Missing Gil-Galad Scenes

[davem]

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.

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

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.)

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.