10 Movies That Could Be Made In Middle-Earth After The Hobbit

3. Beren And Luthien

What's the story? Mortal man Beren flees from his people's defeat by the Dark Lord Morgoth. In a glade he sees immortal elf princess Luthien and falls in love with her. Her father, King Thingol, disapproves of the union and sets Beren the seemingly impossible task of stealing a Silmaril, the Elvish jewels in the Dark Lord's crown. Followed by his Elvish lover, Beren sets out on a quest that involves battling werewolves and Morgoth's lieutenant Sauron. Why should it be filmed? Easily the best known part of the Silmarillion and the most obvious single narrative strand to begin a film series with, audiences will already be familiar with Beren and Luthien as ancestors and reflected archetypes of Aragorn and Arwen's human-elf relationship. Aragorn even sings about them in The Fellowship Of The Ring. It also features Sauron as a major antagonist, which would create continuity with the other films, while being driven by the kind of classic quest narrative that they utilised. Although it occurs a reasonable amount of the way through The Silmarillion, it is the first story that really uses humans as characters to provide a way into the grandiose Elvish storylines. The creation of the Silmarils and Morgoth's treachery could easily be told in a prologue similar to the openings to The Fellowship Of The Ring and An Unexpected Journey. Why shouldn't it be filmed? It's a fairly generic fantasy romance and quest narrative, which might make it seem a little unoriginal, especially as the seventh film in a series that has already featured a romance between a mortal man and an immortal elf.