Cinema Screws the Pooch with LOTR. Again

Back in the 1970s a misguided effort to bring LOTR to the big screen failed miserably. If the industry repeats history for a second crash and burn what are the knock on effects in general, and what does it mean for the Tolkein oeuvre? Less money for all the other Sword & Sorcery moves is my first thought.
 

Driftless

Donor
Tough one. Tolkiens LOTR scale calls for "big" - big story arc, big armies, big dragon, big eagles, big Moria, big Minas Tirith, etc. Lacking CGI back in that day probably doomed any attempt to looking just pathetically wimpy

Other sword-and-sorcery tales, such as Conan the Barbarian, Kull, or the like could be filmed on a smaller scale; so perhaps that genre rumbles on as a "B" movie much like sword-and-sandals films of the 50's. I'd guess they'd have about the same middling level of popularity.
 
Harry Potter showed the way for magic genre, maybe more development in that direction.

Tough one. Tolkiens LOTR scale calls for "big" - big story arc, big armies, big dragon, big eagles, big Moria, big Minas Tirith, etc. Lacking CGI back in that day probably doomed any attempt to looking just pathetically wimpy

....

The first attempt was using Ralph Balakshis animation/rotogravure techniques. From the material I've seen he was on the right track. The oversized and a bit too glittery presentation of LOTR put me off a bit. Rivendel had way more marble than Tolkiens vision

Game of Thrones did a better job of spear and shield battle spectacle. However, would GoT been financed without the LOTR success?
 

Driftless

Donor
The enduring appeal of Tolkien tales in mass-market book form gave legs to a host of fantasy works great and small, so I'd think even a second movie bomb would have been a temporary set-back. As you note, Harry Potter took fantasy off on it's own trajectory. On a different train of thought, the special effects of the original Star Wars films showed how epic scale movies could filmed without the benefit of modern CGI and such.

I've read that Tolkien so thoroughly despised Walt Disney that he would never have allowed a Disney animated version to be done - even with the big budgets and tremendous animation capabilities of that studio. Anyone else on that level - in that era? I'll give Ralph Bakshi great credit for his version - I didn't care for the rotoscope effects, but it was a worthy effort, especially considering the budget and limited support he had to work with.

Beleive it or not, I'm one of twelve people in the US who's never seen a minute of GoT. Still, the long-standing marketing strength of the published works made the series possible.
 
If not for the Bakshi version, could Don Bluth have ever gotten the chance to adapt Lord Of The Rings? Would he have?
 
Maximum craptasticness: an animated version with The Beatles voicing the hobbits (and Ringo as Gandalf). Hammy ad-libbing ala Yellow Submarine, lame Harry Nilssen songs ala The Point, and Rankin-Bass animation quality.
 
I've never seen a full episode, but have examined hundreds of out takes on YT. I often enjoy deconstructing specific scenes or sequences, or analyzing characters, more than following story line through long complex episodes.
 
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