Galadriel: Book vs Movie

gadriel is one of those characters who despite having very little screen time or page time I guess she generates so much conversation she's the elf that launched a thousand internet debates now some of these conversations may be due to um extenuating circumstances but even without that the character of Galadriel has always been a bit contentious and that's not just because of the fans her story underwent frequent and extreme revision well after the publication of The Lord of the Rings tolken just never seemed to quite be able to settle on who gadriel is and I think that makes it all the more interesting to compare and contrast her character from the book and from the movies especially since Peter Jackson's version of the character in some ways lines up with alternative Tolan versions of the character now I want to be clear that this is not a rings of Power video because quite frankly I don't really want to touch that with a 10-ft pole but towards the end I am going to discuss a little bit about the inherent problems with trying to adapt a character like gadriel in that Medium but you know what I would touch with a 10-ft pole or dare I say it an even shorter one the food from this video sponsor hellofresh as much as I love being a hobbit I do sometimes struggle to get in my Square seven meals a day between planning out meals looking for recipes buying food I am wiped out by elies but all of that has been made so much more manageable with the help of hellofresh America's number one meal kit hellofresh removes the hassle from cooking by shipping recipes and fresh pre-portioned ingredients right to your door so that you're only paying for what you need and these meals are fully customizable whether you're still mentally in summer and you're looking for something light and refreshing or if you're like me and you've already mentally moved on to October and you need something really hearty and if you're looking to meet health goals you can choose from over 30 protein smart and calorie smart recipes each week and as we all know plans change and life gets busy but luckily hellofresh allows you to easily customize your delivery from week to week you can adjust your delivery date and even skip weeks if you're not going to be home if you want to give hellofresh a try click the link in my description or use my code right here to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life that means one free breakfast item per box while your subscription is active if you're in the US and if you're outside the US your local discount will apply thanks so much to all of you for checking out my sponsors when I have them it's how I'm able to keep doing what I love and thank you to hellofresh for sponsoring this video gadriel was born before the Sun and the Moon in the years of the trees when the elves still lived in peace and Harmony in the Holy place of valanor she's the daughter of the Noor elf Lord finarfin and she was known far and wide for her strength her wisdom and her overpowering beauty the name gadriel translates to Maiden crowned with a Garland of bright Radiance a reference to her astonishing hair it was said to be as gold as the warm light radiating from the great tree laurelin shot through with the shimmering silver of Tel perion in her these most holy lights mingled and Blended together becoming something even more profoundly beautiful but she wasn't just beautiful Tolen writes she was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic Feats ages later when the fellowship meets her in her kingdom of lth lauran her beauty and prowess have matured into something even more staggering on two chairs beneath the bowl of the tree and canopied by living bow there sat side by side kelborn and Galadriel very tall they were and the lady no less tall than the Lord and they were grave and beautiful they were clad wholly in White and the hair of the lady was of deep gold but no sign of age was upon them unless it were in the depths of their eyes for these were Keen as lances in the Starlight and yet profound the wells of deep memory I actually think that the movie and Peter Jackson and his team did a really good job of capturing the sheer Transcendent beauty of Galadriel Director of Photography Andrew lesny actually set up a panel of little fairy lights or Christmas lights in these shots so that when we get close up of galadriel's eyes we see this sea of shimmering light the light of the two trees of valanor reflected in her memory and I think that this role was perfectly cast Kate Blanchet finds a really great balance between ethereal inhuman Beauty and very grounded power and command her costume is highly textural these layers of different white fabric so even though it is monotone even though it is only one color it has so much depth and texture it feels real from head to toe she simply radiates light every time she's on screen they didn't give Galadriel a particularly deep voice which the books mention that she has a voice that's deeper than most women's but cap Blanchet has such an open and resonant vocal tone that I I still think it gets the point across but we do start to see some differences once you compare and contrast what gadriel actually says in the book where there's more time and space for her to speak she is very selective with her words she says to the fellowship I will not give you counsel saying do this or do that for not in doing or contriving nor in choosing between this course and another can I Avail but only in knowing what was and is and in part also what shall be but this I say to you your quest stands upon the edge of a knife stray but a little and it will fail to the RO ruin of all yet hope remains while all the company is true later on at the mirror she clarifies I do not counsel you one way or the other I am not a counselor you may learn something and whether what you see be fair or evil that may be profitable and yet it may not seeing is both good and perilous this emphasis and this amount of specification cannot be found in the movies but I find it to be a very important Nuance in the greater context of the story Gandalf has just fallen in kazad Doom his entire role was to be a counselor to be a guide it was literally what he was put on the earth to do but it is not so for gadriel she'll offer you knowledge she'll tell you what she knows using her Hind and foresight but she's not the new gandal her role is different as she says seeing can be both good and perilous and it's not up to her to tell you which one is which she can lend you her sight she can give you knowledge but she cannot tell you what to do with it the movies don't have these lines outright instead I I think they scape by just by implying it everything about gadriel the pedestal that she's on her inhuman glow the reaction of breathless speechless awe that we see from the fellowship all of these are visual cues to us as the audience that she is not the new gandal she's not a particularly warm or outright friendly character she's offering them shelter but she's also offering them warnings she gets around to telling them that the quest stands on the edge of a knife but everything about the reactions to that it shows how much of a blow this is to the already crumbling confidence and friendship of the fellowship I think it's fair to say that the galadrial of the books is far more light-hearted and openly friendly than the gadriel of the movies she smiles she sings and in earlier drafts of the story tolken was planning on having her laugh when froto presents her with the ring tolken ended up giving this scene a bit more sincere gravitas but he still chooses his words very carefully you will give me the ring freely in place of the dark lord you will set up a queen and I shall not be dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night Fair as the sea and the Sun and the snow upon the mountain Dreadful as the Storm and The Lightning stronger than the foundations of the earth All Shall love me and despair she lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark she stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement and beautiful beyond enduring terrible and worshipful then she let her hand fall and the light faded and suddenly she laughed again and low she was shrunken a slender elf woman clad in simple white whose gentle voice was soft and sad I passed the test she said I will diminish and go into the west and remain Galadriel in the mouth of gadriel these words are not the ramblings of a Madman she says that she will be beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night this means something because she was there when day and night were invented when the sun and the moon were put into the sky she knows how stunningly blindingly beautiful light can be and how paralytically terrifying the dark is she has seen the waves and lightning tear the great human city of numor and all its thousands of souls under the sea from her viewpoint on the precipice of History above all of time and space Galadriel would become everything she would be the Pinnacle of both Beauty and horror shining so brightly that the rest of the world around her would be plunged Into Darkness the ring takes who you are and enhances it and gadriel is already so ancient and so primally powerful that with the ring she would become so much more to overcome this temptation to overcome the draw of the ring she must sacrifice that part of herself she must bow her head head and accept her destined role in creation not as the Arbiter of truth and light but simply as gadriel the tone of this scene in the movie does differ in order to capture this sudden magnification of power they went more for like the scary route and although it's different I still think it works pretty well gadriel becomes a point of Radiance as the rest of the light around her goes out but instead of the pure white light that we've seen her in before it's this sickly grayish green more akin to the light we see emanating from Minas morgo later on she becomes something truly terrible the dichotomy to saon the dark queen to his dark lord when she breaks free of that it doesn't read so much as the Bowing of her head as surrendering her Pride but it reads more as exhaustion it was a fight that she overcame and now she's free this approach is less nuanced and wellth thought out than what we have in the book but this more dark and power hungry version of Galadriel is far from unfounded you see galadriel's back story especially at the time of the publication of The Lord of the Rings it was pretty murky way back in valinor she had a bit of a contentious relationship with the other elves her uncle fanor became utterly obsessed with her beautiful hair and he begged her again and again to give him just one strand from her head she refused him outright three separate times and after that fanor went off and created his saril gems which also capture the light of the trees in a very similar way to galadriel's hair the rift that this caused between the two of them would never really be mended And yet when the two trees of Val or were killed and the world was plunged Into Darkness and everything was in disarray she found herself beginning to be swayed by his Charisma fanor spoke of the far off continent of Middle Earth Over the Sea of this wide open completely ungoverned land ready to be claimed and tamed by the oh so wise and Powerful Noor elves like gadriel many elves VES were convinced to go with feanor including gadriel and soon they struck out for Middle Earth it wasn't long before feor revealed his true self and began shedding blood almost at random and gadriel was utterly disgusted by this and she and many other elves split off from him but they still proceeded to Middle Earth on their own they settled in Middle Earth and gadriel met her husband kelborn and they settled loran fueling it with the seed of valorian magic it is at this point that the cannon starts to get a little bit messy you see in the S marilan it's stated that the Valor did not explicitly ban gadriel from returning even though they did ban some other people from returning the reason that she doesn't return to valinor anyway is because of a voluntary Exile she decides that she had Associated too much with fanor and his ilk and she likes Middle Earth she likes lloran so she decides to stay it is a completely voluntary Exile this Baseline Cannon was what tolken had in mind when he wrote The Lord of the Rings however some 25 years or so after the Lord of the Rings had been published he started fiddling around with this a bit in the road goes ever on published in 1967 Tolen rcon galadrial story gadriel was the last survivor of the princes and queens who had led the revolt ing Noor to Exile in Middle Earth after the overthrow of morgoth at the end of the first age a ban was set upon her return and she had replied proudly that she had no wish to do so in the road goes ever on in his letters and particularly in his essay entitled The shth of feanor tolken places a very heavy emphasis on galadriel's Pride She's Too Proud to accept the valor's garden and she's too proud to give up Loth laan after all the work she put into it she finally has something that is her own her own pocket of magic and she is far too proud to go home with her tail between her legs so she remains banned from returning by the time we meet her in The Lord of the Rings she's plagued by the inherent Elish longing for the sea and for valinor but now there's nothing that she can do about it and this IDE idea is really interesting because it retroactively infuses a lot of tension into the existing scenes from The Lord of the Rings as the fellowship leaves she sings her Namar her song of farewell which speaks of long passing years of her cup which is nearly empty and will not be refilled she Longs for the sea she longs to return to valinor and the city at its heart valamar the last line of her Namar her Farewell Song translate to now lost lost to those from the East is valamar farewell maybe Thou shalt find valamar maybe even Thou shalt find it farewell gadriel misses her Homeland terribly and in this reccon version it's not just that she's staying away from valanor for personal reasons she cannot return this pain this pain over the loss of valinor is her Penance for her Pride she wanted to have something of her own she wanted a kingdom that was entirely hers but as the years have dragged on she's realizing just how much of a vain Folly that was this context also lends much more weight to the moment after she has the Outburst over the ring suddenly small and meek she says I pass the test I will diminish I will go into the west and remain Galadriel tolken says that at this point and then further compounded by the destruction of the Ring her ban from valanor has been lifted the test wasn't just there as an arbitrary step it was her giving up her Pride at last cleansing herself so that she will now be ready to pass into valinor she was willing to diminish to become less than the powerful queen that she could be if it means that she gets to go home in this context this scene feels much larger it feels like the conclusion to a centuries long story arc this new version of the story in which gadriel was actually banned from valinor because of her Pride was what tolken stuck with for quite a few years he tinkered with it here or there but he seemed pretty happy with this new idea that was until just a couple of months before his death when he went back and decided un aneu of the story which completely erased all of that catriel was unstained she had committed no evil Deeds she was an enemy of fanor she did not reach Middle Earth with the other Noor but independently her reasons for Desiring to go to Middle Earth were legitimate and she would have been permitted to depart but for The Misfortune that before she set out the Revolt of fanor broke out and she became involved in the desperate measures of men way and the ban on all immigration so essentially he's decided that she was banned from returning but it was due to no fault of her own this last minute change and the seeming wiping away of any complexity with her character could be considered frustrating and it is but I think it's just ongoing proof that for Tolen there was no one specific Canon he wasn't writing this perfectly infallible airtight book that some people seem to think he was he had all of these ideas after he published The Lord of the Rings for how he could complicate the character of Galadriel and he played with a lot of them he put them in different published works but in the end he just couldn't justify this prideful Spitfire redeemed character from his later notes with the kindly gentle and pure lady that he had first put in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and I think that this final red conning this claim that she was unstained and had not committed any sins of her own was part of an effort for Galadriel to line up better with Mary the mother of Jesus as a Catholic tolken had a very special and very particular dedication to Mary she was the unblemished immaculately conceived sinless Mother of God and no I'm not trying to say that gadriel was the immaculate conception or the mother of God but her role in the story lines up very well with Mary's role in Catholicism she is humble and radiant and wise and while she isn't necessarily a counselor or a guide she intercedes for people to God she knows God she knows some of his plan and she can share that with people where she sees fit this was a parallel that a lot of fans noticed and it was something that tolken admitted to in his letters and I think that this version of gadriel which is unstained and sinless was part of an effort to make her line up more clearly and theologically accurate with Mary the Mother of God but something that I think the movie did really well was that they found a pleasant medium between the book character and token's original and final conceptions of gadriel and they were able to melt that with this this middle version the more complicated and complex version of gadriel because as much as she is a Maran figure there are parts of her that also nod back to the Pagan world she is this powerful and mysterious woman of the woods a sorceress feared by many with the power to see things back in time and forward through time and nobody's quite sure how she does it she is both adored and feared in large part because of just how mysterious she is the idea of the mysterious sorceress especially the mysterious Sorceress in the woods is a very popular Trope throughout myth and literature one of the best examples of this is Morgan Lefay the Sorceress from the aruan myths especially as she appears in the 14th century tale of sir gawan and and the Green Knight in San and the Green Knight Morgan Lefay is kind of a looming presence she's not on the page she's not actively there for most of the story but we're given the impression that she's always watching she's pulling the strings and nobody is quite sure what she's planning and yet we know that she has her hands in every part of the story her power is both beneficial and Sinister it's beautiful but it's strange and the Mystique The Cloud of unknowability that wraps around her character is a big part of the appeal so it is for Galadriel who is revered and also feared her powers are known of but never spoken of in anything above a whisper her power of seeing is as she says both good and perilous I think that a more complicated prideful and Fallen version of gadriel meshes very well with this character type it shows just how dangerous pure light can be it's beautiful but if you let it get too bright it consumes everything it can become the only light in a painfully Dark World power is dangerous but Power paired with mystery and beauty is even more treacherous it is in this sense that I think the movie portrayal of gadriel Works quite well her semity the fanatical reverence that she brings out of people the ominous undertones to her advice and her warnings to me gadriel is a tough character because there's so much you can dive into about her there's so much you can do with her character so many different ideas you can explore and yet she really only has a very short amount of time on the screen or on the page and the glimpses that we get to see are incredible she has this vast knowledge of the past the future and the present by the power of her generosity and her kindness when she gifts gimy three hairs from her head she manages to start the healing process between elves and dwarves her advice and her Enchanted gifts are one of the things that pushes froto through his journey to the Finish Line even in her very short appearance gadriel establishes herself as an ethereal Powerhouse operating in the story in ways that we can't even comprehend but maybe I find her so frustratingly fascinating precisely because we see so little of her character it's like Tom Bombadil if we fully understood him if we sat down and got an explanation from tolken so much of the Intrigue that made them magical would be lost she is this Relic from the old world but also a very real and tangible character she is a saint but she is also a fallible person she is both Immaculate mother and fairy queen Bridging the Gap between the old world and the new and honestly I really like her portrayal in both the books and the movies galadriel's character is an excellent example of how adaptation can be used to expand a story you can use the power of a medium to explore ideas that the original medium could not so that brings us around to the rings of power show and I think that one of their hardest tasks that was set out for them was trying to give us a close-up version of the character of gadriel it's not impossible to do I mean God knows tolken gave you a lot to pick can choose from when it comes to picking out her character traits and I really do think that there is an absolutely fascinating character buried within tolkien's notes the problem that arises is that by making her a main character making her someone that we have to get to know in order to invest in the story you are inherently destroying some of the things that made people love her in the first place taking her in in both the books and movies is like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon it's so vast and unknowable and from your Vantage Point you can't help but see it as something alive something so astonishing in its entirety but if you actually go for a walk into the Grand Canyon you see these things up close and they go from being a magical Vista to being just wind and water stone and Sky again I'm not saying that it can't be done well I'm not saying that she's a character that shouldn't be explored I really think there's something interesting to dig into but the people that liked her in the books and movies are not going to like this character in the same way she's going from being an incomprehensible fairy god Queen to being a real person or elf but isn't that just the beauty of adaptation it takes a story that we know and love and does something new and interesting with it and I always think that's very fun like I said I can't bring myself to choose between book gadriel and movie gadriel she was like one of my favorite parts of the movie as a kid I liked her more than I liked AO in just because I thought she was so cool but let me know in the comments if you prefer book glad dril or movie gadriel and why give this video a like if you enjoyed it and consider subscribing if you want to come back here every week to hear me talk about stuff you can go ahead and check out my patreon if that's the kind of thing that you're into I'm going to be on the Discord in these upcoming days talking about the rings of power way more than I'll ever talk about the rings of power on this channel so uh you know go ahead and check that out if you're interested but either way thank you so much for joining me this week and I hope that you have a very happy hoby day [Music]