Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:19 amGreat Confederacy of Commonwealth States wrote:Lindon-Rivendell wrote:yeah, but NO LINES?
That's a liiitlle much.
If he had any lines, he would have to be introduced as this awesome character with enormous backstory and history, in the space of just those lines, just that scene, and vanish afterwards from the story.
This, in a scene that already introduces us to a lot of characters, and characters which are far, far more important. If you look back at the scene, only the future Fellowship (and Elrond) has lines, because those are the people we need to get familiar with. There is literally no purpose in giving Glorfindel anything to say, other than 'this is a cool character, he deserves screen time', but that would be at the cost of the streamlined nature. The strick of any kind of storytelling is to contain your story to contain that story to as few characters as possible; this streamlines the story, gives more persona to the characters we need to know, and takes it away from distracting fluff.
Why is Glorfindel even in the book? Because The Lord of the Rings books are both a self-contained story and a guided tour through the lands of Middle Earth that Tolkien had created beforehand. If that is your goal, then you need people like Glorfindel, who have absolutely nothing to do with the story, but who flesh out the world. The movies, however, are just the story, not meant to give a guided tour. Which is why the movies (at least the theatrical cut) never even mention Numenor, where Angmar is supposed to be, what the Undying Lands are; the words 'Valar' and 'Maiar' are also never mentioned; the Istari are just considered wizards, and they are never explained as having come from across the Sea. This all, because for the story, it absolutely does not matter.
And I think asking the movies to be more like the books in that matter would have made for worse movies.
The example of this is the Hobbit-trilogy. Since the succes of the Lord of the Rings-movies, people got really into Middle Earth, and started reading the Silmarillion. Exploring all the neat behind -the-scenes stuff like Gondolin, and the First Age, and Morgoth... And the Hobbit really tried to become a guided tour through the mythos of Middle Earth, even though the Hobbit book was even less connected to the overarching story than Lord of the Rings already was. So you get the pointless Dol Guldur-plotline, or mentions of the Ringwraiths, a Morgul-arrow (somehow fired by an Orc?), Mount Gundabad, the White Council... Bloating it beyond what it was supposed to be. The Hobbit really failed in streamlining where Lord of the Rings was perfect in that regard.
Long story, but basically: stripping Glorfindel of anything was a really good move on Peter Jackson's part.
Yeah, i guess so....
*sheds a tear*
