June 21, 2003

Cast Choices - The Elves of P.J.
Bob Praz

Just want to add my opinion (yes, again) to the whole "cast choice discussion", about the elves in particular. I think the ENTIRE cast was brilliant. I know a lot of movie reviews say the same, but it’s true. Of course, the characters on screen will never be the exact ones in the book, but a for the movie, we could not have asked for a better cast. If P.J. had made the elves exactly as they were in the book, they would probably be always bathed in light (not literally, but you get the point), and they would sing, dance, and laugh more. But Jackson was trying to make the elves feel REAL, as well as making them believable. If they were too joyous, not to mention if they were covered in light all the time, they would seem too surreal, too much, in fact, like they would in a fairy tale, which Jackson was trying to avoid. By making them more serious, and more down-to-earth, he was giving them depth and wisdom, which Tolkien definitely wanted his elves to let across in the book more than anything else, I think. Of course, if there had been more time to spare within the movie, maybe we could have then seen the lighter side of the elves, but that’s obviously not the case.
I’d also like to say that I think Liv Tyler is underappreciated, simply because of her reputation outside the movie. Liv is not taken seriously because when we think of her, we think of star, a model, and a pretty face that plays the other guy’s girlfriend in every movie. But Liv Tyler has brought a gracefulness and sadness to Arwen that I never expected her to be capable of. If you only think of how you’re used to seeing her when you watch her in the movie, then you’ll never appreciate how she brought a character to life, which until then had had little life.
And Hugo Weaving, although I admit I was also skeptical about his casting in the beginning (perhaps mainly because of his serious and somewhat unfriendly appearance), has also impressed me. Elrond is much more serious in the movie, just as Galadriel is much more mysterious, and therefore more frightening, but he conveys the emotion that Jackson needed him to convey. In the movie, Elrond is really the guy who brings to us the dark, harsh, cold reality of what is going on in Middle-Earth. Both at the Council and when he talks to Gandalf he basically keeps our attention on the gravity of the whole matter of the ring which, with the hobbits or even with Gandalf, is never presented to us as it truly is. He is the voice of experience and the voice of logic, because in the movie that’s the only side of him we have time to see.
As for the rest of the cast, I’ll just say that I love in particular the performances of Elijah Wood, Ian Mckellen, and Viggo Mortensen; when I read the book, I can’t picture their characters in any other way than their portrayal.