I’m not a major Lord of the Rings fan. I read the books once, a long time ago, and I remember enjoying it, so I rented the movie on video. It’s an enjoyable enough adventure movie (though I can’t for the life of me imagine why wither it or Ian McKellen was nominated for an Oscar), and definitely most of the scenes rang a bell, and what didn’t at least fit well enough into the plot.
What seemed odd to me, though, was the scene where Galadriel, the Elvish witch, pretty much tries to bully Frodo into giving her the ring…then, after scaring the living daylights out of him, she backs off and says something like “I am still Galadriel”. Say what? What was she doing/trying to do? Did she want it or didn’t she? Was she merely testing her own strength of will, or Frodo’s, or what?
I know some of you guys are major Tolkein fans, so…help me out, please.
Remember at the start of the movie, when Frodo asks Gandalf to take the ring? He refuses, saying he would take it out of a desire to do good, but would end up doing evil.
It’s the same deal with Galadriel. She’s tempted to take the ring, even though she knows it would ultimately corrupt her. In the book there’s no uneeded special effects and booming voice, though. I liked the movie, but Prof. Tolkien’s version of this scene is far better than Mr. Jackson’s:
"‘For many long years I have pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. . . . . And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of a Dark Lord you would set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! . . . . All shall love me and despair!’
". . . . She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall … and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose voice was soft and sad.
‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.’"