The Worst Tolkien Adaptation That Never Got Made: John Boorman’s Lord of the Rings Script, Pt. 1 

We really lucked out with the LOTR trilogy by Peter Jackson. It was a time when the technology existed to do it right, the cultural environment was sane enough to not have a bunch of weird 70's stuff, but it hadn't become politically absurd like it is now. There truly couldn't have been a better time.

I love that you covered this! I’ve been meaning to do a video on it for some time and just haven’t gotten around to it. No matter how Amazon’s adaptation turns out, it’s nothing compared to this dodged bullet! 😂

“Frodo really left the Shire in September, not springtime.” Me: *confused Australian noises*

Aragorn dual wielding a single sword is top tier comedy.

When I was about 10 years old I wrote a complete script for Lord of the Rings in crayon. I never imagined we would be talking about it here today....

Its really sweet of you that in this trying times not only for Tolkien fans you are so kind to tell us, it could be even worse.

I dunno... those magic mushrooms may have finally solved the riddle of Bombadil.

Golly, this sounds like a fever dream. How much you wanna bet the scriptwriters were on Nyquil when they wrote it?

Boorman's LOTR will rank with Jodorowsky's Dune as adaptations of beloved books that thankfully went nowhere

I physically flinched when you said "... probably three videos" -- your sacrifice is noted and deeply appreciated.

This is rather ironic, given that Boorman's *Excalibur* is probably the most faithful screen adaptation of the Arthur legend.

I love Excalibur, though that movie was a bit trippy at times as well. I'm trying to imagine LOTR done in a way that resembles Excalibur and it blows my mind.

11:56 _"because they soon started to get you giggly .."_ Oh, you _didn't_ mean legal trouble with Farmer Maggott's lawyers, if they were too many for his dogs?

As weird as it is, I still wish I could watch it

It sounds like it could give Jodorowsky's Dune a run for its money in the category of "strangest movie never made."

🤣🤣 I was gone at the Black Riders fighting with spears... and then it got even better with Elves on ponies. What a hot mess! It's like the script just lifted small details (ie fog, aggressive trees) and drops them in anyhow and anywhere. I first read LOTR age 15 in 1977 and was blissfully unaware of this madness.

Thanks for the video. I can almost imagine this monstrosity. A splendid mixture of the films ‘If’, ‘The Ruling Class’ and ‘The Whicker Man’ utilising every classically trained British thespian from the cast of ‘Dad’s Army’ to Leonard Rossiter and the always wonderful and over the top Brian Blessed. We wanted Led Zeppelin for the soundtrack but ended up with The Wurzels, perfect. Probably better than the absolutely dire plan to have The Beatles make their own version of LOTR’s in the 1960's.

Oh my. I've been reading the books for years so I've always had some reservations about the Peter Jackson films (although I think they're a remarkable achievement in film per se), but never have I appreciated Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh so much as while watching this vid!

The elves on ponies made me laugh so hard I missed the next 5 minutes of the video. That's...quite an image, lol.

Boorman also directed Deliverance.

Most likely Arwen would have been played by Boorman's daughter, Katrine. She was in Excalibur.

13:48 I am starting to get a feeling, Tolkien's text made very little sense to Boorman, and he proceded to change it to something more relateable and reader friendly (his presumed pov, not my actual one).

Boorman was an amazing artist. He wouldn't be doing an adaptation an average fan would have appreciated, but his films are wonderful.

Always ❤️ your videos can't wait for the next livestream.

Some people believe it would have been something like Excalibur others think it would have been more like Zardoz ...

So the Soviet LOTR tv movie isn't actually the strangest adaptation conceived? 🤣 It's fascinating that there are still bits where Boorman is clearly cribbing from the source material (like the scene of Gandalf's voice urging Frodo to take off the Ring, which reminds me of a similar scene in the book at Amon Hen) while still not understanding the assignment.

Dan Stride's blog, A Phuulish Fellow, has a nice piece about this script. There is a detailed account at The Tolkien Gateway. Boorman wrote it for United Artists who had purchased the film rights in 1968. It reminded me of Bored of the Rings, the 1969 Harvard Lampoon parody novel.

You’re welcome! I knew you would have a unique experience with this script

Fever dream... Probably from being told you have to adapt the whole story into a single film.

I wish this had been made for the sheer cult film fever dream audacity of it I think the writer got some of those suspicious mushrooms

I didn't know this existed until now. It's amazing how many little obscurities there are attached to a franchise like Middle Earth.

This is great! I can't wait for the next part. So insane!

Oooh this is hilarious - it’d be funny if someone recreated this in a parodic way, like Spaceballs vs. Star Wars. Great video, really excited for the next the rest of the series!

A reward for halflings. This puts me in mind of Warner Bros. 'Duck Season!' 'Hobbit Season!' 'Duck Season!' 'Hobbit Season!'

Boorman was also the director/writer/producer of Zardoz (1974), so I am not surprised that it gets weird. I could actually get on board with some of the changes. Like Arwen being the healer and the healing happening on screen rather than between cuts. This giving Arwen more visibiity within the story (since she is very much a mute 'prize' in the published LotR story (outside of the Appendices), although I am so not sure why the ~3000 year old Arwen needs to look 13... Perhaps best not to dwell too much on that. The idea of Gimli being ready to chop the infected arm off is nice, too, although I am not sure how that is going to work if the wound is on the shoulder. But yeah, the script so far definitely would have needed at least another revision to correct for the inconsistencies of the One Ring and Gandalf. And maybe go a bit easier on the mushrooms (both in the script and while writing it).

As I show my age.... By the time JRRT passsed, I was sad to know that there were no new works coming. Shows you what I knew. By that time I had read LOTR at least 23 times. So I paid attention to adaptations. The Beatles adaptation was before my time but I remember all the other adaptations, including seeing some in a movie theater - first run. Boorman could do no wrong after "Deliverance" but next came "Zardoz". It was quite a trip. "The penis is bad, the gun is good." Sean Connery in a red onez diaper or a wedding dress are just a few of the highlights. I have the DVD and it fun to hear his commentary, referring to LOTR. But "Excalibur" was quite a bit of fun if you enjoy weird movies. It is best to first watch it, then watch with the commentary. To me, the best part is when Uther is shagging Igrayne. It was silly to see Uther in full plate armor but when you find out from the commentary that Igrayne is played by Katrine Boorman, the director's daughter. My first husband liked to go to the movies so I saw the animated movies in theaters. But by the time the LOTR came out it was me and my two kids so I didn't see them in a theater. I have seen all Tolkien movies released in the US up to the Hobbit movies. I have not seen them. I enjoyed "Zardoz". and "Excalibur" but I was happy that Boorman did not adapt LOTR. I still would like to see an adaptation of "Board of the Rings"

This is fun. Can't wait until the next one.

Someone needs to film this.

Boorman did Deliverance as well.

As someone who's eaten mushrooms of legal questionability more times than I can count, I have to say, none of the hallucinations one will see are anywhere nearly this bad or this strong, they're actually quite mild and overrated as far as psychotropics go...of course, I guess since hobbits eat a lot, one could assume they were consuming a heroic dose, so maybe it IS the one bit of accurate writing in all of this trash.

27:21 Other theory, a Tolkien society (perhaps not affiliated) with lots of Masonic side inspirations used LotR as very loose basis for rituals. Boorman's script describes these more than the book.

Now I actually really want to see it, just because of how ridiculous it sounds.

If not Jackson, they would've adapted LOTR one way or another, it could've been so much worse.

Geek, it is amazing that your sanity is intact after reading this much of such an asinine script. I'm not sure the Amazon series is going to be at all superior to this mess given the leaks we have seen. But lead on! The more we understand the stupidity of some treatments, the more we can support a good rendering of Tolkien's works when we find one. Namarie.

Does Frodo get intimate with the voluptuous hobbit lass wearing full plate armor?

😂🤣 "The Lord of the Axe" sounds like a Netflix spin-off about the merry adventures of Legolas and Gimli that took place in their travels after the book ... 🤔 Apparently titled during lots of drinking games ... 😆🤪

not gonna lie... I want to look into a paralell dimension and see this film

Thank goodness this version was never launched! 😅

I swear I keep getting flashes of the 70’s animated Lord of the Rings with almost every scene being described…

Given that Borman went on to make Zardoz, with Sean Conory in a wedding dress imagine the horror. ZORDOZ the gun is good. Watch the trailer it’s weird as hell.

At least they didn't have the Hobbits cut down the Party Tree and make wagons out of them for their journey.🙄

According to Ian Nathan’s Peter Jackson biography, Boorman did influence Jackson’s LOTR movies; Boorman loved those movies, and Jackson loved EXCALIBUR. So even if Boorman did not make his LOTR movies, it’s all for the better.

I don't wanna die without watching morgoth on a movie😢

OMG!! I loved it when Galadriel declared: "There is a tempest in me! I am quadruple vaccinated and six time boosted against Covid-19 and that is why I can do what I can do," - hot tears started streaming down my cheeks. What a truthful telling of Tolkien's masterpiece! So brave and stunning!!

This sounds like the same screen writer who did the script for the 80s version of Dune or Starship Troopers.😎

Thank you, now I can start enjoying Amazon series, since I see it could have been worse... much worse 😂

The cartoon version of the 70s was just as ass as this. When did gandalf the grey abandon reason for madness...

PJ's version looking better and better......

Perhaps, just perhaps, the writer should have stayed out of the mushroom field before he started writing

It's the first time i see this guy laughing so much. It's a great video.

The Kabuki drama is a brilliant idea.

The only thing I can think of as respunse: DUDE!!!! 😄

Spyro Fans: This movie scrip is so terrible! I'm so happy this didn't happen. Spyro would never had survived this! Lord of the Rings fans: OUR STORY....wouldn't had survived if this work of Mordor happened.

I've read this script several times. It's interesting to compare it to the Excalibur script - his LotR's may not have been as bad as the script suggests.

Not Jeff here. If you want to get weird, the closed captioning on this video keeps translating to "black writers". I'm having visions of the hobbits being chased by Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frederick Douglass and Octavia Butler. Actually, I would like to be captured by that crew.

The script is very John Boorman, which also means it's very not Tolkien

Just a quick note at @ 28:00. The Silmarillion wasn't published till 1977 I think, so much of the back story (prior to 3rd age) was pretty obscure at the time of this screenplay?? Ill shut up and watch the rest now haha

Boormans Excalibur is a great film.you would think he would have been .ore faithful to Tolkien. Glad he didn't follow through on this.

I'm vaguely familiar with the script overall. Part of me is morbidly curious as to how it would have turned out, but the better part of me is just glad Tolkiens material wasn't dragged through the mud.

This is really weird. Thankfully this wasn’t made.

Any word on exactly what John Boorman was putting in his pipeweed while coming up with this?

And I thought what Amazon was doing was ridiculous fanfiction.

Hmm, I don´t know. I have watch scenes from the Russian "production".

Ooooooooooh no... It's the one where Frodo bangs Galadriel, isn't it? :[

31:25 As a sewing fanatic, I'm wearing the trousers of a "leprechaun" that's emblematic to Chouffe (a Belgian beer), would you mind making a shorty on the insanity of the costumes, unless that's too gross?

Gandalf was a famously good dancer in Valinor.

Ralph Bakshi's incomplete version deserves more credit .

Hope this isnt take then wrong way, I do enjoy your content but have you thought about doing thumbnails? Distingushing a difference between your content is nearly impossible as every video looks the same and you have a lot of videos. 😁

In short: We are very fortunate that the Peter Jackson version is so accurate.

The 'Jodorowsky's Dune' of Tolkien

This does sound insane but it was the seventies. Glad it never got made.

I've read this script and its absolute bonkers. And awful. As in Amazon-probably-couldn't-make-a-worse-adaptation-if-they-tried awful. Love this video but you also forgot the best part about the Kabuki theater, where Sauron is described as a Mick Jagger type. So 70s! And yes, all of this pales to the insanity to come. Wait til you get to Galadriel. Wait til you get to the Houses of Healing!

Can you link to the script directly? Or is it shared in the discord.

The kind of mushrooms that could get you in legal trouble. You don’t say? Kinda sounds like that kind of mushrooms were involved in the creation of this script. Hilarious.

I'm starting to wonder if a debate is going to break out as to which is worse, this adaptation or the infamous Russian one. 😳😬

The 1970's really were like a long cultural bad dream. Pretty much the only decent thing that came out of it was Star Wars.

This is horrible! 🤢

Wow, Boorman's excalibur movie sucked (not gonna get into how badly he butchered the Arthurian myths), and to think he might have directed LOTR would have been horrible, and this is such a terrible script, just what I'd expect of such a director! Ugh, I didn't like the Jackson movies, but they weren't this horrible.

Okay, the Ring being this inconsistent doesn't match canon. However, it's an object with its own will, so in theory it doesn't HAVE to be consistent. Even in canon it has moments of inconsistency, e.g. betraying Smeagol.

As weird as it sounds, it's undoubtedly sounds better than Jeff Bozo's Rings of Garbage.

And you are going to make more videos on this script? I think you are a glutton for punishment!

I don't know... you ever watch the Soviet version? That one is pretty bad.

I got a feeling that Amazon's about to ask somebody to hold it's beer.

Still a better story than Rings of Power.

Walmart' s Ring of Power will make look this like a masterpiece wait and see ...

Still better than Rings of Power.

Still sounds better than what Amazon is doing. Cheers

It all sounds weird - but better than what we have seen of Amazon's "ROP"....

And now we have stupid woke Amazon Second Age series, that's sure to be far worse than this script you talked about. That said, this script clearly sounds like the kind of thing written by someone who only read a half-remembered and extremely concise summary of the books.

Why be happy a movie wasn't made? You don't need to watch it if it doesn't interest you - Boorman's take on LOTR would have interested me much more than Jackson's.