Thread: Is the Voyage of Earendil filmable?
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The Silmarillion is about the Silmarils. Just as Lord of the Rings is about the ring. You need the voyage of Earendil paired with the final overthrow of Morgoth to truly end that series. No matter how many films you make out of the rest.
Consider the big three... noone defeats the bad guy! Oh, they win battles, get back a single Silmaril, but still Morgoth is there. And he's not dying of old age either.
You have to have his voyage, the Valar returning, and the last two of Fenor's sons die. You need to end the Silmarillion with one in the sky, one in the sea, and one in the ground.
I guess you could skip the Valar creating Numenor during the epilouge though. But I would love the prospect of a feature film quality retelling of the Akellebeth.
If you didn't use Earendil's voyage, how would the story end?
The Voyage is essential. I also would like to see "Akallabeth" on screen...hmm...methinks of another idea...
Would he wear the Silmaril on his brow and just sort of make it through the enchanted isles?
Perhaps they can show him enter a horrific storm, only to be beguiled and end up heading back east again. Then after [i:3sohxw8r](Damn, I forgot his wife's name!)[/i:3sohxw8r] arrives on his ship he tries again.
[size=85:3sohxw8r][i:3sohxw8r]As to how the filmmaker would like to show her take the hue of a bird and fly to his ship? I have no clue. But that is for another discussion.[/i:3sohxw8r]
[/size:3sohxw8r]
This time, when he enters the same horrific storm the light of the Silmaril shines the brightest and allows him to make his way past the Enchanted Isles and out of the storm. And then on to the shores of Aman.
But what can they do to the storm to make it worthy of his journey? What could they do that would make it bigger than just a repeat of every other film storm. How do you represent a end all, kill all storm?
In the grand scheme of things, it would be very difficult to cram this into the Big Three. In order to make things complete, they need a film before the Big Three, and then a film (including the voyage) after the Big Three, making a total of 5 films.
A more promising story would start of showing the reason for the voyage: The elves and edain losing, on retreat. Then the voyage, with a mighty storm, Elwing changing into a great bird and flying out to meet Earendil, a short part of passing through the enchanted isles (we don't know much of what goes on there anyway), and arrival at the shores of Valinor. After an evocative passage about the empty city of T’n, the armies (and gods) of Valinor go to battle. A climactic battle follows, that dwarfes (sorry Gimli) the battle of Minas Tirith, and the overthrow of Morgoth. After that Earendil sets sails across the sky, and as the light fades Elwing changes form and flies after him...
In this movie the voyage still plays a key role, but only as the catalyst for the intervention from Valinor. And if anyone wants to make that movie, I'm game for the manuscript...
(My mistake! )
(I can only imagine how Tin's going to take it! )
[b:2fnflgrz]GB[/b:2fnflgrz]
[b:jwohw7tf]GB[/b:jwohw7tf] has spoken, this ends here!
beats , !
It does? begs to differ
(I have cooler glasses)
(Uber geek beats regular geek, Ally)
I think is perfectly filmable. The story can seem very short, and so it is in the Silmarillion, but it can be adapted deeply in a long film.
We can start with the Doriath and Gondolin refugees in the Sirion's mouth. Earendil and Elwing are married and they have the little Elrond and Elros. Maedhros is forced by the oath of Feanor and claims the Silmaril. Earendil is in one of his long trips and they don't anwer. Maedhros attaks and almost kills everyone. They kidnap Earendil's sons and Maglor symathyze with them. Elwing jumps into the sea with the Silmarils and Ulmo gets her to Earendil. And here begins the journey. He can make some parallelism with Ulysses odyssey, but we don´t have to make it very long. I mean, we can put some dangers in the trip, but we don't have to make up long fights with tentacled monsters like the one in Moria and things like that... They cross the enchanted islands with the power of the Silmaril and arrive to Aman. Here we can have 1 hour of the film perfectly.
Then, Earendil goes alone, discovers the empty city, and then talks to the Valar. Elwing chat with the Teleri and then goes also with the Valar. They are given the choice of being human of elves, they choose the second because of Elwing, and then get prepare to the Wrath's Battle. The huge army goes to battle, heading Finarfin, and Angband is conquested (we can expand it a lot, making a 20 minutes battle, or even more). Morgoth is caught and thrown to the emptiness.
Earendil ends flying in the heaven with his boat and the Silmaril.
Then, Maedhros and Maglor, the only Feanor's sons who survived, steal the Silmarils, escape and find their fates.
We can end with images of each Silmaril, in groung, sky and sea. Or we can also make and epilogue with the chose of Elros and Elrond, the Numenor kingdon, even the creation of the rings or power.
So, we have a more than two hours film, and more if we make that epilogue.
The problem is creating a lot of details and dialogues not included in Tolkien's work.
i agrree with both Beren and Hador. Something out of the ordinary special effects or no would have to be laid down, it would take so much thought and finesse as well to bring forth from the page what our esteemed professor Tolkien painted in his heart and mind I think.
Due to the Epic Ethereal Fantasy nature of the whole Sil- I believe that the only way a film could do it justice is to actually release the Sil as a serialization and cover the entire thing. A good half of it would have to be CGI as lets face it the visualizations which Tolkien conjours, especially in the beginning of the book would be simply impossible to film in studio.
I thnk in a few years time someone will definitely make some form of visual version of it.
Even a Opera, on film, I would love to see that!
Rene Flemming for Varda!
I should not like to see it attempted until someone comes along that was and is a die hard Tolkien fan, having read over and over his works and becoming almost like a profiler so that the deep inside of the thing could be understood and transferred to cinema. I know I am not making sense, and I cannot even explain it, but anything less would be to me a serious and irreversible tragedy.
That's the problem Lee Lee. No matter how learned and fanatical the Director was in Tolkien, her or his work could never live up to the superior rendition which our mind conjures during the reading and re rereading of these works. Its a lose lose situation.....
You are quite right dear Brego, but when read and reread it at least brings into focus after a while certain things that cannot in any way go against what Professor Tolkien was conveying, both in 'fact' in this world and in emotions. And let us say that the director was only one of six or seven others that had done the same, well then surely between them, all extreme veterans of the books, something at least as true as humanly possible could emerge from the mist and give us something to treasure. But to just sort of skim over , thinking of this tremendous body of work as just a screenplay as it were and a good money making project, well,,,,,,,,,,,forget it. period.
