#silm adaptation: the impossible dream

[the-elusive-soleil]

Thinking again about a Silmarillion TV series, and how I would set it up if I were High King of Hollywood and also copyright law (long post):

Let's say we have a three-season setup. Three Silmarils, three acts, and everyone making and watching it knows there's a predetermined endpoint. No spiraling out into infinity, no matter how popular it gets. And I'll roughly hazard ~8 episodes per season; that seems to be the average amount these days.

Will there be whooping great battle sequences? Probably. But as is my wont, I'm focusing more on the ~interpersonal drama~

Season 1 would start off like I've posted about before, with Finwe telling the Ainulindale as a story to kid!Feanor, as a segue to bringing up the remarriage, and then a post-opening-credits cut to Feanor as an adult. We're in the very early YT 1400s. In the first episode, we're laying a lot of groundwork for a Normal Day in Tirion. Various members of the House of Finwe are introduced, and we get a sense for the familial and political landscape. Everybody seems to believe that life is completely perfect--and then there's Feanor, who knows it's not.

And then the news comes that Melkor is being released on parole.

In the next couple of episodes, we see reactions to this, through dinner-table conversations and such in each of the three households. People are tense, but...for the most part, life goes on.

Except for Feanor, who gets an Idea and eventually unveils the Silmarils.

Through part of the third episode and escalating through the fourth, we start to see Melkor stirring the Noldor up. They're making weapons, and the political tensions are starting to get higher. The different sets of Finwean cousins are training with swords and such, and coming up with increasingly thin excuses to each other as to how they picked up those minor injuries.

Episode four ends with a bang, as Feanor's sword incident and banishment occur.

Episode five jumps five years ahead to the festival in Tirion that Feanor's supposed to go to. We get the "jail-crow of Mandos" scene in flashback as he leaves the Silmarils behind. Everything seems fine on the surface, but the background music keeps slowly increasing in tension, and everyone's happiness is just a little too frenetic--and then the Trees go out.

Next episode, we get the Oath, the Flight of the Noldor, the Kinslaying, Losgar. (We're keeping the version where Amrod lives btw.)

(Side note: I think it would be very cool if we got little flashes of foreshadowing that gradually escalate as time goes on. Give me shots of Maitimo's right hand that linger just a little too long. Give me Maglor or Curufin in an early episode, talking about upcoming wedding vows that bear a suspicious resemblance to what the Oath will be. Give me Finrod wrestling with a family dog; give me Turgon and Aredhel teasing each other about his love of cities and how she'd rather die than be kept from running wild. Give me Feanor by firelight, Feanor being gently reminded by Nerdanel that he doesn't have to rush ahead and tackle a dozen projects all at once, Feanor insisting over and over again that things need to be written down and portrayed and preserved because nothing is really, actually permanent...)

Episode seven cuts back and forth between the people struggling across the Helcaraxe and the Feanorians in Middle-earth. The Feanorians fight orcs and lose Feanor, and the Helcaraxe group has their own battles with ice monsters and also the sheer. horrible. cold. Maybe we can have Fingon and Turgon and Aredhel arguing about the Feanorions along the way. Maybe we can have the argument cut short by Elenwe falling through the ice. Maybe we can have that lead Turgon to reiterate that the Feanorions are Doomed and have doomed everyone else with them - and then cut to Maedhros about to ride out to parley with Morgoth.

The episode ends with the Nolofinweans mourning Elenwe, and Maedhros being dragged out to hang from a cliff.

Season finale starts with the Nolofinweans arriving. There is most definitely an emotional, sweepingly epic sequence of the Thangorodrim rescue, the stuff edits and gifsets are made of. And we end with Maedhros ceding the crown, and with Fingolfin's coronation.

Season 2 starts with the Mereth Aderthad, which gives us a chance to catch up, via dialogue, with how everybody's been settling in and what they're planning to do next. We also get the skinny on Thingol and Melian and Doriath. (Luthien should definitely be mentioned at least once.) (Celegorm should definitely be in the shot when she's mentioned, although 50/50 whether he visibly pays attention or reacts.)

We get Finrod and Turgon's dream sequences and them discovering the places where they're going to put their respective cities. Also Artanis meets this Guy...

Dagor Aglareb is probably an episode 2 thing. After it, and after any significant conflict this season (attack on Hithlum, Glaurung, etc.), there should be someone assuming out loud that they are now past the worst of things. Bonus points if there is fire in the background of the shot when the person says this.

We meet Dwarves. I think the optimal way to handle the Dwarves-and-Caranthir thing is to have them be very blunt and no-frills with each other, and leave it up to interpretation whether this is actually them getting along.

Finrod, of course, is so very (gestures demonstratively) Finrod at his Dwarves, and also at the Men when they show up.

(checks timeline) Maeglin is born in YS 320, and he and Aredhel flee to Gondolin in YS 400, and Andreth is born in YS 361. I think it could be interesting to start out an episode with Aredhel being snared and having Maeglin, and interspersing creepy Nan Elmoth stuff with Aegnor/Andreth and Athrabeth stuff. Towards the end, Finrod has a conversation to the effect that it's not just that Aegnor and Andreth's romance was doomed, it's that they're all doomed here (possibly referencing the Amarie situation) and there is no way to have a good love story under such circumstances. And then, of course, we have Aredhel and Maeglin running to Gondolin (and Maeglin meeting Idril) and the deaths of Aredhel and Eol.

I have less of a specific outline for this season, because I want a lot of it to be filled up with...just Long Peace stuff. I want to see the Noldor having their Beleriand Renaissance. I want to see hunting trips that give us beautiful sweeping shots of the landscape, and glittering social events laced with politics, and little moments of relationships between different characters.

Basically, I want this season to make it very clear just how much stands to be lost here.

And then, of course, the season finale is the Dagor Bragollach, culminating in Fingolfin's last stand against Morgoth.

Season 3 opens with the utter chaos that is the aftermath of the Bragollach. We also get to meet Hurin and Huor and see their visit to Gondolin, which contrasts so sharply with the state of things literally everywhere else.

The first episode also introduces us to this random human guy named Beren, out there in the wilderness. And it ends with him stumbling on something in Doriath...

Second episode is just ~*Beren and Luthien*~. It has a very cultivated fairytale feel, right down to the lighting and the music. The world we just saw last episode is so very harsh, but not here, not now. There is never any doubt that there will be a happy ending. And there is! The episode ends with their wedding.

(...and distant wolf howling but don't pay attention to that)

Third episode has the wolf hunt. Beren dies. Luthien goes after him. They both come back. They don't really explain themselves to anyone, and I'm leaving the details mysterious. Luthien singing to Mandos should probably be treated like the Ainulindale in that we don't attempt to make humans portray it. What we do see are the beginnings of fallout: as Luthien and Beren come back to life, Maedhros is wrangling with his brothers. As Tol Galen is settled, as Dior is born, Fingon and Maedhros start to plan the Union, and it's hovering in the background that they need to do this because with the Oath, the only other option is going after the Doriath silmaril, and they're not doing that.

Episode four is the Nirnaeth, and it. is. devastating. If you read the book (and maybe even if you didn't), you know this isn't going to work. But the characters really believe it will! And the music and cinematography are fully conspiring to make you believe it too! There might even be some leitmotifs from the Thangorodrim rescue during the battle to suggest maybe it will turn out this time... And then it doesn't. It was never going to. It was always going to end with trampled blue and silver banners and broken bodies and the sons of Feanor scattered in the wilderness and Hurin chained in a chair to watch his family suffer.

Episode five should be 50% Children of Hurin, and 50% Tuor's story, cutting back and forth for maximum contrast. We go directly from Turin and Nienor's deaths to Tuor and Idril's wedding.

Episode six is all Fall of Doriath, starting off with Hurin showing up with the Silmaril, escalating through Thingol's paranoia and death, and ending with the Second Kinslaying. Bonus points if there is a very subtle Girdle of Melian leitmotif that has been in the background for all Doriath scenes so far, and abruptly cuts off when Thingol dies and Melian leaves. And we end with baby!Elwing being taken through the woods with the survivors, clutching the Silmaril.

Next episode is the fall of Gondolin. I would really like for there to be a specific leitmotif throughout the show for people (Maedhros, Fingolfin, Hurin, etc.) defying Morgoth, and for it to initially emerge for Maeglin...only to break down. And throughout the episode, Eol's theme keeps getting stronger and stronger, until it fully emerges when Maeglin falls.

We end with tiny!Earendil arriving in Sirion and seeing Elwing, and the Silmaril, for the first time.

This season is going to have to be nine episodes long, because what's left might take up one Silm chapter, but I have too many things I want to do with it. Specifically:

Episode eight opens in the middle of the Third Kinslaying. I don't want it to be dramatic like the other two. I want it to be frightening in its banality. I want it to be very, very disturbing how habituated the Feanorians are to this now.

When Elrond and Elros first appear...something shifts. It's not really like the world-apart, fairytale vibes of the Beren and Luthien episode, but there is something Different about these kids. They're who this whole violent, convoluted story was meant to produce. They're going to build a better world someday.

We spend most of the episode going back and forth between Maglor and Maedhros doing their best to raise these children in a world that is falling apart at the seams, and Earendil and Elwing in a Valinor that is almost unsettlingly pristine after the past couple of seasons that we've spent in an increasingly entropic Beleriand. I want M&M and the twins to camp out in ruins of a place that was built "only" a century ago, and Elwing to wander through a building that she assumes is brand new and expensive, but is actually very average and older than the Silmarils.

At the end, the Valar authorize an army, and we see Gil-Estel rise, and the War of Wrath begins.

Most of the final episode is epic War of Wrath stuff, definitely including the slaying of Ancalagon, definitely also undercut by comedy relief bits of people trying to guess who Gil-galad's parents could be. (It's never revealed.)

In the last third or so, Maedhros and Maglor steal the Silmarils.

When Maedhros takes his out and looks at it, he sees himself as he was back in Valinor, perfect and whole and unbearably innocent. We have this whole golden-lit mini-flashback sequence of him and Maglor just messing around at home, teasing each other. Their brothers are in the background. They are almost unrecognizable.

Maglor glances in a mirror and it shifts back to him in present-day, face twisted in pain and screaming at the Silmaril's burn. Maedhros startles, notices that he's burning, too. He doesn't scream, although he's clearly in pain. He just reaches over, gently brushes the Silmaril out of Maglor's hand and onto the ground, kisses his brother's forehead, and then stands and with a great deal of outward calm, walks over the edge of the nearby lava chasm.

Maglor weeps and can't stop, but he has to when footsteps start approaching. He flees to the shore, and flings the Silmaril in, and stares for a very long moment at the water like he might dive in, too. But then he just turns away with an unreadable expression and vanishes into the fog.

The last moments of the show are spent with Gil-galad and Celebrimbor and Elrond and Elros and Galadriel, talking out what they're going to do now. The world didn't end, but their world sort of did. What do you do with that? What can they possibly build from the ruins around them?

They have to try, is the one thing they all agree on. If they give up, what was even the point of everything in the last 600-odd years? And in any case, they can't possibly do any worse than the mess they and their predecessors just lived through.

Right?

[edennill]

silm adaptation of my dreams - miscellaneous thoughts:

so I've already said that somewhere, but I really might start it with a little galadriel being told the tale of creation and about the awakening of the elves, the great journey etc.

this would not be in the same continuity as the pj movies/rop but I think it would make a nice callback/contrast to her narrating the prologue in all the other adaptations.

rop got a lot of crit for making the elves more earthly, emotional, but whatever my own criticisms of it, that is the way to go, just with better writing. there should be a balance between that fantastic aura and the, for lack of a better word, 'humanity' that would be difficult to achieve, but it's better to err to the side of the latter if need be, true elvishness being impossible to portray in any case.

the first season would obviously focus a lot on the tensions within tirion, but I would also give some screentime to the arafinweans in alqualondë. the kinslaying should hurt.

the swanships would have to be among the set pieces made with most care and detail (hey, we've got a dream budget). the burning has to feel like a profanation of sorts. but the sentimental value should also be emphasised.

in a way for the arafinweans this is the continuation of the kinslaying and their childhood burning okay

now that I think about it, the participants are all grown up, in some cases married, but this is also a coming of age tale of the darker sort

you know how the hunger games movies came with music albums of related songs? this is absolutely happening here

[warrioreowynofrohan]

The Silmarillion as a TV/Netflix Show (Part 3)

Links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 3 is where Men show up, and this is the point where the time-frame issues around adapting The Silmarillion become really challenging. Because in Season 2, you could have longish periods of time passing, a season taking place over the space of decades, without really drawing attention to it - your characters don’t age. But unless you want to really draw out the events of the Silm, you’re going to end up with whole generations of Men aging and dying within the space of one season. Which does have the intriguing potential of essentially getting the audience to view Men - us - from the Elven perspective, and see the brevity of human life the way the elves percieve it. For the most part, I’ve dealt with the issue by shortening the time frame and incorporating one timeskip, so the events can be concentrated into two periods rather than spread out evenly over more than a century.

(Technically, there are also about 150 pretty quiet years between the end of the previous season and the start of this one. Whether we tell the audience that is an open question - on the one hand it could deflate the tension a little; on the other, it explains some things like Aredhel’s restlessness, which could come across badly if she’s pushing to leave the city just a couple episodes after it was established.)

Episode 1: Teenage Glaurung sneaks out of Angband and is driven back by Fingon and a party of horse-archers. This is an effective warning of things to come, as he’ll show up again at the end of the season in the Dagor Bragollach; plus, it lets the season get started off on an exciting note. Finrod and Thingol both have foreboding dreams (Finrod’s of the fall of Nargothrond and an oath; Thingol’s of trouble coming to Doriath from Men), and Finrod talks to Galadriel about him. Rumours reach Beleriand (likely via the dwarves, as Nogrod and Belegost have relations with Khazad-dum) of a new people on the other side of the mountains.

Episode 2: Finrod, on a visit to Maedhros and Maglor (and interesting in asking the Laiquendi about the new rumours) encounters Men in Ossiriand. The Laiquendi dislike them because they find them disruptive to nature, and Finrod negotiates that the Laiquendi will not bother them and that the Bëorings can establish a settlement further northwest, which becomes Estolad. Haleth’s people are in Ossiriand at the same time and settle in Caranthir’s lands; Caranthir tolerates/ignores them. At the end of the episode the people of Hador (much more military and well-armed) also arrive in Estolad.

Episode 3: Aredhel leaves Gondolin. The arrival of Men fits into this nicely, because it gives her an incentive beyond mere restlessness. What we see of her suggests she’s adventurous and impetuous, and she would be interested in meeting this new group of people, in addition to wanting to see her cousins. And she can make the case to Turgon that knowing more about them would be beneficial to Gondolin. Turgon lets her go partly because he can’t really stop her and partly because Idril has a foresight that Men will be beneficial to Gondolin in some way. Aredhel’s group encounters monsters in Nan Dungortheb; she survives (and has some exiting vattles with giant spiders and other unpleasant creatures) and makes it to Aglon; the rest of her company do not.

Various elves, curious about Men, visit Estolad, and we have several scenes of the various elven main characters (Sons of Fëanor; Fingolfin and Fingon; Thingol and Melian) discussing the situation.

Episode 4: Aredhel, on her way to see Estolad, attempts to cut through Nan Elmoth (seriously, it’s directly to the north of Estolad) and becomes lost. She meets Eöl. Whether there are plenty of different interpretations for their early relationship, I think it works best for the show (and gives Aredhel rather more agency, and makes Eöl less out-and-out evil) if they’re genuinely infatuated with each other at the beginning. Neither of them has met anyone quiet like the other before! Falling in live with a mysterious stranger does seem like a reasonably in-character thing for Aredhel to do. Let him tell her the story of how Thingol and Melian met (in those same woods) and make some appealingly-flattering comparisons. Leave it ambigous as to whether Aredhel’s inability to find a way out of Nan Elmoth is due to Eöl’s magic or to the general enchantment surrounding Nan Elmoth.

The Noldorin rulers of Hithlum and Dorthonion, both out of desire for closer relations between elves and men (it’s fascinating to finally meet the Secondborn!) and an understanding of their military value, invite the houses of Beör and Hador to live in those lands.

Episode 5: The Men of Estolad debate whether to accept the elven-lords’ invitations, or whether the presence of Angband makes Beleriand too dangerous and they should head back east of the mountains. We get the moment at a community meeting where someone who looks like Amlach claims that both the Valar and Morgoth are a fiction and the real problem is with the Eldar; but Amlach says he wasn’t there, to great discomfitment. Some of the Men leave for the east; some leave for the west; Anlach goes north and joins Maedhros’ forces.

The debate, while interesting, doesn’t fill an entire episode. There’s also room in this episode for the Orc attack on Haleth’s people, the death of her father and brother and her desperate defence; and their (belated) rescue by Caranthir.

Episode 6: Haleth’s people head west through Nan Dungortheb (with more battle sequences!), and after their arrival in Brethil, Finrod negotiates with Thingol to let them stay there. Some scenes with young Maeglin in Nan Elmoth, as several years have passed since the previous episode. The houses of Beör and Hador settle into Dorthonion and Dor-lómin, respectively.

Episode 7: Timeskip from the previous episode. Beör, now living in Nargothrond, is elderly, while his grandson Barahir rules the Edain in Dorthonion (yes, I think I’ve condensed things by a generation). Death of Bëor. In Dorthonion, Aegnor and Andreth meet, fall in love, and break up. The juxtaposition with Beör’s death highlights the difficulties inherent in relationships between elves and mortals.

Maeglin, now an adult, is becoming weary of life in Nan Elmoth and expresses interest in meeting Aredhel’s kinsfolk, including the Sonnof Fëanor. Eöl reacts sharply and threatens to chain him up if he tries it.

Fingolfin calls a council of the lords of the Noldor to discuss an assault on Angband aimed at going beyond a siege and winning the war.

Episode 8: The council of the Noldor-lords is held. Considerable debate about whether to try to outright overthrow Angband. Fingolfin, Fingon, Angrod, and Aegnor are in favour; the Fëanorians, Finrod, and Orodreth are opposed. (Turgon, obviously, is not present.) Maedhros in particular is opposed on the basis that it’s impossible, being the only member of the group who has actually seen the interior of Angband. The decisions is ultimately against a direct attack on Angband.

Aredhel and Maeglin talk, and it becomes apparent that both of them are feeling rather like prisoners and Aredhel misses her family and Gondolin (and sunlight, and freedom).

This episode is also a good place to introduce Beren as a young man, since he’ll be one of the main characters in the next season.

Episode 9: Eöl visits the dwarves in Nogrod for a midsummer feast; Aredhel and Maeglin take the opportunity to escape. Eöl follows them to Gondolin, is captured, tries to kill Maeglin, does kill Aredhel, and is executed. This is dramatic enough to trick the audience into thinking it’s the climax of the season (well, at least if they’re not very genre-savvy; the subject matter of the previous episode is what we call ‘a hint’.)

Episode 10: The early parts of the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach): Glaurung (now full-grown), the deaths of Angrod and Aegnor, desperate fight of Maedhros to hold Himring in the east, defense of the fortresses of the Ered Wethrin in the west. Ends with the Duel of Fingolfin and Morgoth and Fingolfin’s body being brought to Gondolin. (Poor Turgon has now lost two immediate family members in the space of two episodes. This contributes to him feeling very attached to Maeglin, the one family member he’s gained.) Season ends with a final pan out from Gondolin to show the entire north being on fire and full of orcs.

This episode is going to need a serious special effects budget.