Normally, people don’t stop to think about the influence that directors have on the final result of a film, and in my opinion it was quite risky to choose Peter Jackson to direct the famous trilogy, but… What would have happened if other directors had done it?
Original idea
We already know the movie or the first book: Bilbo Baggins leaves a ring to his nephew Frodo, who along with other hobbits leaves for Rivendell, and there the Company of Nine joins together, with Gandalf and all. And they set out to destroy the ring, and they pass through Moria mines, and they reach the forest of Lorien, and then the Company falls apart.
ABC Newspaper Version
Bilbo Baggins is called Bilbao Baggins. Aragorn, as the legitimate king of Gondor, is the absolute protagonist. The orcs speak in Basque or Catalan.
Spielberg version
All hobbits are played by children. Gandalf’s death is much more tear-jerking. All long scenes are made with shots of less than five seconds. When it seems like the movie is over, it lasts another half hour in which hardly anything happens.
Role players version
It is much more faithful to the original book (nothing is deleted to save time, not even Tom Bombadil), except for the continuous jokes about the alleged homosexuality of the elves. The fights are longer, with more humor, and three times as many orcs fall. Instead of music by Enya, from Blind Guardian. Disney version
Frodo has a talking animal as a companion. Saruman too, and he bores him by telling how bad he is. There are songs at the tip of a shovel. The princess has more prominence and songs, she accompanies the group, but never fights.
Shakespeare Version
Legolas is Arwen disguised as a man and has witty conversations with Aragorn. Frodo, Boromir, Gandalf, Saruman, and even Sam have long monologues about power. Kenneth Brannagh directs.
Manga version
The characters, apart from big heads and eyes, have even bigger weapons. In fights they jump ten meters and slice several enemies with one slash. The fight between Gandalf and Saruman lasts ten minutes and lightning and fireballs come out. The fight between Gandalf and the Balrog too. Frodo is a bit perverted and steals Arwen’s underwear.
Akira Kurosawa version
Aragorn is a ronin and Boromir a samurai, but they must join Frodo as a matter of honor. They all wear Japanese armor. Landscape shots last minutes instead of seconds. Saruman’s orcs display a banner (“mon”) to the wind with the sign of the White Hand in the final fight. When Boromir-san is about to die, he asks Aragorn-san to behead him and give his katana to his clan.
John Woo Version
All plot lines are forgotten in favor of one: Aragorn and Boromir have a rivalry relationship based on honor. In the fights everyone jumps in slow motion while throwing arrows, daggers and throwing axes, spinning around on themselves. On several occasions, two characters face each other, pointing a gun at their faces or necks at the same time.
Almodóvar Version
Bilbo, in reality, is Frodo’s secret father, the result of a childhood relationship, and he gives him the ring because the remorse of the secret eats away at him, the orcs are nuns who left the congregation to dedicate themselves to organized prostitution, Frodo is gay but does not know how to come out of the closet, all the elves are drag queens, Gandalf is gay, Aragorn is gay, of course, they are all gay without coming out of the closet and the company of the ring is nothing more than a platform gay-lesbian to claim any stupidity.
José Luis Cuerda Version
Frodo [Quique San Francisco] runs into his old friend Gandalf [F. Fernan Gómez], who, nervous, scolds him with histrionic fuss (“Fuck the ring… Fuck it!”) in order for him to undertake a long and dangerous journey to order the m… eeeeh, destroy the One Ring that his uncle Bilbo [Alfredo Landa] bequeathed him.
Alex version of the Church
This Tolkien fan wanted to introduce tones of humor in his version of ESDLA: to begin with, Merry and Pippin see their characters enhanced a little more than usual. In addition, it introduces a little more action to the plot, that is, the scenes are the same, but with more action. Tom Bombadil appears, played by Arturo Fernández (Jolidol, chatín). Although it will not be more than a cameo.
Of course, this director is, as I already said, a fan (at least that’s what I heard) of Tolkien, so he would instruct the actors like no one else to master Elvish.
The most characteristic thing about the film would be the casting, which says it all: - Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin would be played, respectively, by Resines, Pepe Sancho, Javier Cámara and Toni Cantó. - Fernando Fernan Gómez… Would he play Gandalf? DON’T KNOW!!!! - The Ringwraiths would be embodied by Wyoming & Company. - After enormous criticism of the director, who insisted on casting Santiago Segura as Strider, he decided on a more athletic character, a true sex-symbol: Quique San Francisco.
Almodovar version (2)
The first novelty (deduced from the filmmaker’s characteristic films) is that the sex scenes would be the protagonists of the film. What’s more, it wouldn’t be The Lord of the Rings, but The Lord of the Condom. The Fellowship of the Ring would be made up of characters of different sexual inclinations (the hobbits are gay; Strider and Boromir are bisexual; Gimli is, in reality, a lesbian woman; and, to silence criticism, Legolas, like all the elves, is heterosexual). The Dark Lord needs the One Condom to create a company that takes out the competition.
Due to the director’s recent Oscar, Banderas y la Pene (I mean, logically, Penélope Cruz) would be in the starring roles, as Strider and Arwen. In fact, the other colleagues take a backseat. Gandalf doesn’t even appear. And Gollum would be an evil spirit; For this reason, Almodóbar would later apologize, arguing that his literary culture is not as great as some think.
Casting: Banderas, la Pene and Concha Velasco as Galadriel. Pablo Carbonell is Frodo and the others, hitherto unknown actors.
Amenábar version (1)
After an interesting plot, in which Aragorn (Noriega) who is a good friend of Boromir (Fele M.) turns into his rivalry against Arwen (Penelope) who is otherwise an idiot. In the end, they make friends until they reach nine, and then they discover that they are all dead and they form the famous ghost company that dissolves in the mist of the night. The script, the music, the direction, and even the role of Sam fall to Amenábar. Tom Cruise produces, and demands to be given an elf role (to the extent of his natural gifts, wow).
Amenábar version (2)
If LCDA seemed mysterious to you, imagine yourself with the director of The Others and Abre los Ojos (the latter copied in the US, and renamed Vainilla Sky). In the Shire, Frodo receives a visit from a mysterious wizard whom no one knows (which annoys him, because 10 minutes ago he organized a party for Bilbo). Gandalf, played by the Argentine Héctor Alterio (from the series El Grupppo), explains to him that he is the One Ring, and blah, blah, blah…
In his adventure he is pursued by beings who are believed to be alive, but who are actually dead: the Ringwraiths. Upon arriving in Rivendell, he meets Elrond, who accuses Frodo of having made the Ring disappear. Frodo realizes that he is the only one who can see it, so he escapes from there and recruits a Company behind the Elves’ backs: they will destroy the Ring on Mount Doom, which will destroy the sight of Sauron, and thus prove to the Elves his innocence.
It would be filmed in Spain (of course), but the only decent location is the Canary Islands: it is worth the Rohan Pass, the Carathras Pass and Mount Doom (the erupting images would be of Etna). As soon as the film(s) were made, it would receive massive awards, but it would be criticized here for its lack of Spanishness, and some envious directors would try to boycott it.
Casting: Hector Alterio (Gandalf), Chechu as Family Doctor (Frodo), Antonio Ortelano (Striders), Mónica Cruz (Arwen) and the Bacterio de Companions (Saruman).
Ana Rosa Quintana Version
The little jobit Fredo takes the Unique Bracelet, which belonged to his uncle Bolbo, and takes it to Mount Luck, where Souron forged it, together with the Bracelet Company.
Camilo José Cela Version
They are all workers or prostitutes who won’t stop swearing. That bastard Aragorn gets killed by an orc while he’s jerking off for being a son of a bitch. In one scene everyone gives themselves a common enema.
C.B. version DeMille
Shauron rules the Middle Empire, and dominates among others the orcs and hobbits. Among the latter, a leader is born, Bolson (played by Charlton Heston) who guides his people through Moria to freedom. On the way, he is given the rings of the law that he throws against Balrog (a moving golden calf that some of his acolytes inspired by the evil one had built). The earth opens and swallows him, but without rings they have to wander for 40 years through deserts until they reach Lorien. And then the heavens opened and a ray of light came out. And everyone rejoiced.
David Lynch version
A ring. A flash. The flame is lit. The peasant woman shouts. An ogre laughs. Some horsemen appear. They are black. A sound in the night. Another flash. Sauron dies.
Edgar Allan Poe Version
Frodo kills Bilbo to take the ring from him, and slowly goes crazy until he confesses.
H.P. version Lovecraft
Frodo is a wealthy heir to a New England family. Sauron and the orcs have a fishy face because they performed dark rites and fornicated with aliens. When Frodo takes the ring he discovers that his inheritance is cursed and goes mad after saying a phrase in italics.
James Cameron Version
It would have cost three times as much to begin with (and even then it would have been profitable). Some characters would have changed slightly. Gandalf, for example, would be played by Schwarzenegger, and he would spend the film telling bad jokes and famous phrases (the highlight being his fall into the abyss of Moria shouting: I’ll be back!).
Aragorn would be a cyborg ranger and would wear a leather jacket and dark glasses even at night (his first scene would be entering “The Prancing Pony” naked and addressing Bill Helechal: I want your clothes, your pony and your beer).
Women would have much more prominence, in fact Boromir would be a woman, who would take advantage of any break to do push-ups and sit-ups, when she was not obsessively cleaning her weapons (50% larger than normal).
The hobbits wouldn’t really matter since they would spend the entire movie being dragged around by someone. By the way, Leonardo Di Caprio would have the role of his life playing Haldir (an Oscar job).
As for the orcs… the orcs would be many more, with a double jaw that would ooze slime, and instead of Balrog the company would have to face the orc queen. The scenarios would also change slightly. Lorien would be a sunken city filled with ethereal glowing elves. The Anduin would be much wider and deeper, and an iceberg would appear from no one knew where that would cause them to shipwreck (by the way, shortly before Aragorn had stood up, on the bow of his canoe, when passing by the Argonath, to shout: They were the kings of the world! Yay!).
The composer of the soundtrack would be, of course, James Horner, who for the occasion would “borrow” some songs from his work on Braveheart and a couple of songs from “Titanic” and try to sneak them in as new (well, some things don’t change too much).
Everyone would say that it is a terrible movie but, mysteriously, it would break box-office records around the world and sweep the Oscars (although Schwarzenegger would be disappointed when Russell Crowe took away the award for best lead actor for his role in “Gladiator II”; where we discover that Máximo did not die, but rather that he only became a quadriplegic and turned to drinking to finally recover and, facing the Roman bureaucracy, becoming emperor).
Stephen King Version
Frodo is a mature writer who has run out of ideas and lives in a town in Maine with his wife, a blonde woman with big breasts. Sauron’s name is Randall Flagg, and he kills all of Frodo’s friends in a brutal and sometimes absurd way, until he overcomes his alcoholism and destroys him. In the end a half-scorched hand takes the ring.
South Park version
They don’t come out orcs, but Canadians, Saruman is the only one who doesn’t say a single curse while singing Julie Andrews-style songs; Aragorn, Frodo and these sing one that says “Sauron is a bastard son of a bitch….”
Tim Burton version
Hobbits are grotesque characters, skinny and with disheveled feet. Frodo is more extravagant than the others, and feels rejected for being half Brandybuck. He is played by Johnny Depp; Galadriel is Tim Burton’s girlfriend, and Saruman is Christopher Lee.
In Moria bats flit, mice scamper and snakes slither. There are no natural landscapes; everything is decorated, with high contrast of colors. In the field on the edge of Hobbiton there is a scarecrow.
When Frodo puts on the Ring everything looks deformed, black and white checkered, the Eye is a spiral and the Nazgûl are dressed in vertical stripes. Saruman creates the uruk-hai by mixing goblins and men, Frankenstein style.
Soundtrack by Danny Elfman. Song “May it Be” by Tom Jones or Harry Belafonte.
Coming soon…more.