If the Children of Húrin was filmed...

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

What I would fear most, in a Hollywood version of the Narn, is the dreaded modern curse of emotional incontinence.
Narn is a very buttoned-up, sparse tragedy. It is Morwen saying nothing but scratching at the doorpost til her fingers bleed when the child Turin leaves for Doriath. It is Hurin and Morwen, at the end of it all, after decades apart, not falling into each other's arms but sitting in silence, mourning the terrible fates of their children.

Can't help wondering if this is because so many modern novels are written as 'first draft screenplays' - the writer always seems to have in the forefront of his/her mind the movie version. Hence, this 'emotional incontinence' is a problem with many modern novels as well as movies. The two seem to feed off each other. Certainly if Tolkien had had a movie adaptation in mind when he wrote CoH he may have felt constrained by the necessities of that medium.

I wonder if that is why so much modern fantasy is increasingly bland & authors afraid of taking risks? Fantasy movies are now big business, & adaptations are assumed to be automatic. Hence this thread perhaps - the assumption behind it is that a movie should be made, so let's start planning it now!! I'm sure that many studios also assumed that the rights would be up for sale & have taken the clear statement on the Estate website that there are no plans to sell the film rights as either the result of CT being an old fogey still living in the dark ages, or a shrewd customer playing hard ball to get the best deal. The idea that a writer (or editor) might have written/produced a novel rather than a FDS (first draft screenplay), & intended for people to read it rather than watch it in the cinema seems to be an odd one to many people.

It strikes me that it is this attitude that is the problem, & would be the reason for any movie version being savagely bowdlerised - movie studios do not think in terms of producing art, but rather of making money. The novel is indeed merely a FDS & is there to be 'developed' into the 'final' stage which is the shooting script. The novel is not an art form in its own right but a source of raw material, waiting to be shaped into the 'real' thing. Thus, they do not think in terms of respecting the artist's vision, because that 'vision' to their mind is not in its final, proper, form - only when it becomes a shooting script is the process complete.

So, the incest, the dual suicide, the bleak, not to say often depressing, mood of the tale are not, to the studio executive's mind, essentials of the story (nor is the language) - they are the starting points with which they begin. We saw this attitude repeatedly in the LotR movies, with the movie makers constant repetion throughout the DVD commentaries that ''X' would not have worked in a movie.', or ''Y' was not really convincing to us, so we had to change it to 'Z'.'

Its not so much a case of 'disresect' but rather of not understanding what a novel is, that it is a thing in its own right, not the source for something else. The problem is this assumption that a novel exists to be made into a movie & that the movie is the ultimate form the story should take - even if what actually survives of the original story is the barest bones. What is needed is a change of attitude - an assumption that novels will not be made into movies, & that when one is found that can be adapted that is the exception rather than the rule. Yet, one cannot put all the blame on the studios - the writers, as I stated, are complicit in this - too many write novels with an eye on the movie rights.