[Boromir88]

Yep. I've established that Haldir is an unnecessary show off.

I would disagree, I think Haldir is nothin' but a sentinel that liked to break the laws

'....I do not doubt you,' said Haldir. 'Yet this is our law. I am not the master of the law, and cannot set it aside. I have done much in letting you set foot over Celebrant.'

By Haldir's own admission he's stretched his authority a bit too far, so all the things that he did for the Fellowship, he probably shouldn't have...hmph he should be honourably discharged.

Phantom, of course there are rules within Middle-earth, I mean Gandalf can't storm into Mordor and blow up Barad-dur with a fireball out of his...erm...hand. But, just because there are limitations to the 'magic' in Middle-earth doesn't mean everything from Middle-earth is exactly how it is in our 'real world.'

Let's take the Old Forest for example...Old Man Willow was a tree:

"...and in it there lived yet, aging no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice. But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river."

Old Man Willow (in Middle-earth) was simply a tree, but he certainly doesn't behave like the trees we have in reality. And as Tolkien points out in Letter 212, trees in his world can 'go bad.':

The Fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may "go bad" as in the Old Forest...

If anyone in the 'real world' came and told me an evil tree tried to eat them I would put that person on some heavy medication.

Yes, there are limitations to 'magic' in The Lord of the Rings...but that doesn't change the fact that (as SpM points out) The Lord of the Rings is in the fantasy genre and not everything from the real world behaves as it does in Tolkien's story. So, we end up with ropes that can untie themselves, nasty trees that try to eat hobbits, gynormous spiders...and so on.