[Kalimac]

I know this is a pretty divided issue, but it seemed to me that Arwen's characterization within the movie (how similar she was to the book character is another kettle of fish) was really well-done. It didn't seem to me that she was riding a horse and carrying a sword because it "made her look strong" - once she was in Rivendell and wearing long dresses with no swords in sight, she certainly didn't give the impression of having grown weaker. There was nothing particularly feminine or unfeminine about it; she was doing it because it was the sensible thing to when traveling out alone into a country like that. It's not unrealistic that she would know how to defend herself like that; for one thing she's had 3,000 years to practice, for another thing there's always Celebrian's fate to consider.<P>In a weird way the whole rider-Arwen thing reminded me of the way the early-medieval nomadic tribes worked (and probably later ones, haven't read about those). In those societies they bred horses for a living, and the girls were taught to ride and handle weapons alongside the boys not to make any sort of feminist statement (they certainly weren't considered equal in other ways) but simply because the way of life was so hard and the threat of attack so constant that every single person was needed to help defend the camp; it simply made no sense to handicap half the population for no good reason since it could lead the tribe being wiped out. And while the Elves certainly weren't living a bare-bones existence like that, their population had been decreasing slowly for a long time, and at that point in the story were pretty sure that their major strongholds were going to be attacked very soon. In a situation like that you're going to want to make sure that *every* able-bodied person capable of fighting knows how to do so. (Though it is hard to imagine Galadriel with a sword. OTOH even in the books there's a distinct impression that anyone who crosses her is going to be very unhappy afterwards).