruction of the Ring allowed them to emerge victorious.

tldr: Sauron was a last feeble gasp of the dark power with which the Elves had contended, and yet even that was stronger than Men could ever hope to defeat on their own. Elves were more than mortals, if less than gods.

Actually, it took Sauron the better part of an age to wear down the Race of Man to the point where he had a chance of winning. Don't forget, the might of Numenor was such that he admitted defeat without so much as a passing resistance.

I like to think of the Last Alliance as a meeting of the Man and Elven races in a hallway going opposite directions. Equal for that one brief moment but soon to be separated in power once again. And those men were merely a shadow of Numenor's old power.

I think Sauron took that strategy Bc he knew he couldn't beat the Numenors in a direct fight

The battles in The Silmarillion are definitely on a much much bigger scale. I would love to see it adapted as a Netflix series or something. I think you could skip a lot of the creation of middle earth stuff and start with the awakening of the elves and still make it work well.

Fingolfin vs Morgoth was one of the best things I've ever read.