I won’t go so far as to say that the film versions of The Lord of the Rings changed the world, but I think it could be posited that they changed the world’s perceptions of fantasy. All of a sudden, those who never knew a dungeon from a dragon were discussing hobbits, wizards, dwarves, and elves. The films made fantasy fans out of those who knew nothing of fantasy.
Of course, there was a steadfast group of Tolkien devotees who knew of the story as a book before it was a film trilogy, many of whom took umbrage at the fact that their — THEIR — story was now filmic fodder for the unwashed masses. These Tolkienites appointed themselves watchdogs of the epic, challenging everything they read on the internet about the films’ progress during production. However, when the films debuted, they were, for the most part, satisfied at the immense achievement of the director Peter Jackson and the entire team who brought the films to life.
There was, however, one problem. And it got very ugly.
As discussed in a previous article, there was a brief scene in the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, in which a minor character, Glorfindel, is replaced by another minor character, Arwen (played by Liv Tyler), in a roughly three-minute long rescue sequence. She comes on horseback, picks up the wounded hobbit Frodo, is pursued by evil wraiths, and calls upon the power of Rivendell to cause a river to wash away said wraiths.
A little later, as in the book, she has a quiet romantic moment with another hero, Aragorn. Then the titular fellowship leave Rivendell, and we don’t see her again. Her part is a cameo at most.
And when a certain subsection of fans saw this, they went ballistic.
But why? Having Arwen sub in for Glorfindel is far from the only change made to the story. There are others that are far more obvious: the absence of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Wight sequence, Frodo’s reduced age, the lack of music and poetry that make the books so charming, and the completely revised characters of Merry and Pippin.
So why zero in on Arwen in particular?
The answer is obvious to everyone except those who hated the changes to Arwen’s character. And that answer is simple, old-school sexism.
Tolkien didn’t put many women into his epic. Of the scores of characters in Lord of the Rings, only four of them are female, and one of those females is a giant spider. It’s a boys’ story, where men perform all of the major action, with the exception of Eowyn’s slaying of the Witch King. And it seemed like a lot of anemic nerds wanted it to stay that way.
In the extended version of The Two Towers, Merry and Pippin are about to be swallowed up by the wicked Old Man Willow when Treebeard, the Ent, arrives in the nick of time and saves them, saying to the beastly Willow, “Eat Earth…Dig Deep…Drink Water…Go to sleep.” This moment also occurred in the books, but rather than Treebeard, their savior was Tom Bombadil.
This is exactly the same as what happened in the first film with Arwen, yet not a peep was heard from the fans. Why? Because Arwen is a woman, and Treebeard is a…well, okay, he’s a walking tree, but he’s a walking tree that’s also a dude.
The elf Legolas, an extremely minor character in the book The Return of the King, had a ridiculously huge hero moment in the film version of Return, in which he toppled a Mumak (basically an elephant the size of a skyscraper). He climbed up the side of its body using the arrows that had pierced its hide, slew numerous enemies riding atop it, killed the beast, and then surfed down its trunk as it died, naturally landing on his feet. This is not a revised episode from the book, but rather invented wholly from scratch for the film. And what was the reaction of those same people who called for the beheading of Liv Tyler for sullying the pristine beauty of Tolkien’s work?
“Dude, Legolas is AWESOME!”
What amazes me is the number of excuses I’ve heard people make to allow the filmmakers their wiggle room, and yet Arwen consistently gets thrown to the wolves. When you step back and look at the films, you realize that the only plausible reason for people to single out that one, small alteration among many is because it cast a woman in a more proactive, heroic role, and that is clearly a mortal sin.
So I’m calling you out, nerds. It’s time to knock it off. If you ever want to actually get a girlfriend, you need to get with the times, and backing off of Arwen is a good place to start.
Incidentally, in the original script, Arwen was written into the battle at Helm’s Deep, arriving with Haldir’s troops. This allowed a brief reunion for her and Aragorn, before the film kicked into high gear with its awesome climax. I only wished they had kept this is in the film, because personally I would have loved to see Arwen and Aragorn fighting side by side, laying the smackdown on some Orcs. Alas, it was not meant to be, although they did film some of it. (Andif you have a keen eye and a few minutes to spare, you can catch a glimpse of footage of this in the bonus features on The Two Towers Extended Edition. You’re welcome.)
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For some of us hardcore LOTR fans, we love the books, and enjoyed the movie because we got to live in Middle Earth for about 12 hours. I was bothered some because of the narrative changes Jackson and crew made to the plot, but it had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with sexism. If anything, it was reverse sexism. The idea that if they made a film adaptation that was faithful to the books, they had to increase the role of a couple female characters or it wouldn’t sell. That’s bogus! Women have been enjoying reading LOTR for over 50 years. I wish Jackson would have simply eliminated the parts of the story he didn’t have time to tell, and not make stuff up. That doesn’t mean I’m sexist (I was deeply moved when Eowyn killed the Witch-King), rather, to quote Tom Shippley in the appendices of the DVD’s, “turns out Professor Tolkien knew what he was doing.”
Lay off it will ya? Seriously. As soon as a woman is given any sort of grief, the interwebs are filled with forums like this. Live Tyler getting rumbled in the reviews was obviously because she was a women given a role of power, and not because that role was poorly written and poorly acted. She served very little purpose in the books, save to say that Aragorn had something to get all emo about, and she was essentially just there as eye candy for the movies (seriously, find me a nerd who didnt think she was the hottest thing to appear on screens and i’ll show you a gay nerd). As for people who keep going on about movies being different from books, well of course they are. They’re a different medium. If I wanted an exact representation of the book, I’d read the book. The movie is meant to be a visual interpretation of the book, and therefore can be changed. Hell, I didnt see a Hobbit battle at the end of the 3rd movie, did you?
Block of f—ing cheese
“it’s great to show her as being powerful, but why does that power have to translate into combat prowess?”
It’s not just Arwen who is afflicted by this. One of the big contrasts in LotR (the books) is between “men of wisdom” and “men of action”, best seen between Boromir and Faramir. Also Aragorn and Denethor, and Gandalf and Saruman. Tolkein’s story is full of powerful people who choose not to seek glory and power (Gandalf, Aragorn, Cirdan, Galadriel, Elrond) and play a supporting role (and distract the big bads) while lesser people (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Eowyn) do great deeds.
In contrast, the movies seem to want to push Aragorn especially into the “real action hero” role.
I greatly enjoyed the expansion of Arwen’s role (one of the few changes I did enjoy) in saving Frodo. It made narrative sense for a movie as well; why introduce and explain Glorfindel was when you could simply expand the role of another character who was already present.
But regarding Tolkien’s treatment of women in general, I can’t really think of a weak female in his writing. Females are sparse, but the ones that are there are powerful.
Galadriel - A Queen who is more akin to a Goddess. The gifts she gives are prescient and save the lives of Merry, Pippen, Sam and Frodo. Her insights are superhuman (superelven?) and her presence and control of the ring in her possession keeps Lothlorien safe.
Eowyn - Dude, she offed the WitchKing! Beyond that, she holds the family together (and by extension the kingdom) through the darkest times before Gandalf frees the king from the influence of Saruman.
Goldberry - she strikes me as almost being a Celtic river Goddess. We don’t get to see her powers really but I was left with a definite impression that a woman suitable for Bombadil would be a complex and powerful woman.
Shelob - the last offspring of the all devouring Ungoliant, the epitome of venomous selfishness. Not pleasant, but not weak either.
Arwen is the meekest of the bunch, but think about the choice she made. Only a strong person could make a choice to give up immortality for someone they loved, especially in light of the lonely centuries before passing away.
Tolkien gave us very few women in his stories, but the ones he did give were complex, full characters who tended to be very powerful and instrumental in the story.
I’m personally glad that they didn’t have Arwen fighting orcs: it’s great to show her as being powerful, but why does that power have to translate into combat prowess? Her skills lie elsewhere, and the movie shows her lending some aid to the War, from a distance. Xenification has almost become a cliche in the past decade; every lead woman in science fiction or fantasy has to be a skilled fighter. This has led to some great characters, but it’s not the only way to portray strong competent women.
As an aside, I don’t know what it says about me, but I always saw Merry and Pippin as being female– I knew they weren’t, but when I read the book or had it read to me, I tended to imagine them as girls. Merry’s name probably had a lot to do with it.
If you actually READ the books, you would know that they are not sexist in any way. This is just the case of needing a romance in the movies, that is all…nothing more. I do got a problem with letting Arwen take Glorfindel’s place rescuing Frodo. Glorfindel was one of the most powerful elven warriors in all of Tolkien’s works..there was probably no elf the Nazgul feared more than Glorfindel. The whole reason the Nazgul got swept away by the water in the Fords of Bruinen was because of Glorfindel was forcing them into the water by showing them his true form…in the movies I guess they just stood in the fords because they were retarded?
Other extra scenes of Arwen in the movies I have no problem with, some of them were even from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, I believe..it’s just the Frodo rescue scenes that bug me.
Well, big daddy, you only prove my point. No one’s saying the books were sexist (which I have read, several times). What I point out in the article is that the response from certain Tolkien fans who zero in on Arwen’s hero moment was sexist, seeing how the many, many other major changes to the story get mostly ignored.
I loved having more Arwen; her relegation to the appendices is one of the book’s main weaknesses. It’s also great that she got to be more active. Her subbing for Glorfindel was logical and welcome. But to bring her to Helm’s Deep would have been an unnecessary complication to a sequence that had enough going on already, and it’s probably best that they didn’t.
I absolutely agree that the problems a certain sort of fanboy had were driven by sexism.
More Arwen was fine by me. I also would have been happy to see her take part in the battle, rather than just be a “prize” to be awarded to Aragorn following his victory over the evil orcs.
I can only vaguely recall the original “outcry” at Arwen’s additional inclusion and it seemed to boil down to people complaining about Arwen being made into a Xena-esque character. Given that Eowyn was a “warrior princess” in the original novels, I didn’t really understand the outrage directed towards expanding Arwen’s role (quite minimally).
Well said, Agent. In the bonus features for Fellowship, there’s an interview with Liv Tyler where she talks about being reduced to tears by the things people wrote online. Turns out misogynistic nerds and the anonymity of the internet are a lousy combination.
Excellent. One of the big problems with classic fantasy is the we sexism–even stuff from the 80 and 90s.
I agree…utterly and completely. I’m glad they gave Arwen a bigger part and a chance to be tough; though maybe that’s just because I’m a woman and feel that women were not represented well enough in the books. However, I realize that it was written at a different time and even with that flaw is still one of the best things I have ever read. I will say that my favorite moment of the books was Eowyn’s riposte to the witch king “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman…”. However the movie line was much better “I AM NO MAN.” is totally something Xena would say! Ala-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!
I agree. I don’t like the books, and the changes for the film were for the best (although I like how the SMP’s plans to join Frodo better than I do the films).
Word!
oh god yessss