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The Lord of the Rings will forever be one of the greatest film trilogies to ever hit the silver screen. Not counting The Hobbit movies, The Lord of the Rings changed the landscape of adapting classic novels to the big screen. Though one member of the Fellowship didn't quite live up to his novel counterpart. Legolas, played by Orlando Bloom, didn't really have a whole lot to do in The Lord of the Rings, besides killing some orcs and looking cool while doing it.
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You have my sword
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And you have my bow. And my axe. This is the only line in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in which Legolas speaks directly to Frodo
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Five words across nine hours of runtime, eleven if you're watching the extended editions
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and we can't even be sure our intrepid hobbit knows Legolas' name by the end of the whole ordeal since he never says it
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This is only an admittedly hilarious symptom of the larger, more serious problem at play
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In J.R.R. Tolkien's books, the elves of Middle-earth are an unendingly interesting race of beings that manage to be both impish rascals and ethereal enigmas
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They laugh, they sing, they drink to excess, and they wax poetic about the nature of their eternal lives
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Though he did an excellent job bringing them to the big screen, Peter Jackson's versions of these characters lean a little further into mystical god-like territory
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Jackson's elves are capable of astonishing supernatural feats, and would never suffer the indignation of drinking themselves under the table
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At least, until the Hobbit movies. The point remains that some of the most interesting characters in the movies are elves
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But Legolas? The elven branch of the Fellowship? He's not one of them
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Legolas Greenleaf of the Woodland Realm, son of King Thranduil, Prince of Mirkwood, and Master of Squinting Pensively into the Distance
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Everyone's favorite Elven Archer possesses many complicated titles with their own equally
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complicated backstories. He is tied to a deep history written into the lore of Middle-earth
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and yet his character across all of the Lord of the Rings movies is stretched and thin
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like butter scraped over too much bread. Considering Jackson's trilogy is widely
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regarded as a masterpiece, it may be difficult to find fault in them, but even outstanding works
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like the Lord of the Rings have room for improvement. And Legolas' extreme physical
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prowess, the balking of his more jovial personality from the books, and the lack of real development
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make for one of the weakest points in the entire movie franchise. When Tolkien wrote The Lord of
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the Rings, he ended up establishing a new baseline for elves in high fantasy. Long-living elves who
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are fleet of foot live in forests and distrust other races may seem like an all-too-common trope
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today but in 1954 this was fairly new ground Tolkien was lightly trotting on All that Legolas is in the movies comes back to Tolkien original vision But in the almost 50 years between the book publication and the first Lord of the Rings movie
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audiences had plenty of time to familiarize themselves with similar characters from other properties
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When Legolas shows up in 2001's Fellowship of the Ring doing something like this
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it's undeniably cool. But it isn't novel the way it had been when Tolkien first conceived the character
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Especially considering Aragorn is right there with him keeping pace, the movies had to find a way to differentiate Legolas from the other skilled warriors of the Fellowship
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So, Jackson stepped up the elven action to make it more impressive
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This, along with Jackson's action-oriented style, is why we got the shield-surfing moment in Helm's Deep in Two Towers
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and the Oliphant takedown in Return of the King. No longer is Legolas a competent elf who honed his craft over hundreds of years of practice
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He's a superhero capable of impossible feats of strength, accuracy, and balance. He's a one-man
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army that puts even the other elves to shame. Even though some of these shots make for more
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memorable visuals, they ultimately detract from the experience. What are meant to be serious
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battle scenes become comical opportunities to see superpowers on display, and for no other reason
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than to remind us that Legolas is cool. This idea is elevated to insane levels of self-parody
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in the Hobbit movies. Unlike in The Lord of the Rings, these sorts of scenes are often tied
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inextricably to the plot rather than being exciting little detours during important moments
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What's worse is that Legolas had no business being in the Hobbit movies to begin with, which
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makes these death-defying stunts all the more unnecessary. The problem is, outside of his combat expertise
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what does Legolas actually bring to the story? The answer to that is he brings virtually nothing
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That's a glaring issue in the Hobbit movies, but it was also present during the Lord of the Rings trilogy
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Orlando Bloom's performance as the Elven Prince has long been a point of contention amongst fans
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To give the then 24-year-old actor his due, he didn't have much to work with
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As written in the movies, Legolas has very little in the way of a personality
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In the books he is often portrayed as a lighthearted jokester who playfully taunts the other members of the Fellowship and offers up songs of joy or lament when the need arises In the movies particularly the theatrical cuts Legolas is a staunchly emotionless rock for most of his screen time
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just like the rest of the elves. Even in the scenes which are meant to be his most passionate
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he says every line with the same bored tone. Forgive me. I was wrong to despair
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The extended editions add several scenes which give him moments of much-needed levity
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but they are few and far between, and don't really do much to make it feel like Legolas
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is anything other than an ancient being who's tired and just trying to get a job done
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43. He was already dead. He was twitching. Even more dire than his lack of personality is his lack of any form of character development
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The only trait Legolas has which he gets to overcome is his hatred of dwarves
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It's true that the exchange between him and Gimli in Return of the King will forever bring a tear to our eyes
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I thought I'd die fighting side by side with an elf. What about side by side with a friend
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His growing fondness for Gimli is heartwarming, and it serves as a reminder of what this fellowship could mean for the future
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that being stronger bonds between the races of Middle-earth, and a new era of peace
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But a single friendship between an elf and a dwarf does not make up for ages of resentment
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and even if it did, Gimli's relationship with Galadriel fulfills a similar role
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The same can be said for Legolas' admiration towards Aragorn, which on the surface looks like a pretty straightforward echo of his friendship with Gimli
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Over the course of three movies, you'd expect Legolas to become more devoted to the future king
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or maybe even doubt him. But he was already a loyal friend at the start of their journey
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and any conflict between them is fleeting. The true mark of the elves' acceptance of Aragorn comes from the relationship between him and Elrond
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which Legolas has no part in. For the most part, the rest of the Fellowship takes a much more active role in the story
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Boromir shows us the esoteric power of the ring and completes his own self-sacrificing arc
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Aragorn smooths political tensions, finds the kingly resolve to lead armies, and is finally installed on the throne with Arwen at his side
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Frodo inspires the others and carries the ring. Sam carries the entire operation
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And Gandalf? Well, he's Gandalf. Even Merry and Pippin orchestrate the last march of the Ents
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Legolas and to a lesser extent Gimli makes a friend But even Gimli got to ruminate on the loss of his kinsmen in the Mines of Moria and charm the Lady of the Woods with a humble yet
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significant request for a strand of her hair. Other than taking down enemies with aforementioned
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super strength and skill, Legolas is practically useless. He's so useless that they resort to
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making him an exposition machine in order to give him a few additional lines
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They're taking the hobbits to Isengard! It doesn't help that a lot of Legolas' most important beats in the books
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happen in the appendices of The Return of the King, and we saw next to none of it in the movies
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Considering the direct impact many of the other characters had on the story of Lord of the Rings
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Legolas' contributions seem almost laughable by comparison. But it didn't have to be this way
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The Lord of the Rings movies took liberties with several characters from the books
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The screenplays written by Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens were intended to make the story fit a more traditional Hollywood structure
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Aragorn was given a self-defeating attitude to overcome, and Glorfindel was removed from the plot to strengthen Arwen's character
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A wedge was driven between Frodo and Sam for some extra dramatic tension
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and some characters were erased entirely to make room for growth in our main cast
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Whether all those changes were for the better is up to the individual viewer
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However, they helped to illustrate the point. Legolas could have been given more time and attention
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There was an attempt to do this in the Hobbit trilogy, where they gave him a terrible love triangle plotline
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but again, Legolas shouldn't have been there. The most obvious way the Lord of the Rings movies could have developed Legolas is through his relationship with Aragorn
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Had Legolas shown any level of distrust or doubt in Aragorn before their argument in the Battle of Rohan
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Legolas' apology would have been more poignant. It would have shown Legolas to be an imperfect and skeptical person
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who needed to learn to put his hope and faith into his friend
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Alternatively, he could have wrestled with his own legacy as the son of Thranduil
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and come to terms with what responsibilities he may have to take on after the war
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If he willingly took those responsibilities on, he could have been an example to Aragorn
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Instead, Legolas befriends a dwarf and kills a lot of orcs. It's a testament to how incredible the movies are that
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despite the hollowness of one of their main characters, they're still incredible works of art
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