So here's my question. What was the idea behind casting a bunch of dark-haired actors and putting them in blond wigs? It makes it look like all the elves except for Elrond, Arwen and Galadriel bleach their hair and seems silly, to me. Especially combined with the dark stubble on a couple of the elven men.

It's been a long time since I've read the books, but I don't recall it being said that all elves are blond. Or was it supposed to show that the dark-haired elves (Elrond and Arwen) had human as well as elven blood. (One of Elrond's parents was human, correct?)

I was merely embarassed

I was so embarassed after going to see RotK with the not-my-kind-of-LotR-geek girl who was nice enough to ask me to a free midnight showing.

She called a mutual friend of ours and made several comments as to how she had never met someone so "into" a movie as me. But! But! She had read the books! She knew it wasn't just the movies I was into!

I saw her in bar a week or so after and she just gave me an awkward smile.

Thing is - I was on really good behaviour. I mean, besides the uncontrollable sobbing. I didn't correct her for the most part when she got facts from the book wrong. And I gave her the extremely abbreviated "the books are not an allegory for WWII" speech when she called the Shire "Switzerland."

But yeah - embarassed.

etf: grammar

I don't recall it being said that all elves are blond. Or was it supposed to show that the dark-haired elves (Elrond and Arwen) had human as well as elven blood.

In the books, there are blonde elves and dark elves, and some of each are Noldor or Sindar. It just depends on their family background. And Cirdan is, IIRC, grey-haired -- and bearded? Maybe?.

Just because Galadriel is blonde shouldn't make all the Galadrim blonde, for instance, because a lot of those elves were actually Sindarin, and more closely related to Legolas than the Noldor who came back from Valinor. Hell, Celeborn wasn't even Noldor -- but then Celeborn's kind of a non-entity.

That said, the Half-Elven line and the Dunedain are all said to be dark-haired and light-eyed.

I think in the books most of the elves are dark and isn't there a particular combination of very pale skin, dark hair and light eyes that was the mark of the Noldoli?

Galadriel (although a niece of Feanor) -- came from a lone blonde branch of her family, which is why I was surprised to see so many blond elves in FotR.

Right. The blond wigs were doing very few people good, and several people active ill. No harm in going with the dark wigs, which, with enough judicious eyebrow-plucking and pouts, can still cause a guy to look imperious. And after all, Tolkien had a huge fetish for dark-haired, pale-skinned, grey-eyed people, or else Faramir, Boromir, Strider, Arwen and 90% of Gondor are based on one person.

(Just like how, whenever there's an important -- noble -- horse, it's gray or white. No amusing piebalds in Middle-earth!)

ALL the horses of Rohan were supposed to be gray.

And all the ones Imrahil and his peeps ride in on, and Strider's favorite brought down from the north. I think except for Bill the Pony, every horse in the whole fricken story is gray.

And we don't know what color Bill the Pony is.

I love it when this thread gets all Tolkien history geeky. I learn so much that I managed to miss while reading The Silmarillion.

It was difficult to make it through until I got to Beren and Luthien and the House of Hurin. Unfinished Tales is great because of the Hurin backstory.

"Get in the damn boat, Fodo" was my tagline for a while. It's what our friend's girlfriend (now wife) said toward the end of FOTR. She really had to pee.