Missing Gil-Galad Scenes
 

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, though I searched for a thread on this subject and can't find one here.

There seems to be a lot of pictures of Gil-Galad on the net which never made it into even the Director's Cut of the prologue of "The Fellowship of the Ring":

http://www.council-of-elrond.com/cas.../gilgalad3.jpg

http://www.council-of-elrond.com/cas.../gilgalad4.jpg

http://www.council-of-elrond.com/cas.../gilgalad7.jpg

I'm assuming that these scenes were actually filmed, but were cut and left on the editing floor for some reason. Does anyone know if this footage can be viewed somewhere? Anywhere? I'd love to see Gil-Galad in action with Aeglos.

I would have liked to see more of Gil'galad, too.

But I'm not sure if we're ever going to see more than what we've seen in the EE Fellowship Prologue.

You get to have a bit more of Gil in terms of music, though.

Which song version of the poem do you prefer?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDZhO...response_watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pOH1...eature=related

Best Regards

Neither - for me the perfect rendition is by William Nighy, playing Sam in the BBC Radio LotR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BquuEMC0ei8

I'll have to agree with davem. Though the first of Dakêsîntrah's links isn't too bad. :cool:

I've always wanted to start a band that'll use Tolkien's poetry as lyrics, but then again I can never play an instrument to save my life. :o

Inevitable nitpicking: are these the shining armour that could be seen from afar, and the shield that mirrored the countless stars of heaven's field? Both could do with some polishing (nice design, though).
And for my taste, he looks much too - shall we say, well into middle age for an immortal Elf; that's rather the kind of face I'd have liked to see on Aragorn. I realize it's difficult to get that ageless look right with mortal actors, and I guess it's OK for a Half-elven like Agent Elrond to show some wrinkles, but I'll always imagine Elves in eternal youth except for that ancient wisdom in their eyes. (Cate Blanchett's Galadriel is the only movie Elf who hits the nail on the head for me.)

Of Dakêsîntrah's* links, I prefer the second one - it feels more elegiac to me, and also has the merit of giving more weight to the words (literally), whereas the other one, although beautiful, tends to blur the consonants for the sake of a smooth melody. And somehow I feel a male voice more appropriate for a warrior's dirge.
But I also have to agree that davem's link beats them both.

*Please, may I simply call you Dak (or whatever abbreviation you prefer)? Those circumflexes drive me crazy... But no doubt our Ibrîniðilpathânezel (look, I did it!) will be pleased that there's finally a new Downer whose name is almost as hard to type as hers.;)

Well, everybody was looking pretty grubby by that point. Maybe the shield, like everyone on the field of battle, needed a bath.

I'll agree with the actor looking too old, though. I could understand casting an older actor if the role was going to be difficult and the lines would sound incongruous coming out of the mouth of an apparently callow youth, but near as I can tell, they never intended for Gil-galad to say anything. Or if they did, it wasn't going to be much. Perhaps, amid the myriad other peculiar notions Jackson and Co. got from what they read of the books, they had the notion that all dark-haired male Elves must look craggy. The costume designers did find a nice way of incorporating a version of Tolkien's own rendering of Gil-galad's sigil, without making it look like medieval heraldic arms.

I have my own notion of what the tune to the Gil-galad song must've sounded like; it came into my head during a reading of the books while I was in college, closing in on 40 years ago, and got incorporated into a medley I wrote for a composition class a few years later. I always thought that the tune could not have been too difficult or "pompous," since Sam is the one who remembers and sings it, but then, since he learned it from Bilbo, it's possible that what Sam sang was Bilbo's tune, not the Elves'. I think the medley is somewhere amid the MIDI tunes on my website, but heaven knows what it sounds like on other peoples' computers.

And did you manage to type my name without needing to go into an outside program, or otherwise do a copy and paste? :D

I always hear the songs in my head to Stephen Oliver's tunes, & I think Bill Nighy's singing is 'perfect' (btw, one of my greatest Down's related sadnesses is that we never got to finish our listen through of the series - http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=14646 - particularly after Brian Sibley's gracious appearance on the thread). Nighy sang it exactly as I felt Sam would have done.

In the book Elves, & the past generally, have a kind of romantic aura about them - the battles may have been terrible, many may have been slain, but there is never a sense that the Elves ever got their armour tarnished, or their tunics grubby.... They are always surrounded by a kind of ethereal 'glow'. One of the biggest mistakes Jackson made was to show those events, rather than merely referring to them as happens in the book. Our place is with the folk who live at the end of the Third Age, looking back to the terrible & glorious, but long distant, past - we should not be 'present' at those events.

Well, there must have been some younger actors out there who didn't look quite as bland as Orlando Bloom!:D
Agreed, that was well done.
I did (as a matter of pride)! And I think I've listened to that medley of yours (as indeed to most of the music on your website, by now), but I've got to go back to it one of these days and hear what you did with that particular song. Anyway, you've got yourself a new fan!

Exactly. That's one of the things PJ just didn't understand - that Elves (as I don't know who said so very rightly on I don't know which thread, but it was something to do with Tolkien illustrations) 'aren't just sexy people with pointed ears'. Where, in all of the movie trilogy, is that shimmer, like the light of the moon above the rim of the hills before it rises, which seemed to fall about their feet?
And that's one of the (many) things Ralph Bakshi did right when he decided to film his historical prologue in silhouettes rather than full animation like the rest of the story. Maybe, if PJ had to show those events at all, he could have done better by using black and white and a blurred lens, or something of the like... but that wouldn't have been as spectacular, I suppose :(.

Jackson supposedly "forgot" that Glamdring was an Elven sword that would shine in the presence of evil, too. Seems to me he rather conveniently forgot just about anything that would dignify any race that was not Mortal. *sigh*

And I've got another fan, eh? Good, that makes about... a dozen...? :D

Hey, thanks for the replies.

Apologies, Andsigil, for somewhat changing the topic, but I thought it might be an appropriate time to squeeze in the music aspect of it. :D

And yes, davem, I wholeheartedly agree, after watching your preferred version, that it is indeed the superior one. I thought Sean Astin was singing that for a second...

Thank you Pitchwife, for the amusement and kind words. You have excellent points about PJs apparent inaccuracies regarding how Gilgalad and the Elves should have looked.

And, Ibrin, it's awesome that you make music like this. I hope you don't mind I took a peek at your profile and went to your webpage. I listened to some of your music...and it's beautiful! Great work! And..you have yourself another fan!

Best Regards

That's okay. All of the discussion keeps this thread bumped to the top, which increases my chances of someday seeing the lost Gil-Galad scenes. :)

Well... (if you're willing to ignore the uncanonicity)

As long as I count as one. ;)

For a scene like that, I'm willing to forgive PJ & co one or two of their minor blunders. Is that from the Extended Edition? Quite nice... if only we could have seen more of the like.

(On second thought, however - Wood Elves? Wood Elves??? Hrrrgnnn...:mad:
...
OK, I'm done foaming at the mouth. But seriously - what would have been the problem with having Frodo say 'High Elves'? Same word length, same number of syllables, wouldn't have taken any precious screentime from Aragorn snogging with his horse. Except that it would have been correct. I guess that had to be avoided at all cost.:rolleyes:)

There, there *passes a virtual cup of tea*

And yes, it is from the FotR EE (back when the Extended Editions were all, "Here, book fans, have something closer to canon" instead of "I didn't have time for this in the theatrical version!"). The song (which I love) is also available on the complete soundtracks, along with the "Frodo does the chicken dance" track.