If you are referring to the William Wyler version of Ben Hur (starring Charlton Heston), that was the second version. The first was a silent adaptation directed by Fred Niblo. It was the most expensive movie of the silent era and the chariot race is just as grand as the latter version.

I too have written fan-fiction, but I wouldn't presume to make money on it like Peter Jackson's 50 Shades of Middle-earth.

I think Shakespeare was far better at characterization, at creating a complete psychological profile of a given role. As far as Hamlet or Henry V, even great actors like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud or even Kenneth Brannagh did not presume to add fan-fiction to the Bard's words. They didn't drop in whole fan-fic subplots in their productions of Shakespeare. There are levels of respect afforded Shakespeare's work that are not necessarily given to Tolkien's. Although I am sure there are some asinine adaptations of Shakespeare out there that have largely gone ignored (as it should be).

Hey, lets give Hamlet an Elvish mistress that adds a love triangle between Hamlet and Ophelia, and then throw in an Orc (a French one, of course) that chases Hamlet around the castle throughout the play.

As far as new versions of Tolkien's work? I don't see why not. It may be further in the future than many of us will see (what with copyright laws extending past my expected expiration date), but with the rapidity at which technology advances, we may get to view Middle-earth in person via a Holodeck a la Star Trek before we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Interestingly, the folks over at Red Letter Media (caution, language etc), who did the excellent Star Wars prequel reviews, consider Peter Jackson to be more of a Tolkien 'purist.' They gave a positive review of DoS, though found it a bit long.

Let me guess...they also thought the ending was a "cliffhanger", right?

One of the things I actually loved about this movie was the portrayal of Thranduil.

OK, it may not have been faithful to Tolkien's Thranduil (who we really don't actually know that much about), but it did accomplish one other important thing.

Basically it reminded me of a son of Feanor - one of the middle ones, Celegorm, Curufin or Caranthir - more than anything else.

So he's a bit of a jerk, slightly "wild", you get the sense that he's dangerous to be around, liable to do anything, "of perilous mood" indeed.

I've no idea if this was intentional or not, but it did bring forward a side of Tolkien's elves that's otherwise not present in these movies, and that was something I thought important and was happy to see done.

To be 100% faithful would require a TV series no doubt, given the length alone. And a movie budget no movie company would provide

I posted this in another thread along this same theme:

Smaug was the best feature of the films so far because of the personality he was given. Whenever dragons are portrayed in film or literature, they are always 1) bestial, or 2) any mix of arrogant, mean, evil, etc.

This Smaug was, for lack of a better term, a psychopath. Absolutely unhinged. If they had a giant, padded wagon with normal dragons in white coats, they should have been called to straightjacket Smaug and take him away to a rubber dragon's cave.

And that made Smaug really, really scary.

Ex-post-facto, I realize that my thread could probably be merged with this one.