The problem with making movies about authors.

When it comes to biographical movies about authors, I have to say that I'm not someone who gets easily excited about them. In most cases I just don't think that films about famous writers are that interesting or worth your time.

After all, even though the books and the novels that these authors have written might be interesting, that doesn't mean that they themselves are interesting enough. There's no guarantee that their life story is fascinating or worthy of a movie.

So when it comes to these author movies, one of these problematic films is the upcoming biopic about the 'Lord of The Rings' author J.R.R. Tolkien. This is a movie that is going to be released this week after having been in production limbo for years.

When it comes this particular film, the fact that it took so long to produce the movie shouldn't really surprise anyone. It simply wasn't easy to come up with an even remotely entertaining story about a real life person like Tolkien.

After all, even though his books have been popular and have been turned into well received movies, those books don't equal him. Just because those books about the middle-earth were great, that doesn't mean that a movie about him would be too.

In reality, the problem with making a movie about a writer writing a book is that in most cases there's not much of a story to tell. There's usually no real story, because there's no drama in the book writing process and there's no drama in that person's life either.

So naturally, instead of the movie having a natural built-in story, the screenwriter has to try to fabricate a story. The writer tries to come up with something that would actually make that person's life and 'work' interesting.

Unfortunately, what is especially problematic about this is that it's usually a big stretch to make a 'dramatic' connection between your life and your work. Especially when it comes to things like fantasy authors, it's almost bound to feel contrived and hokey.

So not surprisingly, movies like these will mostly consist of meaningless scenes that don't make enough sense. They have stuff like semi-relevant 'inspirational' scenes and writing scenes in which the 'hero' of the film writes in his room (no one is excited).

In comparison, when you make a biopic about a football player or perhaps a musical band (like Bohemian Rhapsody), things are different. In these biopic films there are basically no 'unfilmable' scenes and the progression in the hero's journey is easy to show.

After all, since you don't have to 'fabricate' the story, it's not that difficult to come up with proper story arcs and to keep the audience happy. There's no 'meta' level in which the audience is required to know its subject matter before they see the film.

In that sense, when you look at these basic problems and issues in the 'author' genre as a whole, it's not that surprising that 'Tolkien' has been in trouble as a movie project. It's not surprising that it hasn't been particularly well received by the critics.

After all, based on its reviews so far, there doesn't seem to be enough going on in the movie. Even though the film isn't completely awful (46% Rottentomatoes.com & Metacritic score 48) it just doesn't have a screenplay or a story that is good enough.

In that sense, especially considering that there are other biopics about this genre in the works too, I wouldn't get my hopes up about those other projects either. Clearly 'Tolkien' is setting a prime example on how things can go wrong.

After all, as unfortunate as it is, especially in the case of the J.K. Rowling biopic, things look pretty bleak (it has been in production limbo for years). It doesn't look like the proposed film - if produced - would be a good movie either.

On the contrary, everything about that project spells trouble too. That project spells trouble and it's difficult to imagine that her biopic would be able to tell a good story or that it would be able to make a good connection between her life and her precious books either.