“More recently I realized how much film Gimli had been downgraded from the eloquent, gracious, and chivalrous character of the book.”
Spot on. I feel like a lot of the Fellowship members in the movie had characterization of stock fantasy characters. Like, Gimli is the party’s dwarf so he acts like a stereotypical fantasy dwarf: gregarious, has fun interactions with other characters, eager to fight, etc. And it is funny because Lord of the Rings is kind of an ur-text of the fantasy genre but at the same time it is its own thing and does not necessarily follow many of the tropes that came later but are associated with Tolkien’s trilogy by default.
“More recently I realized how much film Gimli had been downgraded from the eloquent, gracious, and chivalrous character of the book.”
Spot on. I feel like a lot of the Fellowship members in the movie had characterization of stock fantasy characters. Like, Gimli is the party’s dwarf so he acts like a stereotypical fantasy dwarf: gregarious, has fun interactions with other characters, eager to fight, etc. And it is funny because Lord of the Rings is kind of an ur-text of the fantasy genre but at the same time it is its own thing and does not necessarily follow many of the tropes that came later but are associated with Tolkien’s trilogy by default.