Major Movie Announcement
 

Touted as the "inspiration for the Lord of the Rings," a new movie has been announced! Yes, a movie version of the Silm... errr, no.

Actually, a movie version of the Nibelungenlied. Older fans will recall that in the late 1960s and 1970s, various writers opined that the Nibelungenlied (or the later operatic version, The Ring of the Nibelung which, purportedly was based upon earlier Norse versions of the Nibelungenlied) was the source and inspiration for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. After all, it featured a dragon, and epic heroes, and good versus evil and dwarfs (not Dwarves) and fighting families and a ring! Very obviously the source of LoTR! But didn't Tolkien dislike Wagner...?

Anyway, marketing blitz soon to follow...

Who is the director? Peter Jackson? Given that Wagner managed to do his opera cycle in a manner that takes around 17 hours to perform, I'd wager PJ would single-handedly manage the same in 70. If we are being minimalistic, of course.

But appropriately for this forum (and to keep this on-topic), the first question that crossed my mind (after the abovementioned one) was: how much is this going to draw visual inspiration from LotR?

You know what I mean - there are certain expectations nowadays, ever since PJ, majority of high fantasy films, video games etc tend to try to (consciously or uncousciously) borrow the visual style of PJ's LotR. Half the towers of any "noble civilisation" look like Minas Tirith and its monuments look like the statues of Argonath, evil spiky fortresses look like Morannon or Barad-Dur, noble defenders look like the soldiers of Gondor with those shiny pointy helmets.

So how much will the dragon look like Smaug? How much will the Dwarves follow the default Dwarf-stereotype and how much will it try to be unique? And will the Ring look like... the Ring? :smokin:

It would be an interesting "full circle" (well, if we trust that there was any inspiration at all).

Can Fritz Lang be improved upon? And never mind Wagner, could Tolkien have seen Lang's movie?

I'm already imagining some horrible casting decisions and action choreography. I hope I'm wrong, unlike with The Current Thing.