Would The Beatles and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ have been any good?
There has never been a more famous band than The Beatles, and it would be incredibly tough to argue that any other group has had remotely the same cultural impact worldwide. Given the frenzy that surrounded the band during their existence in the 1960s and the amount of historical documentation of their careers that is available today, it’s hard to imagine anyone else having the same long-lasting impact as them in future decades either.
Seeing as anything with The Beatles’ name attached to it was sure to attract attention and, therefore, generate money, The Fab Four almost had completely free rein to do whatever creative projects they wanted to without any obstacles getting in their way. If Paul McCartney says he wants to create a film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, are you really going to turn that down?
Well, in 1968, Tolkien did precisely that. Having been approached by the band with the idea of making a feature film version of his most famous book, he was without hesitation in his decision to veto the production of such a project, citing his reasons as being that he didn’t want a pop group touching his precious work. This might seem a little fastidious given how lucrative the idea would have been, but he might have been perfectly justified given The Beatles’ track record when it came to making films.
As good as they were at writing music, their ventures into cinema were hit-and-miss, to say the least. The flick they made to accompany the release of their fifth album, Help! was a hammy disaster, and the television film for Magical Mystery Tour was universally panned for being an incoherent mess. On the other hand, Yellow Submarine was a joyous animated wonder, and it’s probably because aside from providing the musical score to the film, the Fab Four had little to no involvement in the production of the movie.
So what would a potential Lord of the Rings adaptation by The Beatles have looked like? Given that it wasn’t using any of the band’s already recorded music as its source material and would have been based on someone else’s work, would they have been able to successfully make their mark on cinema with something so grand and ambitious, or would they have turned it into another contrived shambles?
None of the band are natural actors, and they’re also not writers, so naturally, they’d have needed some support from elsewhere if they were to successfully adapt the book for the big screen, and their initial plan was to get esteemed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick involved to assist. However, due to Tolkien getting in the way of their idea from the outset, they never managed to get the director on board with the project. Having just released a masterpiece in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the question has to be asked as to whether he would even have wished to lower himself to the level of making a cheesy cash grab with the band. Given that he objected to their unlicensed use of footage from Dr Strangelove in Magical Mystery Tour, he might have also been reluctant to offer his services to the group.
What the band would undoubtedly have been good at is creating a soundtrack to accompany the film, and the idea of a whimsical and theatrical reimagining of the story in song would certainly have been a fine prospect, but knowing how wooden the foursome could be, even when portraying themselves in films, it’s hard to imagine they would have stepped into their proposed roles with any panache. Rumour has it that the proposed casting would have seen McCartney play Frodo, Ringo Starr make a turn as his best friend Sam, John Lennon in the role of Gollum and George Harrison as the wise Gandalf.
If The Beatles had managed to convince Tolkien to give them the green light and received the help they needed to make the film, it could have meant that the Peter Jackson trilogy in the early 2000s never existed and that the only adaptation would have been a schlocky mess that originated from a pipedream that got out of hand.
The Beatles might have been exceptional musicians, but they were not actors, and any films that they did have a hand in were best when their involvement was left to a minimum. There’s every chance that the vision they had for Lord of the Rings could have been a psychedelic masterpiece and might have turned out similar to the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, given how Lennon fronted a large sum of money for the production of The Holy Mountain in 1973, but there’s more to indicate that it would have been a failure, and would probably have seen the band step away from ever making films again.
There’s a good reason why you can’t imagine four Hobbits writing an album as good as Abbey Road, and there’s an equally good reason why The Beatles never portrayed Tolkien’s diminutive characters on their journey to Mordor.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.