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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 634384" data-attributes="member: 2020">Concerning ArwenIf Tolkien had seen the replacement of Glorfindel with Arwen, he would have had some strong things to say on the matter, in my opinion.  The Arwen of the books was a strictly sheltered woman.    She is found travelling outside of Rivendell only rarely, and then only to safe places such as Lothlorien, and then only under heavy guard.  Indeed, if you look at the histories in the Appendixes, Elrond finally brought her back (whether she wished it or not) from Lothlorien to Rivendell.    This happened was just prior to the War of the Ring, because Elrond saw that the lands from the Misty Mountains east were becoming perilous, and he refused to leave his daughter even in the sheltered safety of Lothlorien.  There is no way, not even theoretically, that the book Elrond would permit (yes, I said permit, folks) his one and only daughter to go out into danger, if Elrond knew there to be an active danger (such as an orc band on the hunt, or knowledge that the Redhorn Pass was held in force by an enemy.)  Elrond lost his wife, Celebrian, that way.  Even though she was guarded.  Her guard was slain, and she was captured ... by the orcs.  I leave it to your imagination how the orcs of the Misty Mountains treated their elven captive.  Tolkien stated it was grim.  After long months of torture, Celebrian was finally rescued by Elladan and Elrohir, but she was so ruined, so permanently damaged in body and mind, that she went over sea to Valinor (the one place where she could be healed.)  She went over sea, leaving her husband and children to remain alone in Rivendell, and they were the first - I am betting that, at least - to support her departure.  After this, Elrond lived alone, without his wife, but with graphic descriptions of what state the orcs left her in, compliments of what he was told by Elladan and Elrohir, and by what he himself saw with his own eyes.  This, is an elf who would allow his daughter to walk into the same peril?  If Elrond would not have permitted Arwen to go into danger, then he most CERTAINLY WOULD NOT have allowed her to go into danger ALONE.  And this gets to my point.  In the film, Arwen goes out, alone.  Into danger.  Into supreme danger.  Arwen is riding alone against the Nine, the greatest of all of Sauron's servants, with the expectation of having to do actual battle with them.  Glorfindel, in the books, did do such battle, and drove the Black Riders from the Bridge of Mitheidel.  He then pursued these Nazgul westward.  One must assume Arwen did the same thing, since the Bridge was the only way into the Lone Lands from the Angle (see the geography maps of Eriador.)  It is not a matter of the book Elrond sitting at home, outraged that his daughter would disobey him, or go running off on a rash mission.  The book Elrond would have fainted.  He would, after waking, have all but killed those who let Arwen go (or who weren't watching out for her.)  Elrond would have leaped onto his horse, Glorfindel and Erestor and his sons and many others with him, and gone storming out of Rivendell after Arwen - not to punish her, but to save her life.  Then, after saving her life, he would have locked  her up in Rivendell with the biggest and strongest chains the elves could forge.  The Purists will agree with me, I think.  So yeah, Peter Jackson's Arwen is as different from the book Arwen as, say, Peter Jackson's Faramir is different from the book Faramir.  Or his Treebeard from the book Treebeard.  Those who are outraged by Elrond behaving thus, must live with the fact that Tolkien wrote it that way, and that is that (Elrond spoke:  My daughter shall marry no Man who is less than both King of Gondor and Arnor.)    My poll is not about the book Arwen.  It is about the film Arwen, since there is such a major difference.  Someone said:  why all the fuss and bother?  Well, because I've spent $40 on tickets, to go see TTT a number of times, out in the freezing cold, that's why!  And I like to discuss Tolkien.  You know, some people keep comparing Arwen to a young lady, or a girl barely grown.  It is more appropriate to think of her as a grandmother.  Think of the elderly woman in the Wendys Commercials (WHERE'S THE BEEF?  WHERE'S THE BEEF?)  Yet Arwen makes that woman look like a child.  Arwen is three thousand years old!  If a human woman lived to that age, and decayed in the normal way while alive, that human woman would look slightly worse than Gollum does.  She might even beat out the spectres of the Dead Marshes.  In other words, imagine Aragorn, a hot-blooded young man, going up to a granny (WHERE'S THE BEEF?) and saying:  I love you!  Let's get married!  To some extent, that is exactly what Aragorn did.  He went to a very old woman, and said:  I love you!  Let's get married!  Of course, humor aside, there are mitigating circumstances because Arwen is elvish - yet I must wonder how any girl, elven or not elven, could live for 3,000 years as a chaste maiden, and remain sane?</blockquote>

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