a fantasy movie or series like lord of the rings but more mature and darker, but not like game of thrones would really hit the spot.
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a fantasy movie or series like lord of the rings but more mature and darker, but not like game of thrones would really hit the spot.
How would you make LotR darker than it already is? Adding in rape, gore, and sex wouldn't really make it any more interesting.
Frodo and Sam gangfrickin Gollum would've been kino
Place it in 40k and have some fun.
40 is just moronic Toy Soldier bullshit
LotR is not dark at all. It is about the triumph of good over evil, and is overall very optimistic in how it portrays people. Part of showing the struggle against evil is that you have to portray evil, that means the suffering of innocents, the despair and grief of those dispossessed and bereaved by violence, but to counteract this we have moments of joy and levity. Songs are abundant in LotR, as are happy moments where characters enjoy one another's company.
A true dark fantasy has very little to balance out the bad. There are merely evil people and less evil people. Nobody is truly noble or good, everyone is following some selfish agenda which only resembles good by accident.
>A true dark fantasy
That's just horseshit then and not a good story. Twisting reality.
GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire leans very heavily toward dark fantasy. He does have truly good and noble people, but seems to set them up to fail, and to thereby drive other characters further into despair. As I said, a dark fantasy replaces the narrative of good vs evil with evil vs less evil, that is, a starkly dualistic morality with moral relativism. Even seemingly evil people become more human once you know what is motivating them (see Jaime Lannister, for example).
These types of stories live or die by their character writing. If you're going to throw the comforting good vs evil dichotomy out and replace it with morally gray personal agendas, then those personal agendas had better be compelling. That's ultimately why GRRM's books and the HBO series were so popular, he was very good at character writing.
The main character not being a limp wristed b***h would make it LOTR way better
Who, Frodo? Blame Hackson for that, he's not like that at all in the books.
What's he like in the books?
Older, more driven, braver, more of a leader (especially within the hobbits). Their journey through the Old Forest sort of establishes him as a character and that's fully cut. In the movie, he's just sort of along for the ride but he is a much more active Fellowship member in the books. Obviously he's not doing Yoda flips and killing everyone, but he is smart and contributes. A lot of his good moments are given to other characters or omitted altogether. For example, in the movie Arwen is the one who yells at the Nazgul "You shall not have him!" when they're fleeing on the horse in Fellowship, when Frodo is the one who says it in the books. Basically he isn't a little b***h, he has agency and is competent (especially for a hobbit).
sam is actually the limpwrist for the first couple books, he is basically there to complain. he comes into his own at the end obviously but he's way more annoying in the first book than sean astin played him in the movie
For sure, also way dumber. I guess I see why they changed their dynamic for modern audiences, I just wish they hadn't dumbed down Frodo so much in the process. A lot of it is Elijah Wood too tbh, even the lines ripped direct from the book sound kinda homosexual with his delivery. He's a fine actor but doesn't match with book Frodo at all.
Shut up, coomer. You'll meet your match and that little tough guy act of yours is gonna shatter. And if you'll keep being an uppity little wannabe tough guy, it'll drive you to the brinks of suicide and beyond. Stop being gay.
Arwen deserves rape.
And that deserves a soundtrack...
?si=h9HW_4pnty0cGWZX
Flesh and Blood is such a horrible piece of shit movie.
Do explain. The film isn't perfect, but the soundtrack is masterful.
Sorry to hear about your terminal shit taste
same dumb Black person
same dumb place
It definitely punches under it's weight for what it is. Rutger Hauer and Verhoeven? It's awesome in the beginning but then starts to feel like two kids making shit up? Hawkwood has the plague but survives, but then he catapults flesh from a dog that ate his bile and sores over a castle wall and into a well, and somehow everyone CAUGHT THE PLAGUE in a couple of minutes. It really meanders as it goes along
A movie of Children of Hurin from the Silmarillion.
That would upset everyone (except perverts)
Sauronman had a rape dungeon where he had men impregnated by orc bulls somehow
I'll keep that in mind OP. ANYWAY you know what could make for a really great adaption?
nah it would have to be an original
lord of the rings is kinda wholesome in a way, with frodo and the wizard and the other companions they're just too (for lack of a better word) childish, i always thought of lord of the rings as a kids movie.
yeah add some gore to it, like a dark fantasy with star wars levels of gore would be great, like a dudes hand gets lobbed off, that's gore enough. lord of the rings is just a little too wholesome for me, i want something a little darker, but to still have the adventure aspect that lord of the rings had. i want it to not be too safe.
>lord of the rings is kinda wholesome in a way, with frodo and the wizard and the other companions they're just too (for lack of a better word) childish, i always thought of lord of the rings as a kids movie.
Frodo gets maimed to the point he never goes back home, Gollum gets tortured, Orcs are the product of torturing and corrupting elves, the dwarves in Moria got slaughtered, Gothmog and his crowd use human heads as projectiles, etc. It's plenty dark.
damn, i see. i guess dark isn't exactly what i want and i have to admit i never read the lord of the rings books, just watched some of the movie.
still a new fantasy series that's actually good would really hit the spot, i love the setting, some xena shit but actually good, that would really hit the spot, i day dream of it.
so many people play dungeons and dragons now a days that an original fantasy series would really take off, if it's good of course.
Amazon is definitely trying to capitalize on the popularity of GOT by adapting epic fantasy stuff. They did their Rings of Power series (though it was terrible) and their Wheel of Time series (which is even worse than terrible).
Can you explain what you meant by dark instead of what you didn't mean?
i thought dark fantasy described an aesthetic and not a genre.
Try Solomon Kane and Vampire Hunter D.
Kane is more weird Pulp than dark fantasy.
The movie? Eh, it has that generic dark fantasy look. Too little color for pulp.
sure the film is pretty generic 2000s dark fantasy S&S
Weird pulp works as dark fantasy in the right places. If there were a book-accurate adaptation of Conan, that would make for some good dark fantasy. No good guys or bad, only a fight for survival.
>No good guys or bad, only a fight for survival.
I like stories that do this. Even better if it is really just to survive and thrive, not for protecting your homeland or village or whatever.
Wait for them to adapt Children of Hurin. There's friends killing friends, betrayal and incest.
>lord of the rings is kinda wholesome in a way
Only because there is always hope, and because there are clear good guys and bad guys. None of that fifty shades of g(r)ay so popular nowadays.
Jackson cut out all the dark parts
Saruman makes worm tongue eat the hobbit mayor that betrayed the shire for example or when Sauron gets bored he throws people to Shelob for fun to watch them struggle out of there
>lord of the rings is kinda wholesome in a way
Ever wondered where Mrs. Elrond, Arwen's mommy is? She got abducted by orcs/goblins, and gangraped for years. Her two sons spent years purging the misty mountains of every goblin tribe trying to find there mommy, when they finally found her she was a shell of a woman, just a used up goblin cum rag.
She had to board the boats the undying lands in the hopes that after a couple millennia she might never over that trauma, until then her family basically just doesn't talk about her.
It's pretty fricked up, just like that elf mommy.
Lol nice fanfic
>fanfic
nta but it's literally in the appendices.
Elrond's mom is taken to the mountains against her will, and is then taken out but is no longer able to handle Middle Earth. Tolkien spares us the details but it is pretty obvious that she was not treated well by the orcs.
They were Hamas.
>Elrond's mom
That anon was talking about Arwen's mom, who is quite well and is one of the Lothlorien's rulers.
No it's Arwens mom
>Celebrían
>In T.A. 2509, on a trip to Lórien to visit her parents, she was waylaid by Orcs of the Misty Mountains in the Redhorn Pass. She was captured and tormented, receiving a poisoned wound. Her sons rescued her and she was physically healed by Elrond, but never fully recovered in mind or spirit, and no longer wished to stay in Middle-earth. She left for the Grey Havens and passed over the Great Sea the following year.[3]
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Celebr%C3%ADan
Only vague thing is how long her capture and "torment" lasted.
I misunderstood the bit from the first book then. Never gotten around to reading all the extras, except for Silmarillion if it even can be considered that.
>They were Hamas.
Weird. I remember the female israeli hostages looking very fond of the Hamas guys.
>they were Hamas
Frick off Ben
well, you got a shit one. how's them apples?
>ANYWAY you know what could make for a really great adaption?
Why yes, I do.
T we got lost in the pine barrens and now some prick said were in Mordor. You gotta come get us.
Fricking kek best post I have seen today.
You're never gonna believe it that orc was an interior decorator, but his cave looked like shit.
lmao
depends what you mean by mature and darker. if it's just more depressing and with more immoral characters, nah. i'd love escapism from psychologized storytelling, back into a mythopoetic or folkloric mode.
>back into a mythopoetic or folkloric mode.
Honestly, it's a shame Snyder insists on his edgelord boomerisms so much. He could be Lucas' successor.
Kushiel's Dart series.
It's pure degeneracy.
we need a lotr style fantasy that’s edgy but also fundamentally religious set in the modern world about a secret parallel of drug using wizards
Not gonna lie, I rewatched Harry Potter recently and all 8 movies are kino. I was honestly blown away.
>dark and actually intelligently written harry potter
Would actually be kino.
there's a series kinda like this that's still YA fiction called the Bartimaeus series. the wizards openly rule the non-magical with a brutal iron fist and the non-magic users start a rebellion to free themselves. the story takes place from the POV of a young wizard, a young rebel and the demon Bartimaeus (the wizards summon demons of varying strength to do the brunt of their magical bidding). i recommend it if you want a darker Harry Potter, but don't expect sex and whatnot, as it is still YA fiction
NTA but buddy of mine told me about it and from what he told me, it's really dark and fatalistic concerning its premise. Don't wanna spoil anyone here the way he spoiled me.
i'll be honest, it's been too long for me to remember the entire flow of the story but yes, it did have a much, MUCH more bleak overall tone than Harry Potter. even in the last few HP books where voldemort is murdering fools left and right and the death eaters are betraying everyone etc, it still came across as a more fantastical, good vs evil sort of story than bartimaeus. HP you knew there would be a mostly happy resolution. the Bart books never make this sort of unspoken promise. they have a much more grimey, hopeless sort of feel to them. they focus less on the fantastical elements (although there are plenty) and more on how the disparity in power would truly play out between the classes. i like the 'rules' of magic in Bartimaeus as well, with increasing power levels for the summoned demons, each wizard having to keep their birth name a closely guarded secret as speaking their name is an instant counterspell to all of their magic, etc. it was just cooler to me.
>Bartimaeus series
I'm actually re-reading it right now. Haven't touched it since I got it off the book fair when I was a teenager lol.
I'm very much still enjoying it, although I'm questioning Nathaniel's methods and efficiency much more than I had when I was younger. So much of what he does is just blindly grasping his way through teenage lust and misplaced ambition. I wouldn't compare it to Harry Potter at all though, besides both being YA fiction with teenage magicians in the UK. The story starts out pretty grim for the MC and is only kept light because of how much of a rascal Bartimaeus is. There aren't really any 'break' or cozy chapters where the characters get to breathe much, most of the writing is plotting, conspiracy and consequences (particularly in the third book). The characters are much colder than HP and the conflict is much more grey. Djinn and humans die off every book and war casualties are brushed off as a fact of life. But since most of it is seen from the POV of characters directly involved in the various conflicts (Bart writes it off as typical human slavemaster behaviour, Nath considers it the cost of a functioning Empire, Kitty is alreay too desensitized from her time as a rebel to comment on it beyond constant disdain for the ruling class) it doesn't really hit as hard as HP character deaths.
I always wondered why it never really took off or was brought back today in TV/cartoon/movie form, although that would prolly be disappointing. I'm always happy to see it brought up here or more rarely on Cinemaphile.
The Magicians book series with Fillory and shit checked that off for me. The show is dogshit though.
Del Taco Hellboy.
garbage.
Honestly a series of Arthur / Camelot movies that followed the original Thomas Mallory text closely would be ideal for a dark, mature fantasy epic. Make the first film about Merlin mentoring Arthur and pulling Excalibur from the stone, make the second film about the height of Camelot at its most prosperous and the quests of the Knights of the Round Table, and make the third movie about the fall of Camelot, with Morgan Le Fey, Mordred, Arthur mortally wounded, etc.
Malory arthur still has the batshit stuff about king arthur defeating the roman empire and ending paganism. You would still have trouble adapting it with a grounded tone
You wouldn't be able to fit all of it in three movies because there's so much material, but there's enough to pick from to make three movies and make a cohesive narrative. As much as I like Excalibur it's too much for one movie, even that starts feeling like watching Cliff Notes instead of a real story.
read the vulgate cycle arthur stuff if you haven’t. I honestly think (while I love certain things about malory) his source material did a lot of things better. If you’re into the weird magic and surreal aspects of arthur check those ones out.
Adapt the Drizzt novels.
Would make for a solid anime series.
No, they’d cast an African to be Drizzt
But that'd be whitewashing.
Wizard is too scared to use drow at all so they'd probably just re-write the whole thing and make it about regular elves. Drizzt was supposed to be in that last D&D movie btw.
i was waiting for him to show up the entire film. i actually really enjoyed it, the comedy angle worked well with D&D i thought. chris pine said recently that everyone is on board for a sequel, they just need funding. hoping that one gets a few sequels honestly, there's endless stuff they could do with it. the potential guest stars and cameos from switching out party members each movie could be fun
I found it bad. Terrible humor and terrible casting as well.
the cast could've been better yeah (i literally just remembered michelle rodriguez is in it kek), hence my desire for new party members, but i liked the lighter humour. it wasn't edgy, it wasn't 'reddit', it was just sort of innocently goofy but serious enough to give the story some stakes. after BG3's success, i do wonder if there will be a push for a sequel
it was quite fun. In fact, I'm gonna rewatch it right now. I was looking for something to watch so this is perfect.
Excalibur (1981)
THOMAS COVENANT has entered the chat
Interesting no one has brought up Berserk yet.
anime fricking stinks stop trying to push this dogshit
this
>it’s dore inspired because it’s black and white drawings!
Really moronic take. Stop overcompensating so much.
fricking homosexual read an actual book filled with words
Reading isn't a religion anon, you can choose to read both manga and books.
Berserk is literal trash I’m so glad you homosexuals never got a good anime and your writer died like a b***h.
>never got a good anime
?? Golden age arc wasnt good?
the witcher i guess
>Computer, give me an 80s dark fantasy version Lord of the Rings, cut out all the childish scenes, keep most of Howard Shore's score but add more folk instrumentation, and add Tom Bombadil back in
Conan the Barbarian
while I would love a series that is faithful to the original REH pulps maybe with some timeline followthrough like some of the comics series it's something that would never get made in this day and age since executives would considered it "too misogynistic" which is what happened to a planned series by Amazon that was scrapped 5 years ago now.
It’s slightly unsettling how much this image reminds me of a dream I must’ve had over 15 years ago at this point. Haven’t thought about it since until now.
But the Fellowship is the best of the three because of the light hearted Shire part.
Vance's Dying Earth adaptation when?
The Dragonbone Chair is literally lotr but more mature.
The Witcher game. The books are rubbish, don’t bother with them
games*
uh I guess Deathstalker. Plenty of rape but nothing like got
That's just cheap trash.
your options are quite limited for this type of thing I'm afraid.
True enough.
Isn't this just Conan?
is conan good? i always figured it was cheesy since i watched the cartoon as a toddler.
Conan the Barbarian is a quality film. Conan the Conqueror is a cheesy schlockfest. Both are entertaining for different reasons.
conan the barbarian 1982 or 2011
1982, of course. I forgot the other one existed.
The runelords movie that was supposed to come out last decade ;_;
That was a solid film and surprisingly faithful to a lot of the source material with only a few light changes.
Here is an idea
Huge expansive fantasy world.
Big Empire expands.
Cool looking battle mages lead the legions of soldier to conquer other continents.
Various races including badass looking drow-like race led by Ultra Chad with some cool name and long white hair.
There are also dragons.
MC is simple soldier who later on becomes the local God who balances the shit out.
A lot of battles and magic shit.
Problem with Malazan is that for every 3,000 pages of cool stuff (the Empire stuff), there's 1,000 pages of boring shit (most of the other races' crap) you also have to get through.
If theyd make animated series they would have cut the unnecessary fat, so I wouldn't worry so much about boring parts in adaptation
I want my Malazan kino so bad it hurts, bros
Would have been actually doable as an animated tv series
But pussies will never greenlight it
i want to get into this, but every malazan fan i speak to seems to put on this earth solely to screech about how 'a song of ice and fire is KIDDY SHIT compared to malazan' and my eyes just glaze over every time.
Yeah, they seem like really obnoxious halfwits.
Real talk, Malazan is pretty good and definitely worth reading if you like this sort of stuff (and Erikson has always scored marks for publishing at a consistent pace, which doesn't mean much now the main series is finished but it was important when GRRM was shitting the bed doing nothing). Some books are definitely more exciting than others and it's not like all the payoffs are worth it – but MOST are, and the peaks of the series are definitely top tier.
i've no idea how you'd do all the races, especially tiste. paint a white guy black for anomander and people would complain, but if you cast a black guy then how are liosan and edur suppose to work? animated is the only way it could work.
10 years since reading and I still seethe occasionally over how Brys and my personal GOAT Lorn got done so dirty.
>buy the Black Company books and never read them
>but the First Law trilogy and never read them
i'm a goddamn butthole and i'm starting the black company tonight
>but the First Law trilogy and never read them
I thought it was juvenile and overly cynical.
>buy the Black Company books and never read them
Also cynical but liked it much more overall.
I loved First Law at the time I read it. But a couple of years later when I thought about it, I realised it was mainly "fantasy tropes subverted" the series. It's still well written but it feels cheap now. Anyone read Abercrombie's latest stuff? I stopped at Red Country because it felt like he was losing it there.
>Black Company
Kino. A shame we can't have more short and sweet fantasy novels/series like this. (Yeah, the novels after the original trilogy aren't quite as good, but they're still reasonable.)
>Abercrombie's latest stuff
His new trilogy is a return to form. I also read first law 10 or so years ago and liked it, but I didn't have negative feelings about it later. Bayaz is a cool character, the idea of a supremely powerful, yet aging mage turning to puppet master, owning the largest bank in the world and finding all conflicts to manipulate the state of things is neat. Logen is also a top tier character in any fantasy book I've read.
My vote is for the night angel trilogy. It's not the best written thing in the world but it's dark and BY GOD it is fricking fun. Durzo Blint is the best fictional character ever created. He's ten-year-old men's wet dream of a badass and there's something nostalgic inside me that will always appreciate that an author was able to faithfully actualize that ethereal expectation.
Ten year old ME, not men. Fricking phone posting
>ai Black person op doesn't know shit about lotr
>wants to make le mature and edgy
End yourself my man
for me?
it's the red knight series by miles cameron
Wasn't there supposed to be a Black Company show? it should be surprisingly filmable, even with certain bits like the gang rapes and civilian murders in the first book.
the author himself can write some light-hearted stuff in spite of the grimdark reputation BC gets. even BC itself has a pretty tender romance going on. apparently all he does now is watch anime with his wife these days in his old age
yeah, eliza dushku was producing and starring. went radio silent since just before covid i think, along with a couple other shows i was looking forward to (a new gritty crime show made by pizzolatto starring mcconnaughey, and the eisenhorn 40k live action series).
Impossible to take most modern fantasy seriously in any capacity because genre fiction is running on fumes. Everything's too informed by deconstructions of decade's past, plus the still going-strong trend of GoT-esque grimdark nonsense. I'm surrounded by writers, indie and tradpub, it's either extremely milquetoast "i am srs epic worldbuilder like tolkeen" or 100% someone's fetishes.
Go back to the roots, read old shit from the 1910s-30s, read Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft's Dreamlands stuff, Seabury Quinn, and so on. Find obscure pulp shit. Some 70s stuff is worthwhile even though that's where the genre began faltering and really entrenched itself in there being a "concept" of fantasy full of subversions.
That being said, some people out there do care, but we really need a paradigm shift in the genre.
Honestly, it's just the quality of the writing. I love Vance, especially the Dying Earth. If you broke those stories down into the concepts within them, the plots, the characters, there's nothing amazing going on. But the writing is superb and carries everything on its shoulders.
I’ve got good news for you if they actually end up making “Best Served Cold” from Joe Abercrombie.
That book fricking rules
Would have been The Witcher if not for Hissrich and nigflix
WORLD
OF
GOR
diablo 1 and 2
i dont read books
i could only read the first 1/5th of LOTR but i read all ASOIAF books
they really fricked up the series
>a fantasy movie or series like lord of the rings but more mature and darker, but not like game of thrones would really hit the spot.
So basically The Silmarillion?
Numenoreans get pretty dark in the second age when they are practicing cannibalism and worshipping morgoth. The thing with tolkien's legendarium is that you can imagine any kind of fantasy in it without breaking cannon. From the very cheerful hobbit to the dark silmarillion. If you can't appreciate how much room tolkien left for imagination in his world then you have a skill issue, that's not tolkien's problem.
human sacrifice not cannibalism
>and darker
No problem, half the cast will be black for sure.
aka: The 13th Warrior. Even though it's reality-based (countries, people etc) it's still a masked retelling of Beowulf. Good movie. Also on my shortlist for comfy cinema.