When Bilbo Baggins wrote about his unexpected journey to the Misty Mountains, he titled it “There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale.”
Little did we, the audience, know that we too would come back to “The Lord of the Rings” again, and again, and again, and again.
And now — ugh — again!
During a quarterly earnings call with investors this week, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that yet more Tolkien movies are on the best way from their Latest Line Cinema.
“For all of the scope and detail lovingly packed into the 2 trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien stays largely unexplored on film,” said Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy.
The prolonged versions of the six “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies add as much as about 20 hours total, which seems pretty much explored to me.
On paper, the move is logical. The corporate is struggling, and director Peter Jackson’s sextet of films did big business for WB, grossing a combined $6 billion on the worldwide box office. And half of them reaped acclaim. All three entries within the “LOTR” trilogy were nominated for Best Picture, and “Return of the King” finally won the large prize in 2004. WB sure ain’t winning an Oscar for “Black Adam.”
Nevertheless, let’s be honest, has there been a high quality Middle Earth anything previously 20 years? No. Not one. Gandalf yelled, “You shall not pass!” on the Balrog. Lately it’s more like, “You shall not pass muster!”
In his review of 2013’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” Post critic Lou Lumenick said that Jackson was “mercilessly padding out J.R.R. Tolkien’s 300-page prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as a trilogy to fill corporate coffers.” All three “Hobbit” entries were ungodly long and totally witless.
Before that, in 2006, there was the $24 million stage musical “Lord of the Rings” — then the costliest show ever — that began its short life in Toronto. It got terrible reviews and lost every one in every of its Canadian loonies and toonies. Not trusting those naysayers to the north, the show’s producers transferred it to London’s West End anyway. The musical closed after only one yr with an empty wallet. Post columnist Michael Riedel proclaimed it “The Lord of the Flops.”
And, in one other most-expensive-something-ever maneuver, Amazon dropped its $715 million “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” TV series on Prime last yr. (Some outlets reported that it cost as much as $1 billion.) Reviews ranged from respectable to wretched, and audiences didn’t respond well either. Some blame the bashing on a racist online backlash against the various casting, but do you understand a single one who has watched “Rings of Power”?
WB surely dreams that “Lord of the Rings” can turn out to be a “Star Wars” or a Marvel-style universe, wherein Elrond is the main focus of a classy political thriller they usually churn out a buddy comedy about Merry and Pippin. (Amazon has the TV rights.)
However the Tolkien-verse more closely resembles one other WB debacle: “Unbelievable Beasts and Where To Find Them.” Based on J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” supplemental writings, and padded out into mushy adventure movies, the primary three of those have been a serious money drain and important goal for the studio. Fans, it seems, don’t really care in regards to the so-called Wizarding World unless Harry is in it.
Tolkien’s “Appendices” and “The Silmarillion” are much the identical. They’re intriguing, if dense, add-ons for loyal readers, but not meaty or involving enough for a saga that rivals or a lot as stands next to “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s like attempting to turn the Encyclopedia Britannica right into a Hulu miniseries. Boring. Pointless.
What studios must be doing is in search of the following “Avatar,” an original story that captures the world’s imagination (and billions), as an alternative of giving a drained old elf a makeover.
