For some, the Lord of the Rings is a novel about adventure, for others it’s a novel about the way people change and develop in character when faced with adversity and for others its simply a book about the struggle between good and evil. And for some it is about the romance between Aragorn and Arwen, a mortal and immortal who shared love in both life and death. This weekend, the Hall of Fire is discussing the extended role of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring.
The romance between Aragorn and Arwen, the adversity and sacrifices faced by both lovers only comes to fruition in the Appendices of the Lord of the Rings, and is not as prominent in the tale of the War of the Ring itself. However, the beauty and sadness of the tale has often had Tolkien fans wishing it was more prominently interwoven into the War of the Ring. As Peter Jackson does not have the luxury of movie-goers reading the Appendices beforehand, he has done exactly that: made their romance more prominent than in the book on the silver screen.
Yet in doing so, PJ has had to tinker with the story in places to put the romance up their on the silver screen: if the romance is to be expanded, then the role of Arwen must be similarly expanded also. Also, he has had to use the information found in the Appendices and adapt them to the tale, sometimes having things take place in a different time frame to which they were originally written. In doing so, he has received praise from Tolkien fans with a big heart and hardcore fans who cry outrage for Arwen’s expansion.
So what do you think? Are you happy with what PJ has done in Fellowship of the Ring to portray the love of a mortal and immortal? Or could he have done it differently? Did the story merit inclusion into the film itself, and was the price of tinkering with Arwen’s character so greatly worth it? We want you to ask and answer these questions this weekend as we talk about the great love story of J.R.R Tolkien’s epic.
Upcoming Discussions:
Feb 09 & 10: Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins
Feb 16 & 17: The Misconcepted ‘Errors’ in FotR
Feb 23 & 24: The Needed and Wanted on the FotR DVD
Place:
#thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast
CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
Questions? Topics? Send ‘em here.
