Ladykat wrote:Lalaith-Elerrina wrote: But really, had she just been added in, and been there to balance out all the males, that wouldn't have been too much of a problem. However, when she became part of an extremely ham-fisted, implausible love triangle, that's when things went too far. That's when things became so obviously forced, that the story ceased to be real. Suspension of disbelief was gone; the movie no longer told a functional story; instead, it became something very two-dimensional that Peter Jackson created in New Zealand in a movie studio, with a few shots in the countryside, in order to make money for New Line Cinema et al.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I have no problem with a strong female character---after all, LOTR had Eowyn----but that moronic love triangle nonsense was hard to watch. It added nothing to the story in my opinion.
LK
Thank you! Her creation itself was not pointless. But what happened with her character made the story forced and dysfunctional, and ultimately implausible.
Below, is an essay I wrote for my blog. It doesn’t encompass all my thoughts on The Hobbit movies, but it does go into much of what I got from the character of Tauriel and how that character moved and interacted with situations and other characters within the movie.
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When I first heard of her, I admit I was very wary of Tauriel’s inclusion in The Hobbit movies. She isn’t a canon character, first and foremost, and what her inclusion meant, I didn’t know, which made me very nervous. Additionally, her character came across as a little too perfect, and too constructed. She’s only around 600, very young for an elf, and roughly the equivalent of about 20 in our years, yet she was the captain of the guard. And that didn’t seem realistic, or organic.
However, truth be known, had she simply been there as a balance to the male-heavy story, she wouldn’t have hurt anything. In fact, Tauriel could have been a good non-canon female character; a strong, brave character to give females, including myself, someone to look up to, and root for.
Instead, despite her potential, she immediately became defined by males around her rather than being independent by becoming a romantic interest in a very rushed cross-species relationship. (Elves and humans are not different species; they are different races, being the first and second born of Ilúvatar; dwarves, fashioned by Aulë are a different species entirely.) Additionally, it began with a very disrespectful comment from the dwarf half of the relationship when he asked her to look down his pants. Oddly, this seemed to be remedied and negated by a short conversation about a rock Kili’s mom gave him, and how pretty the stars were. With this, impressionable girls who could have learned a lot of powerful, positive ideas from Tauriel, instead get the false, and dangerous impressions that one- romance doesn't have to take time as long as you simply find the other person attractive, and two- if a man says suggestive, crude things to you, it must mean he really likes you. (It wasn’t a terribly helpful message for boys, either.)
In reality, real love always takes time, and it is always accompanied by regard and respect. Without the time to truly get to know who someone really is, and without respect, it isn’t real. Ever. Certainly one can be attracted immediately to someone he or she doesn't know, and certainly a person can feel compassion for someone one doesn't know, but the ability to know someone soul deep enough to feel honest, real romantic love for that person takes time and is always accompanied by respect. The idea that real love can be rushed was a very negative and destructive idea to give girls, along with the idea that all a woman is good for, is to be someone's romantic interest, since Tauriel becomes so immediately with her introduction into the story and is defined that way all through the story.
Additionally, the dwarf on elf romance was not plausible or natural any more than a human on gorilla romance would be. 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 people.
When one part of a story shows itself to be forced, it creates a cascade effect, and makes the entire story implausible. If, for example, Tauriel and her relationships show themselves to be constructs of the movie director’s choices rather than being something the characters would do on their own if they were real people, then that in turn, means that Bilbo and Thorin, Galadriel and Beorn, Gandalf and Legolas, and everything and everyone else in this universe is false and forced as well, no matter how well they act in their parts. (And there was some great acting in the Hobbit movies.)
All fiction is, of course, fiction. It isn’t real. But the storymakers of fiction have the obligation to create and sustain the illusion of reality. If they are successful in doing that, then their audience is able to suspend its disbelief. When they create relationships and situations that are not natural and organic, as with the situation with Tauriel and Kili, the illusion of reality is destroyed.
Tauriel could easily have been a great addition to the movies, giving girls a strong heroine to look up to, and emulate even though she isn't canon. She could have been a character who added and complemented the story, helping from her position as a supporting character, to move the story of Bilbo along. But that did not happen.