[="Lalaith-Elerrina"]
Exactly! The Legolas/Gimli friendship was awesome and beautiful because it was the first of its kind. And it was completely believable. Different species, after all, can be friends. What happened in the Hobbit movies with Kili and Tauriel, cheapens and weakens what was, in LOTR, an awesome breakthrough friendship.
First of it's kind? I am not so sure, in some of Tolkien's other writing there have been examples of Dwarves and Elves that seemed to get along fine. IIRC Galadriel traveled through Moria so she seemed to be on friendly terms with the Dwarves there.
Or take Eregion, that place had close ties to Moria and the western doors to Moria was made in part for that reason and was made as a joint project of Elves and Dwarves. Narvi made the doors and Celebrimbor made the text.
I liked the Legolas/Gimili friendship in the book and to me the point to it wasn't that it was the first of it's kind, it was that they became friends even with all the bad blood between their races.
Of course, to me, what happened with Tauriel and Kili makes the entirety of The Hobbit movies implausible and two-dimensional while that never happened in my experience with LOTR. What happened between them was not something that would ever actually happen between a dwarf and an elf. Like I said, the dwarf on elf romance was not plausible or natural any more than a human on gorilla romance would be, or an elephant and a giraffe. Different species simply would not be attracted to each other in real life, and the forced relationship between dwarf and elf made it obvious that those events were being choreographed by a force external to the characters rather than it being something that would have naturally occurred if the characters were real.
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You conveniently forget that Humans and Elves are also different species and there are several examples of those romances and even marriages in Tolkien's works. And even off spring. If you condemn an elf/dwarf romance as unnatural because of different species then an elf/human romance is equally bad.
Also, in our world, Lions and Tigers can mate and sometimes produce fertile off-spring.
I don't know if you are familiar with Star Trek but there you have Mr Spock, who is half human/half Vulcan. And he is a very good and interesting character. So in fiction human/non-human relationships are not that uncommon and can produce quite good stories.
As for Tauriel/Kili, the romance leaves a lot to be desired. It frequently gets turned up to 11 and is often like triple Cheese with a side order of Ham. But it didn't destroy the films for me.
Nor do I think it's presence is a sign of a hugely different approach to the source material. From what I've read, Tauriel existed in Del Toro's version. I've also read that the "studio" pushed for a "Love triangle". I didn't see much of a love triangle myself and the Tauriel/Kili thing would have been served with some restraint and keeping it down a bit.
@ markkur
That was not what I intended. Folks will have fun even when they do something they would rather not. To me, there is a big difference in the Spirit of the two sets of movies. As PJ stated at the TOR celebration "he was worried about letting the fans down." Do you actually believe that was the case this time around? I don't and for me, it reveals horribly in the tale; i.e. JRRT's wonderful scene between Bilbo and Smaug (arguably one of the most important in the book) is one long walk into "milking" that totally destroyed the author's intent.But "splatter" is PJ's background and there's no need to overlook that here; I think it comes out in spades.
I don't see all that much difference between the Bilbo and Smaug scenes in book and film. The chase afterwards yes and that was too long and made Smaug look silly and incompetent.
The problem, and PJ even admits to this, was that when they decided to split into three films, they had to make some sort of climax to DOS as they had decided to have Smaug's death in the last film. So this chase was added at the last minute and it shows. Had DOS ended with Samug's death, the chase would not have been needed and Smaug could have left much as he did in the book, destroy Lake Town and die. Would probably have been better but the drawback is that people would ask themselves "Why is there a third film, the story is over."
As for Games being an influence. I don't see it at all.
The complaint "It looks like a Video Game" is one that I've seen made against a lot of films these past 15 years.
There are more effect in the Hobbit films sure but it is not like they were few in the LotR films.
Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor