On one hand, the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting" (as was Peter Jackson, I believe, which is why he refused to direct the Hobbit movie for such a long time). That's a downright criminal practice and "victims" perfectly describes those unfortunate enough to be targeted.
On the other hand, JRR the man passed away years ago, and his son is almost 90. Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit? How long should his children, and their children, and their children, expect to control and profit off of the work of a long-dead man? (Yes C. Tolkien did some original stuff with Silmarillion and Hurin but we're talking Hobbit and LotR here.)
That's a loaded question and obviously C. Tolkien and companies like Disney think copyright should be eternal. (And no doubt New Line now wishes its own copyright on its little gold mine would remain eternal too.) But personally I think stuff should enter the public domain much more aggressively for the good of culture and society.
In such a world C. Tolkien might have made a little cash for a while, perhaps been happy that his family created a cultural touchstone, and maybe went on to do something original and no doubt productive with his own talent. But we'll never know, and now he's spending his last days growing increasingly embittered because he feels that he's lost control of something he didn't even create in the first place.
I wouldn't call it loaded, because the same companies trying to screw over Tolkein Junior want these unlimited copyrights to stifle culture and innovation and hold a vicegrip on information. They are just hypocrites, but that is nothing new, they have been for decades.
If the big businesses get to fuck over every new idea under the sun that borrows from creative works of the last century without a license, the descendent's of the creators of those works that still, by the hands of the same enterprise, inherit the licenses deserve their compensation. It is the house of cards built by Hollywood and they want to live in it.
It's not only a question about copyright laws, money, etc.
Popularization of JRR works sometimes disgusting.
The most disgusting thing(for me, and I think I'm not lonely): LONG ELVEN EARS.
JRR almost reinvented elves. He transcend them from butterfly-like insects into unearthly beautiful beings almost like humans, but in every aspect better.
This effort is ruined: now everybody knows that elves are "guys/gals with long ears". Of cause: it's a lot easier to make long ears, than to make ... unearthly beauty.
I would not say, "in every aspect better". One of the major themes of Lord of the Rings was that the elves are tied to nature but not really to history. They can't evolve as Men and such can, and so as history drags on they just sort of decay with entropy until eventually becoming nothing more than ghost-wraiths, voices on the wind... unless they pass into the Uttermost West, the only place protected from entropy such that elves can exist eternally there.
A quick note about elves: it's a misconception that before Tolkien's work an elf was pictured as a fey. Nordic elves were very Tolkien-ish, for example.
I've read explanations that elves as winged 5" fairies were a Victorian invention, and it kind of fits. European myths from before then generally much more serious.
As in, Genesis, chapter 6, in the Tanakh? I've never heard of that one before. Ancient Hebrew culture had no notion of elves whatsoever, to my knowledge.
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
"The Dwarves have a peculiar history. The first Seven Fathers of the Dwarves were actually created before the Elves by Aulë, beneath the mountains and against the will of Eru Ilúvatar. Eru was displeased with Aulë's rogue action, and ordered them destroyed. As Aulë rose his great hammer to smite his creations and children forever, he wept, and the Dwarves begged for mercy in fear. Seeing this, Eru decided that their life was valuable and that they should live, but the Dwarves must sleep until it is their time to walk Middle-Earth, so they were granted long life so they could hibernate as time elapsed."
> the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting"
I agree with you that this is an amoral practice, but the thing I can never understand: since virtually everyone is aware of this con, how is anyone still taken in by it?
I mean, by all accounts the negotiations for the LOTR rights were tense--but neither Jackson's nor Tolkien's lawyer figured out to put a "percent of box office" clause in there?
It's technically legit. Here's one way they could do it. The movie studio makes no money on the movie. The studio sells the movie to the distribution company for a fixed amount. Then the distribution company made $300 million on it, but that's not part of the contract.
IvyMike wasn't asking how it was done, but why people still seem to get screwed by it. Why didn't Jackson's lawyers know better? Asking for something like a percentage of the box office sales, or similar should be standard practice.
That's an interesting opinion, but I doubt the studio considered Jackson essential to making the Lord of the Rings movies. They had the rights and financing, and both they and Jackson knew they could have found someone else to direct.
The easy way french actors do to "give the fingers" to Hollywood accounting is simple: a % given depending on the number of people going to see the movies in theaters.
That's why actors like "Omar Sy" ("Les intouchables") are now very rich.
The LOTR film rights is a separate issue, since that was from decades ago.
But for other films, think of it like with VC terms and startups. The best ideas can dictate their terms and get points on the gross, while the ideas in the middle have to accept a deal where they get points of profit in order to get the film made.
Somebody like Eddie Murphy can demand gross points, while a first time indie filmmaker cannot.
Tolkien's deal was signed in the 60's and Jackson did have gross points, he was also a producer of the film so he was the other side of the table. His lawsuit was much more nuanced than a straight up gross vs net calculation.
You are putting the wrong argument to this situation. C. Tolkein is obviously far less concerned regarding the financial situation 'to control and profit off the work of a long-dead man' (in your words) and far more concerned with the disneyfication of the stories and characters. This come across pretty strongly in the article, for example he says "The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing".
The way he chooses to pursue this is denying/restricting crappy productions as far as possible.
I happen to agree that Tolkeins books were quite special and the films pretty run-of-the-mill. I'm not so sure thats a big problem, or one that can be solved using copyright to block other interpretations, however I am sure the primary intent is not monetary.
I understand that he's not primarily concerned with money, but I still think that after a certain, comparatively short amount of time after the creator's death, IP should be released to the public. If the public wants to Disnify it, then so be it; the originals are still around for the rest of us to enjoy. Actually I think this perspective was how copyright was first imagined--it was only recently made outrageous by corporations like Disney.
C. Tolkien seems to disagree, and his desire for complete control over books he didn't even write seems to be both stifling genuine re-imaginings of modern classics by a long-dead author, and making him fairly unhappy.
I'm picking on Tolkien but obviously this applies to a huge amount of IP out there that's in a similar situation.
I broadly agree with you on issues of IP, but just think your characterization of this case (especially of the intentions of C. Tolkein) was off, and that your general argument is probably stronger for other cases of IP rather than this particular one.
The validity of copyright really isn't the issue here... if anyone and everyone could make Tolkien films then C. Tolkien's desire to get paid might be worth discussing, but that simply isn't the case.
I might agree with you, except that's it's not really how "the public" sees fit, is it? It's been turned into a Hollywood blockbuster, rather than something closer to the original book.
Why does the movie even have to be "The Lord of the Rings" anyway? Most of the races and themes are fairly well public domain - there were lawsuits around D&D that saw to that. Peter Jackson doing a fantasy action movie would still do well.
> Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit?
Especially in this case.
Do you know why Dungeons and Dragons was able to be so Tolkien-esque without being sued? Because there actually was a court case, decades ago, and the only thing the court ruled that the Tolkien people (I don't know if J.R.R. was still alive at the time) actually owned was the word 'hobbit'. Everything else was taken from the public domain. Hence 'halflings' in all subsequent D&D works.
Not that Dune, to pick an example, was that much more original, but with Tolkien's work it's especially easy to pick out the borrowings.
Dwarfs, elves, trolls, goblins, and plenty others come from Norse mythology.
Orc I think was original to Tolkien, but derived from Old English for giants and ogres.
Many others, like uruk-hai and hobbit, were original.
Also, even though some of the races come from Norse mythology, Tolkien's description of them and their habits are unique (and many times quite different from the "sources").
It is worth pointing out that Tolkien was a phonologist--a linguist specializing in how words sounded--and his stated goal for the entire Middle-Earth universe was to provide a mythic backstory for England.
These two facts converge to make claims of originality very strange and difficult, because the derivations themselves are examples of original work.
I've been reading a book on Irish Mythology (Lady Gregory's compilation) and it reads a lot like LoTR
Tolkien came up with new stories and characters, but the style is similar (and of course with sources from Norse Mythology and others, that mixed and grew apart, etc)
I very much recommend Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-Earth, which discusses Tolkien's influences from the perspective of a contemporary and friend and academic colleague.
No. He was a philologist. Whatever… I agree with the rest of your comment.
For more background, Tolkien was heavily inspired by - among other material - a compilation of Finnish oral tradition called "Kalevala". I've read that he used to complain that the English culture lacked such a tradition which most certainly lead to what the Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the rings and everything else.
Well, I know trolls, elves, goblins, orcs, wraiths, wargs, wizards, dragons and eagles at least were all existing notions. Some of them he popularized (e.g. "orc" and "warg" were both lost to modern usage before Tolkien brought them into currency), but he didn't invent them. I know "balrog" and "hobbit" were original, but I think most of it was a synthesis of existing mythology. Can you come up with many more original species?
They did (except for orcs and hobbits), but if not for LotR, they would not appear in popular fiction as they are appearing now. Besides, the comment above looks like it's disagreeing with originality of hobbits.
As a possibly-incorrect point of pedantry, I don't think New Line holds the "rights", though they distributed the film. Doesn't United Artists hold the rights? To be frank, I skimmed Wikipedia before leaving this comment, and I remain unsure.
EDIT: Ah, Saul Zaentz's company, Middle-earth Enterprises, licensed the film rights to New Line. TIL. What a complicated situation.
I'm actual a strong advocate of "deferred inheritance", which is to say, when one of your wealthy ancestors donated vast sums of money and/or property to X organisation, his/her descendants implicitly have the right to take it all back at any point in time -- imagine the havoc that would cause ;-)
On one hand, the estate is clearly a victim of "Hollywood accounting" (as was Peter Jackson, I believe, which is why he refused to direct the Hobbit movie for such a long time). That's a downright criminal practice and "victims" perfectly describes those unfortunate enough to be targeted.
On the other hand, JRR the man passed away years ago, and his son is almost 90. Copyright law says one thing, but at what point do we as humans say that the creator has died long ago, and his work should now pass to the public to retell as it sees fit? How long should his children, and their children, and their children, expect to control and profit off of the work of a long-dead man? (Yes C. Tolkien did some original stuff with Silmarillion and Hurin but we're talking Hobbit and LotR here.)
That's a loaded question and obviously C. Tolkien and companies like Disney think copyright should be eternal. (And no doubt New Line now wishes its own copyright on its little gold mine would remain eternal too.) But personally I think stuff should enter the public domain much more aggressively for the good of culture and society.
In such a world C. Tolkien might have made a little cash for a while, perhaps been happy that his family created a cultural touchstone, and maybe went on to do something original and no doubt productive with his own talent. But we'll never know, and now he's spending his last days growing increasingly embittered because he feels that he's lost control of something he didn't even create in the first place.