Cautiously optimistic.
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Curious about this one. I never thought there was any appetite for Gollum as they also made a game about him. Hopefully they don’t try and drag this out over three movies like the Hobbit disasters.
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The involvement of Jackson and co. is the only thing that gives this movie a chance to not be yet another garbage movie attempting to cash in on an established franchise.

Even so, The Hobbit trilogy was pretty terrible.
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Yeah, i went and re-read the Hobbit for the first time in like 25 years after I watched the trilogies and was just floored by how they managed to take a book that short and make 9 hours of movie out of it.

I mean sure - it was 90% worthless fluff, but you have to almost be impressed by the audacity of it.

Which sucked because Martin Freeman as Bilbo should've been great. And the story of The Hobbit is good. But god almighty did they gack that thing.

But I'm inclined to agree with you - A Gollum-centric movie isn't the direction I'd go. Tolkien built an entire universe and mythology (at least a massive outline of one) in The Silmarillion; that's really the direction this should've gone.

I mean you look into stuff like Gandalf as a sort of quasi-god and that whole Valar thing with Morgoth and how that all interplays with Middle Earth - it may end up too complicated to bring to film, but if you wanted to make another trilogy and do it well, there's a TON of source material there to flesh out that would actually really complement the series nicely and could even play into the Rings of Power series also.
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Fuck the Silmarilion is a hard read. I've tried....it's a tough one. But there's so much shit in there, They could easily do another trilogy.

I actually really enjoyed the RIngs of Power.
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I have some weird hate for Hobbits and hobbit like creatures.

For example, Willow's stupid face makes my skin crawl.

I want all Hobbit and hobbit things to just die. I love orcs and magic and wizards and elves and dragons and swords and shit....but fuck me, can we just not have hobbits? And their stupid big hairy feet. Dwarves...Hobbits....i just wish the orcs would kill them all off once and for all please.
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Yes. Give me wizards and warlocks and shit. Give me gargoyles and swords and maces.

Fuck you and your hobbits. Never am i more bored than when those genetic losers are on screen.
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I don't disagree. They remind me of Ewoks, who all deserved to die.

Call me a midgetphobe. :-)
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You'd think they would have learned their lesson with how badly the Gollum game bombed.
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I liked Rings of Power as well. Thought it got unfairly criticized in a lot of ways.

And yeah, Silmarillion is TOUGH. That's why I think a movie might be really good. That's the best part of the LOTR trilogy - it's not better than the books, its not worse - its extremely complementary.

Both the books and the movies are better for the others existence.

If you could get a Silmarillion trilogy done and done well, it provides a visual staking post for then re-reading the book. It would be a lot like how the GOT series complemented the ASOIAF books so well. It made those a lot more digestible.

There's an excellent story in there if you can get the names/faces locked in somewhere in your mind. If you have reference points that let you really absorb the story being told. Without it, Silmarillion is as hard as some of those WWI history books where all the names and places start to sound the same and nothing makes sense.
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Gandalf kicking ass in some nether-realm would be a hell of a lot of fun. But you'd still have First Age stuff that would probably annoy you.

Hey, maybe they could right the wrongs of the original trilogy and actually involve Tom Bombadil.

It really did take me awhile to figure out that Gandalf and Saruman and even Sauron where all the same 'order' of mythical creature. Even Radagast. Sauron is just a monumental asshole.

But once you figure that out, the 'victory' makes a little more sense. Sauron really shouldn't have been orders of magnitude more powerful than Gandalf - in fact he most likely wasn't. He was just proactive and had Gandalf on his heels from the jump. That doesn't mean he couldn't recapture the initiative, but it took a couple of good breaks along the way.
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It would require so much movie and screen time to properly do it. I think a Rings of Power type thing could really do it well. Give it a few seasons worth to fully tell the story.

That could get tough to keep up with though. Fun to think about .
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The Hobbit trilogy was doomed from the start despite Jackson's involvement and a product of trying to cash in on the coattails of the LOTR trilogy. Now maybe they were trying to appeal to an audience that never read the books.

There's just no way to take The Hobbit book which was the shortest of all the main books (not counting offshoots like Beren and Luthien) was going to last without gross amounts of fluff and it showed. I know that it turned me off as well as a lot of other fans because of this.

Now I would love a Silmarillion trilogy as I believe there is more than enough source material to support it. I get that it can be a harder read for many (I personally love it), but I also think that it would translate much better on screen.
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Actually watched the Rings of Power and found that it wasn't nearly as bad as many tried to make it. Personally I didn't care for the "Galadriel Warrior Princess" arc, but it is what it is. What I do like was how they could incorporate more elements into the story as their is far less source material that they would have to adhere to.

The Silmarillion is definitely a book that would thrive with a trilogy movie made for it for many of the reasons you highlighted above. The material is there, so the hard part would be making that come to life on the screen without creating multiple snooze fests for the average audience member.

What also could do well is a movie or series involving the Blue Wizards in the east. There's just enough lore that they could make something while keeping it "canon" while not enough lore that they can't take reasonable creative licenses with the story.

I think that would allow for an expansion into an area of Middle Earth that has always been fascinating and mysterious to many fans. As Tolkien has long since passed (as well as his son) there is no way to 100% know if/what he thought of those areas from a lore development perspective (outside vague references here and there).

By having someone like Jackson make it with input from recognized Tolkien experts, I think something great could be made while keeping in the spirit of how Tolkien most likely would have envisioned it.
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