Continued. I just have a lot of feelings about Tauriel...
OK, now on to part one million of this post, The Great Tauriel Debate. When I started writing this post, I hadn't seen The Desolation of Smaug. I was still undecided as to whether I wanted Tauriel in the movies or not. When I first heard about her, I was really, REALLY not into the idea of her at all. I didn't want a completely non-canon main character anywhere
near those movies and I even felt a little bit betrayed by PJ,
who'd done such an incredible job at staying faithful to The Lord of the Rings, that he would write in a completely new character. It didn't bother me at all that Galadriel, Saruman and Radagast made appearances in An Unexpected Journey, and even if I wasn't all that into the idea of Azog, who in canon wasn't even alive during the events of The Hobbit, I could get past it. But I hated the idea of a new character.
BUT
(yep, another "but"), after having seen the new movie no less than
three times and reading interviews with Peter Jackson and Philippa
Boyens, I have completely changed my opinion of her and the reasons she
was written into the story. Something I never thought about was that
there are no female characters in The Hobbit. I know this is
contrary to everything I've said in Part 1, but I'm not going to deny it or
not acknowledge it. That fact in itself doesn't bother me hugely. It's a
great story and just because there are no women in it doesn't necessarily mean that
Tolkien is sexist. But it's still true and Peter Jackson took
the opportunity to change that. I think what people need to remember is
that these movies are adaptations. They don't pretend to stick 100% to the books and quite frankly, they'd be pretty boring if they did. The Hobbit
works brilliantly as a book, but as a movie on its own it just wouldn't
work. So, we can't really attack PJ for adding stuff in (within reason, of course), making it a bit more
exciting and fleshing it out a bit. So, in terms of Tauriel as a new
character, I got over it. Now let's talk about why she is so fucking
badass (ooh swearing, that's a new one!) and why she is so good for this
movie franchise.
Let's start simply with her as an Éowyn-type
figure. She's a woman and she's head of the guard, and she can use a bow
almost as well as our old friend Legolas can. That in itself is pretty
damn impressive. But she's also way ahead of Legolas and Thranduil in
terms of her moral stance on the whole spiders and orcs and general
rumblings of war going on all over Middle Earth thing. Thranduil doesn't give a
damn as long as he manages to keep it out of his kingdom and, being his
son and presumably having a similar character and probably being heavily influenced by his father, Legolas starts out
thinking the same way. She's the one, though, who doesn't see it like
that, and who convinces Legolas that they have to care, that they have
to help. So, she's intelligent as well as good with weapons and
high-ranking in the Mirkwood army. So far, so great.
The one thing I've seen people
complain about since the movie's release, however, is the whole
Tauriel/Kíli/sort of Legolas thing. I get why this annoys people. Here's
a great female character with loads of potential, but she's also part
of a sort of love triangle (not sure whether it is or isn't, I can't
decide whether Legolas actually has feelings for her or whether he just
doesn't like dwarves and is pissed off she likes one). I understand all
this, but it doesn't bother me. Again, why shouldn't she have a thing
with a guy? It's not as if her thing with Kíli is an Aragorn and
Arwen scale romance. I mean, we're not even sure she's got real feelings
for him or if it's just a sort of crush-type thing. You have to bear in
mind as well that she's meant to be a very young elf, so is probably
less bothered about doing what is proper or respectable than Legolas and
most certainly Thranduil. I don't think the whole thing takes away from
her character at all, either. It even made me able to connect with her a little
bit more, showed us some of her emotions instead of her simply being an
action hero-type figure. Watch any superhero movie and there is always a
love interest. People never complain about that. My point is that I don't think it's as big of a deal as
some people make it out to be. She's allowed to be interested in men, it
shouldn't be viewed as a crime. And as for the whole "She walks in
starlight" thing, yes it's cheesy, but have you listened to most of what
Aragorn and Arwen say to each other in The Lord of the Rings?
These are the kinds of movies, I think, where there isn't really room to
be cynical, because you'll end up hating every second if you are. In
short, Tauriel is great and if she's looking for the dwarven D, I say
good for her, go get some.
I just realised that I forgot to talk about Lúthien and how she pretty much fucked Melkor up in The Silmarillion,
but maybe that's a post for another day. This one is getting way too
long already. So basically what I'm trying to argue here is that yes,
the women in Tolkien's work may be few and far between, but the ones
that are there (including newly invented ones) are pretty great
and should be treasured. You can say what you like about Tolkien's
inclusion of women in his stories, but there is absolutely no denying
that when he wrote the ones he did, he wrote them right.
