One of the things that makes me waver on whether or not Tauriel is, in fact, in love with Legolas is the… thing with Kili. I still have absolutely no idea what that was supposed to be.

So, the breakdown –

I don’t necessarily have an issue with investigating the idea of an Elf/Dwarf pairing. There have been several Elf/Human pairings in the LotR universe (at the time of The Hobbit, it’s at about two and a half), but no other interspecies relationships (other than Melian and Thingol). It could have been really interesting, especially given that both sides would have far more reason to be against the match, and that Dwarves are much more insular than Men. However, this was definitely not the way to do it, and I honestly doubt if this would have been the place to do it, regardless.

So the, um, romance was badly handled on more than one level. On the ordinary people-falling-for-each-other level, it falls down for a few reasons. The biggest is that Tauriel and Kili have so very little interaction. The only actual conversation they have – about his rock and then starlight – isn’t bad, as far as it goes. I can support it being enough for them to realize they had a bit of a connection. But that is literally the only conversation they have until Laketown, and it’s implied that her feelings for him were an important factor in her decision to go after the Dwarves. Again, she spoke to him once, and not only was she being hinted about ten minutes earlier to be in love with someone else, but she’s an Elf, not a human. She’s probably been alive for a couple hundred years at least, so a five-minute conversation would probably mean a lot less to her than it would to one of us.

The second reason it falls down. At first it seemed like the writers were going for more of a ‘they’re not such horrible people’ type connection, with maybe a vague romantic wistfulness about it. I wasn’t entirely sold, but I didn’t hate the idea. Even Tauriel’s decision could have been strongly influenced more by the idea of That Dwarf has a mother who worries about him, and he seems like a normal person with a sense of humour, and they are clearly people too, not just our enemies than Twu Wuv™. But then comes Laketown.

I have to stop here and take several deep breaths. The only thing that stopped me from jumping from my seat in an apoplectic rage and snarling “WHAT??” in the loudest voice I was physically capable of was that my mom would have been really embarrassed. (I honestly think my dad would have understood.)

So Tauriel shows up and saves Kili from the ‘Morgul shaft’ with athelas, despite that not really being an Elf-oriented skill like they seem to think. (Even Elves have to be trained as healers. They aren’t just automatically good at it, and Tauriel is a soldier, not a healer.) And he’s half-delirious, and says (and here I swallow back bile) “Do you think she could have loved me?”

Ugh, and I was already sick from all that ‘she walks in starlight’ crap.

No, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK? One conversation. A minor connection and mild innuendo and now you’re all, “Do you think she could have loved me?” What the fuck?

It is just such a no sell. That entire thing felt like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. It was just so out of nowhere. I was actually embarrassed watching it.

Now to examine how it crashes and burns on an Elf-Dwarf level. First off, Tauriel goes from deeply and casually racist to tolerant and connection-having in about two scenes, even if we disregard the Laketown clusterfuck. Less than fifteen minutes before their conversation about her starlight and his trousers, she’s refusing to allow him a weapon in a dangerous situation (in which he appears willing to cooperate with her), casting aspersions on his trustworthiness on the basis of his race, and calling him ‘Dwarf’.  This is all very unpleasant, but it is the way Elves often think about Dwarves. However, that sort of mindset doesn’t disappear overnight. For comparison: in Lord of the Rings, Legolas had a better attitude towards Dwarves than Tauriel does, and it took weeks if not months travelling through dangers to lighten him up. He was still touchy on the subject of race when they got to Lothlorien (“A plague on the stiff necks of Dwarves!”), and wasn’t buddy-buddy with Gimli until they left there. Tauriel’s quick turn-around strains belief.

And Kili’s complete lack of prejudice or even hostility is almost as hard a sell. He doesn’t even seem annoyed that they’re locking him up. Not to mention that he has grown up hearing stories of how Thranduil abandoned his people – if not from his mother and/or father, certainly from his uncle. So while I can buy him being more easy-going and open-minded than the Dwarves who actually lived through that, I can’t see him being all friendly with Tauriel right off – especially after she’s just been calling him “Dwarf”. I can tell you right now, I’m not going to be all pally with someone who goes around calling me ‘woman’.

It’s also completely undeveloped – as I mentioned before, the possibilities of this kind of romance could be interesting. But it’s not explored. Kili’s gag-inducing love query seems to have more of a view to ‘could I ever be good enough for her’ than anything actually dealing with the complexities of the issue, and Tauriel certainly never discusses it. I suppose it might be marginally redeemed in the next movie, but guess what?

The last thing, and one that ties in very well to something I’m going to talk about later – Kili dies. He’s one of the casualties of the Battle of Five Armies. So even if they had addressed some of the potential issues and drama about the whole thing (and in a movie with a dragon, did we even need the extra drama? No.), it goes completely out the window. “Oh, we’ve addressed some of the potential issues, both internal and external, about this relationship, and gotten you to buy into it – it is, after all, the only romantic relationship in the entire movie – and made ‘good’ cinema. But you can forget about that now, because it turns out it doesn’t matter anyway! It was never really going to matter either way! Psych!”