You Thought SciFi’s EARTHSEA Was Bad?
This is why all writers wince and weep when asked to sell our movie rights. We sell anyway, for we need the money, but it is like selling your lovely daughter through a mail order bride service to same man in a dark and far off land whom you do not know.
John DeNardo explains:
Before the 1977 Rankin And Bass production…there was this 1966 version by Gene Deitch. Originally planned as a full-length feature film before the Tolkien craze hit, a screenplay was written that took several heretical liberties with the story. Unfortunately the deal fell through with 20th Century Fox. But then, just one month before the rights were set to expire, the property value of Tolkien’s work skyrocketed and Gene put together the version you see here:
I will never again mock the conceit of an HP Lovecraft story.The idea that the long past covers unspeakable horrors, the abominations no man can contemplate without going mad, now seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I confess I am not man enough to have watches this whole thing. I started to get lightheaded about when I realized that Smaug had changed his name to Slag. Then when the princess is introduced, and goes with General Thorin Oakenshield to visit Gandalf in his tower, who consults the Great Book and degrees that the time of the Hobbit had arrived… no…. lights fading… roaring sound…. Ia! Phnaglui! Mwalgnafth!… human beings cannot fight the four dimensional, the ten dimensional, the thousand dimensional horrors! … they approach through the angles of time, you fools! Clutching scripts in nameless paws! Ah, Azathoth! …
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
