re: Spinoff: Is The Silmarillion possible to adapt to screen

I’m not sure why everyone is saying no. There is a consistent plot movement and great characters and events leading up to the War of Wrath. Just because there isn’t dialogue doesn’t mean it’s not doable, in fact that gives good writers the chance to make it really interesting.

I hope they dont do it, I just dont think you could do it justice. To book readers at least. But I doubt any production studio would care bc they could cash in big time.

I think if they did do it, you would have to leave Eru out, and possibly the Ainur. God and angel like beings just dont come off well on screen. I mean obviously you could write them in and tell back stories, but visually, it wouldnt work. I dont think you could stretch the form of characters much more than they were in lord of the rings.

I also dont think you could ever be able to portray just how badass Melkor and Ungoliant are.

I've thought about this a bit over the years, and I think you do it as a frame narrative that picks up where Return of the King (the film) left off. Maybe this is corny but whatever, I don't care. I think this is how you tie everything together to tell the stories and make it accessible to more than just extreme Arda mythos aficionados.

You've got the ringbearers on a ship headed for Aman: Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel and Celeborn, so you start there. You tie visual and musical themes from the ending of RotK into the opening of this new series.

The frame narrative centers around Frodo and Bilbo asking Gandalf/Elrond/Galadriel about their histories, the nature of the Undying Lands and the world at large, etc. There's alot that Frodo/Bilbo and the movie audience don't know about those three - Elven ringbearers, Gandalf's origins, the Elven history in the First Age, Elrond's relationship to the founding of Numenor etc. So you use the opportunity to start filling in some of the blanks for the audience as you set up the main stories for the movies. Let them talk about the awakening of the Elves and the creation of Orcs, about Gandalf being from Valinor, and link their rings to Sauron's ring craft knowledge to Sauron being a lesser evil than Morgoth. This doesn't have to take a long time, just need a few minutes of establishing dialogue so Frodo/Bilbo/the audience aren't totally lost in the upcoming stories.

This is all happening as they sail over Beleriand and Frodo/Bilbo can see ruins under the water. Now as they ask about WTF is all this, Elrond and Galadriel segway into it being Beleriand and talk about the ancient Elven and Edain kingdoms, and they link this to Feanor, Valinor, the creation of the Silmarils, and Morgoth stealing them and fleeing to Middle Earth.

In my mind this is 5-10 minutes into the movie and now we're in the First Age with Galadriel doing some establishing voice-over on a montage of some of those plot elements like at the beginning of Fellowship - Feanor creating the Silmarils, Morgoth stealing them, Feanor marching on Angband and being killed. So her voice-over gets the audience up to speed for the situation in the movie: Morgoth has the Silmarils, the Elves are pissed, they've been fighting over this shite for a long arse time in and around Beleriand.


First movie pair: Part 1 of the Silmaril story, mainly Beren and Luthien's quest to steal a Silmaril and Morgoth gets pissed. Plenty of characterization and story building to do here with Beren, Luthien, Thingol, Finrod, and others, many who are linked to the story-tellers so you can establish more links here to characters the audience already know. IMO for cinematic purposes you don't get too deep into Beren and Luthien coming back to life and having a son etc. Just leave the story at: they steal the Silmaril, Morgoth flips out.

Part 2 - Morgoth is destroying all of Beleriand. Cover the fall of Gondolin. Earendil becomes the main character with links getting established to Beren/Luthien, the Silmaril, and Elrond. So now we've got Elrond in the frame narrative telling his father's quest to get help in Valinor and defeat Morgoth, and he and Elros fighting in the War of Wrath. Morgoth gets defeated, Beleriand sinks under the sea, and this sets up the next movie pair with the creation of Numenor and Elros becoming its first king.

Do it like an anthology, in the same universe...like Enter the Matrix.