[Garen LiLorian]

I think there is one way and one way only to bring the Silmarillion to the screen. A miniseries, like Band of Brothers. I imagine you could probably get PJ to executive produce it. (like Spielburg with BoB)<BR>I agree that the dialog would be difficult, but I came up with an interesting idea for working around it.<P>I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that Mel Gibson's current project is a movie about the life of Jesus. Leaving aside for the moment thoughts about that, he made one decision that I thought was very interesting; the film will be entirely in Aramaic, with <I><B>no</I></B> subtitles. He hopes to tell the story simply through emotion and visuals.<P>Now, this probably wouldn't work for the Silmarillion. The story is hard enough to follow when you can understand what people are saying. But it sort of bears thinking about. It'd solve the dialog problem, and it would force the thing to be staggeringly, amazingly visual. Tell the whole story simply with visual and audio, no language except un-subtitled Elvish.<P>You could fill it out, without ****ing off Tolkien purists, simply by adding imagery. The end result would be more of a visual poem than a story. The acting would need to be absolutely incredible. <P>You know, I think of it rather like that old movie, Legend. You know, the one with the really young Tom Cruise. The dialog is excreable, but the imagery is unbelievable. Take that one step further, and you have got something I'd watch on my Sunday nights!<P>EDIT; Oh, dear God. (That's a prayer, not a blasphemy) Not Hayden Christensen. Please. Anything but the Great Whiner. If you don't believe he's a bad actor after Star Wars, watch "Life as a House." There's only so much I can take of a pretty, apparently intelligent, gifted boy acting like one of those starving kids you see in National Geographic. And it isn't very much. The boy looks like someone just killed his puppy, all the time. No matter what he's doing.<p>[ January 25, 2003: Message edited by: Garen LiLorian ]