I was yakking about this on Twitter tonight, mostly light-heartedly, but I thought I’d delve into this in more depth here: in the Ideal World According to Me, the next Tolkien movie after The Hobbit would be the story of Beren and Luthien.
I think I’ve mentioned before on LJ posts that their story should totally be a movie. It’s got everything that would make a movie great: an epic forbidden cross-species romance, a quest at the behest of an angry king, a great and loyal hound, monsters, magic, and most importantly, the heroine standing up to not only Middle-Earth’s biggest badass ever but even death itself for the sake of her man. I mean, seriously. You don’t get much more classic than this.
Since this is the Ideal World According to Me, I would of course cast Russell Crowe as Beren. (Actually, I’d have cast him as Boromir in Lord of the Rings, but this’ll work too!) Beren is not a young pup in the story; he’s already got several decades of experience under his belt by the time he sees and is absolutely smitten by Luthien. So Russell’s current general age and slightly grizzled look would be perfect. Not to mention that man, just the thought of seeing him do Beren’s being literally struck dumb by the first sight of Luthien gives me delicious shivers. I can see it now: the camera lingering on his awestruck face, so intense that he looks like he’s about to weep on the spot. Yum.
Likewise, it should surprise none of you that I’d totally be casting Alan Doyle as Daeron, who also loves Luthien and winds up betraying her a couple of times to her father, out of jealousy for her love of Beren. He later repents and writes laments for her loss. Wikipedia describes Daeron as “the greatest minstrel of the Children of Iluvatar”; frankly, if there’s any other role that would have “Alan Doyle” written all over it, even more than “Allan a’Dayle” did, I can’t think of it! (And I’m not fangirling for the opportunity to see Alan with pointed ears! Well okay, not much. Though I’ve always found Alan rather more puckish than your typical Tolkien elf would be, I’ve always suspected a touch of the fey about him. 😀 )
In my Ideal Movie World, they would of course do this movie with all the same loving attention to detail that Jackson’s done with LotR and which hopefully will also be done with The Hobbit. No garishly obvious CGI. Make it look real. Make it look right. The great hound Huan must not under any circumstances look fakey. Nor should Carcharoth, the monster wolf who bites off Beren’s hand that holds the Silmaril. Though I have a hard time visualizing how to do Morgoth–who, as an even bigger badass than Sauron, as in fact the original Big Bad of Middle-Earth, should be even scarier and more intimidating than Sauron was!
And you would of course need a proper Luthien. If she hadn’t already played Galadriel I’d be totally eying Cate Blanchett. But failing that, you’d need somebody who could pull off not only unearthly but even angelic radiance even when rescuing her man from the grimmest, most hellish places on earth. (Since Luthien is not only just an elf, she’s also part Maia.) You would need someone who could sing, or else someone with a heavenly voice dubbed in for when the character must sing–because this is after all a big driving force of the story.
(Side thought: if they dubbed in a classically trained singer for Luthien’s singing voice, one presumes she would be a soprano. Since that would seem fitting for “Tinuviel” meaning “Nightingale”.)
Okay, and in the Ideal Fangirl World According to Me, Luthien would of course be played by me. But I’m thinking of this in terms of the Ideal Movie World, not the Ideal Fangirl World. Mostly. 😉
So many vivid characters to be cast here, overall. I passionately hope somebody writes this into a script at some point and that it gets filmed. And that for the love of all that is holy, that nobody tries to do it in 3-D.
