Orc babies, anyone?

[Finchbearer]

This is less of a Ring of Power bashing thread and more of a question of; how far can a creative project be taken when it changes hands?

This is to say, if your novel was turned into a screen adaptation, how far is too far in terms of allowing someone else to creatively interpret it?

Tolkien never attempted to address this issue in his own work, so what right have others to interpret and speculate the possibilities of how orcs reproduce for example? What are the moral implications of it, and does it matter once it’s in someone else’s hands? The Witcher series is another example of taking a franchise and allowing room for interpretation.

If any of my work was to be adapted to screen, I would probably like to be somewhat involved, but I also feel strongly that it wouldn’t be MY creative project anymore, and so I wouldn’t be against a different perspective or interpretation, but it would also depend on the intent.

 

[Mad Swede]

Tolkien never attempted to address this issue in his own work, so what right have others to interpret and speculate the possibilities of how orcs reproduce for example? What are the moral implications of it, and does it matter once it’s in someone else’s hands? The Witcher series is another example of taking a franchise and allowing room for interpretation.

You've asked two questions here, really, so I'll give separate answers.

Tolkien did answer the question of reproduction, and in the books (all of them) it is implicit that orcs, elves, men and dwarves have babies. Even ents have some form of reproduction. In the case of the orcs it's made most clear in The Hobbit, where Bolg (the orc who Beorn kills to try and save Thorin) is named as the son of Azog (the orc who killed Thorin's grandfather Thrain in Moria).

 

[pmmg]

Tolkien is quoted somewhere as suggesting there must be orc women somewhere, and orc children, but they don't appear in his books.

Tolkien also seemed wishy-washy on the question of orcs, and where they came from. The initial idea was they were corrupted elves, then came from muck pits, then perhaps from orc women. I am not sure he really liked the question.

It is a difficult one to answer, cause I think he wanted them to be fully corrupt and evil, such that there was no redeemable path for them, but how does an brutish evil race care for children? It would seem to be a low priority to nurture and care for them. And do Orc fathers love their Orc sons too? What is the implication of who is good and who is evil, if the elves and humans are about killing orc babies when they destroy orc villages. And might the Orcs now have a real reason to want to fight them back, they are just protecting their homes?

Its a sticky subject, I don't think Tolkien wanted much scrutiny of.

Dungeons and Dragons (and other RPG's) do have Orc families, and so do other works of fiction that claimed Orcs for their worlds.


Anyway....I cant answer for others. For me, I don't want people coming in behind me and doing to my story what they do to all the others. Do not update it for tomorrow's values.

 

[Mad Swede]

This is less of a Ring of Power bashing thread and more of a question of; how far can a creative project be taken when it changes hands?

This is to say, if your novel was turned into a screen adaptation, how far is too far in terms of allowing someone else to creatively interpret it?

If any of my work was to be adapted to screen, I would probably like to be somewhat involved, but I also feel strongly that it wouldn’t be MY creative project anymore, and so I wouldn’t be against a different perspective or interpretation, but it would also depend on the intent.

As I understand things from my publisher and my editor, generally the film and television companies want the authors as far away as possible when it comes to making a film or television series of a book. This is apparently mostly because what works in a book doesn't necessarily work on screen, and often authors can't see this and so won't compromise when the story has to be simplified or changed in some way.

My publishers don't own the film or television rights to my books (I do) but they do represent me as agents. Their stance is that they will aim to give one of their authors the right to produce the first version of the script for any film or television project based on the author's books. In this way the author gets a co-writing credit for the script even if the final script is nothing like the first draft (which it probably won't be). My editor's comment on this is that as an author you give the script your best shot, but unless you're asked to continue working with the script after you've submitted it you as the author should then take the money and run.

The other thing my publishers will ensure is the the film and more especially the television rights do not give the production company any rights to the characters or the setting for the story. It's the right to make a film or television series of a specific book they're selling, nothing else, so they don't want the production company making series after series or film after film about the characters. The intention is to prevent the production company from taking the characters in a direction the author dislikes or opposes. In this way the author can keep writing about their characters and their setting without any threat of interference from film and television production companies.

My publishers also aim to get their authors an option or reading fee each time some production company takes an option on the book, and that this option is limited in time (6-9 months). They also prefer to negotiate a final deal where their authors take a (lower) rights fee and a percentage of gross box office takings if and when a film is made, with similar provisos for television series.

No, no-one has so far taken an option on any of my stories. I don't know how I would feel if anyone showed any interest. I suspect I'd be reluctant to give up creative control, but were they to put enough money on the table I might be persuaded...

 

[skip.knox]

Should anyone want to option any of my work, I'll gladly take the money and use it to stay well away from the making of the property.

Venice is nice.

I regard other works of art as, well, works of art. People work on that project with varying degrees of fidelity and cupidity, but in the end they've paid me to take my work in some other direction. I look at it as a financially profitable form of fan art, except that I get paid up front while they have to work for it. Even if the work is terrible, *my* work remains.

 

[Penpilot]

My general philosophy is this. As soon as I put the last bits of spit and polish onto my story and call it done, I have my version of the story I wanted to tell. Nothing can take that away from me. If a publisher wants me to change something, I'll be open to it. The same is true for movie adaptations.

Nothing is too precious to me that I won't consider making a change if I think it'll help the book be more successful. Obviously there are limits, but when it comes specifically to film, those limits flex and stretch with each successive zero they place at the end of the paycheck.

 

[Queshire]

Ok, so as fungal beings combat serves to spread the Ork spores much like a tree will produce fruit containing seeds. New Orks grow from those spores with some illustrations even showing the spores first forming fungal bodies with their mycelium effectively forming a "womb" that a full grown Ork grows in.

That said, the innate massed psychic abilities of Orks means that-

Wait, what? You mean this thread is about Orcs with a C? And it's not actually about how they reproduce? Boooooo.

 

[Finchbearer]

You've asked two questions here, really, so I'll give separate answers.

Tolkien did answer the question of reproduction, and in the books (all of them) it is implicit that orcs, elves, men and dwarves have babies. Even ents have some form of reproduction. In the case of the orcs it's made most clear in The Hobbit, where Bolg (the orc who Beorn kills to try and save Thorin) is named as the son of Azog (the orc who killed Thorin's grandfather Thrain in Moria).

He dabbled with the question but never fully answered it, as pmmg points out below. He certainly didn’t explicitly describe orc mothers and babies as RoP show.

 

[Finchbearer]

Ok, so as fungal beings combat serves to spread the Ork spores much like a tree will produce fruit containing seeds. New Orks grow from those spores with some illustrations even showing the spores first forming fungal bodies with their mycelium effectively forming a "womb" that a full grown Ork grows in.

That said, the innate massed psychic abilities of Orks means that-

Wait, what? You mean this thread is about Orcs with a C? And it's not actually about how they reproduce? Boooooo.

I’m not attached to Tolkien canon, it was more a discussion on how far away from your original work would you be happy with. I take you’d be happy for a film producer to do whatever they want with your work…

 

[Queshire]

14 years standard followed by an optional 14 year extension then let it loose into the public domain for anyone to do what they want with it.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Tolkien never settled on what exactly orcs were and where they came from. Initially, he had them as corrupted elves (which is the version that made it into the Silmarillion), but later he seemed to have changed his mind to corrupted humans.

As for adaptations, I have two big opinions on it.

The first is that if someone is willing to pay me a bucketload of money, then they can do whatever they please with my work. You only need something like 10.000 books (in a single week) to make the NY Times bestseller list. Which should say something about the average number of copies an author can expect to sell. If someone then throws a ton of money my way, I'm not going to say no. Being an author isn't a high paying job in most cases. Any extra money is nice, especially if it lets me focus on the writing and nothing else. And if they want to pay me extra money to hear my opinion then I'll gladly give it. Otherwise, I'd just join Skip in Venice.

The other is that I would much rather have the adaptation be a good story than a faithful one. Of course, ideally you get something like the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings adaptation, which is both (at least as much as possible). But if I could chose only 1, then I'd pick the good story any day of the week.

 

[The Dark One]

Surprised that no-one seems to have mentioned Peter Jackson's Uruk Hai being generated out of rocky wombs (already adult), which is surely different from Tolkien's vision - Treebeard suggests that Saruman has been blending the races of Orcs and men - a black evil.

There was never any suggestion by Tolkien that children of any race were not produced in the usual way, so surely that's what he intended.

It was a spectacular scene to see those Orcs "born" but would have been rather ick to see them conceived.

 

[Finchbearer]

For reference, from RoP season 2. This is the wife / partner and infant of a pacifist orc who questions if they really need to wage war.

This obviously in turn is asking more questions. Implying that they have family units, care for one another and have feelings beyond nameless ‘evil’. Not saying it’s wrong or right, how they’ve interpreted it. But if a creator was to take your work and change the message of the work in a big way, would you be happy to take the pay cheque?

To my mind, it’s attempting to answer unanswered questions from Tolkien’s lore - given that to answer this question, Tolkien probably feared that his work wouldn’t have the impact he wanted it to have. Perhaps it was because he was concerned with bigger questions, rather than complex domestic morality.

 

[The Dark One]

Only a mother could love it...

 

[Queshire]

Well, I know myself enough to know that there's a decent chance I'd be pissed, but I also know myself well enough to know that my emotions are a lying bitch who can't be trusted.

 

[Ban]

In order for me to sell the adaptation rights to a work, I would first have to come to terms with no longer controlling that work. For me, I imagine that would entail having wrapped up the story and possibly the setting as a whole. At that point I would be able to accept that the adaptation is simply another interpretation, and be able to view it as someone else's vision based on the same material, instead of a repudiation of my work and its intended vision.

 

[The Dark One]

The baby Orc at #13 looks a lot like Alfred E Neumann.

 

[Queshire]

On the whole I think things would be better if we encourage a looser grip on creative endeavors. Yes, there's a risk of getting burned, but if Lord of the Rings was in the public domain then that would open up more room for other viewpoints than (since it's the example at hand) Orc babies.

A copyright closer to the original 14 years might also help encourage innovation amongst the big budget companies instead of the parade of sequels, prequels and revoots that so many people complain about. They would need to come up with something new every 14 years if they want to avoid competing with some random joe making his own Spiderman stories or something.

 

[Queshire]

Anyways, I like the way the game Pathfinder handles Orcs. They hit a good balance where they can be presented as antagonistic or sympathetic as you need.

 

[pmmg]

But if a creator was to take your work and change the message of the work in a big way, would you be happy to take the pay cheque?

No.

I went through a lot of trouble to shape the world the way I did, and the messages are important to the tale. I will not appreciate people trying to change the messages by changing the trappings.