To my mind, Tolkien's greatest failure is to omit any reference to Legolas as the hot Elf dude that he really is. He doesn't even describe Orl - er - I mean Legolas' hair colour! What's that all about!!??
And at one point, I think it's the bit about the big burning demon dude with the wings, he has Legolas wailing "Ai! Ai!" like a little girlie. Most uncool. This is not the amazingly good-looking guy with the never-ending supply of arrows and the cool stunts that we see in the films. I mean, why on earth did Tolkien leave out the shield-surfing and the Oliphaunt climbing? They were some of the best bits of the film. Instead Tolkien has him singing about some stream or chick or something and droning on about the nature of time and such stuff, rather than explaining some of the finer points of the plot. If I hadn't seen the films before I read this sub-standard adaptation, I would have, like, totally missed that the bit before the gates of the bad guy's land was supposed to be a diversion.
It's such a shame that Tolkien missed the point of Legolas' character completely ...
