Death portrayal

[Lalwendë]

For a brief moment I was thinking that maybe he had pulled off this idea when Elrond talks to Arwen of the fate that awaits her if she marries Aragorn, but remembering how the scene was delivered, it's quite the opposite. Film Elrond is very negative about the prospect of death, and while he would indeed have wished to remind his daughter of exactly what she was thinking of getting herself into, if he had been closer to the concept in the books, I think he might have delivered his warnings in a more melancholic fashion, rather than being stern. The Elves in the books seem to view death as more of a gift, a release from the confines of the world to which they are tied. Following the logic of the books, Elrond's warning to her daughter would have been more along the lines of warning her that she would never see any of her kin again if she chose mortality.

Originally Posted by alatar

Regarding the Rohirrim chant, what the movies showed (maybe more so than the books) was that the Rohirrim expected to die that morning. It was like they were saying, en masse, "well, the situation's bad, there's no way we can win, we're going to die today anyway so let's go and kill as many of those foul orcs as possible and not worry about anything."

I gained two different feelings from the portrayal of the Rohirrim charge, firstly that they were acting out of desperation, and secondly that their shouts of 'Death!' were intended to intimidate the enemy. That was a favourite part of the films for me, as it was breathtaking, as Anguirel says, but it also conjoured up a lot of strange emotions! I was impressed and stirred by their bravery, but also moved by their desperation. This was one moment where the 'gift of death' was portrayed ambiguously, but on the whole, I think death was portrayed as not being a gift. Of course, in the books, there are also a lot of mortals who do not consider death to be a gift so the whole issue was possibly too complex to successfully place in the medium of film.