I think Legolas must have had a fairly healthy pre-Bloom fanbase,
Galadriel55. He was certainly my favourite character at my first reading as a rather serious, self-important and chivalric little boy...
The reasons why, for reasons that rationally must be coincidental but certainly don't feel that way, were all extirpated from or altered in the films.
Obviously I always thought Elves were cool but for me this controversial passage picked out Legolas in particular:
Quote:
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Frodo looked up at the Elf standing tall above him, as he gazed into the night, seeking a mark to shoot at. His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.
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and yes, I did interpret that as dark hair (not an unbiassed reader though). Then he only went and shot the blimming Nazgul steed. One of the finest moments of action Tolkien ever wrote I think; for a believer in the old heroic combats, he's always surprisingly excellent at archery moments; no Homeric contemner of Paris the archer he. I actually have a theory that shooting suits novelists much better than hand-to-hand fighting. An arrow going through the air, subject to aim, wind, accident, is a sort of perfect image of suspense. Tolstoy's duels are much more exciting, short-lasting, awe-inspiring than the stylish fiddling around of Dumas's rapiers. Anyway. This feat of archery was cut from the film, as far as I can see because the director thought the action might spoil the vibe of his soporific Enya-larded drift down the Anduin.
Legolas's next fine moment was his contribution to the Lament of the Winds. I've always loved that, though I understand why few songs made it cinematically. Still, sad.
And now, to at last reach the ostensible topic of this thread, how about the wonderful verse of Galadriel's warning?
"Legolas Greenleaf long under tree
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea!
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,
Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more."
I seem to recall Legolas takes this as a warning that he is likely to be killed. Remember that on first reading you have next to no idea about the rules of the game re: Elves and the Sea, just indistinct feelings of elegy, often at an age before you know about anything else elegiac. I wouldn't be surprised if it was here (or maybe in some war at Troy retelling, but close enough) that I got the impression it was in some sense good to die, noble to be resigned to fate and defeat. I can see in the film this would have been complex: a prophecy about a peripheral character that doesn't even come true in any obvious clunking way (as no true prophecy should). But complex is beautiful, and I really resent that there was
no reference to Legolas and the gulls in the film at all, except a nod in that admittedly lovely glimpse of Elves going seaward in FOTR: EE.
I think Tolkien's last footnotes about Legolas are a way of reconciling this sense of elegy (about which there is SO much good, short Ang-Sax poetry) with Gimli's more upbeat spirit, of wagers, promises to visit Aglarond, grim irony. Of course there are times when the buskin is on the other foot: Gimli has his sentimental side too, and Legolas raises the spirits (not the Spirits) in the Paths of the Dead.
Another lovely, structurally purposeless aside is Legolas's recognition of Imrahil's elven heritage; Imrahil himself being a sort of incidental flourish of a character.
Finally, when Saruman warns "it will be a grey ship, and full of ghosts", I think of Legolas, going off at last to fulfil that prophecy, as much as or more than I do of the Ringbearers.