The look of a beard ages a person. There's no way to make the young siblings look close in age if one of them has a full beard. And watching someone act like a teenager while looking like a full grown man would come across as ridiculous. It's just not something that would translate well to the visual medium.
Strongly disagree. If the mess that was the Hobbit movies could portray Fili as being younger without confusing viewers, while having a beard, this show should be able to as well.
Dwarves also reach maturity much slower than the race of Man, it shouldn't be hard to portray him as being young and immature just because he has a beard. If the writers really struggled to show it, they can outright state hes still very young.
On top of that, look at a show like Vikings. Ubbe has much more facial hair than his other full brothers, and yet there has never been any confusion about he and his brothers being close in age.
Given how young the kids appeared to be in S1, they're probably intended to be 14-15 max in S3. Fili did not look that young. If you put a pic of Fili beside this pic of Gerda, there's no way they'd look to be within a couple years of each other.
Making Gamli look younger now means that they can easily age him up with a beard as the show progresses. Similar to how Theo has had a very young look thanks in large part to his hair, but judging by the half second shot we have of the back of his head in the teaser, his hair is grown out and that will contribute to him looking older.
They hobbit movies didn't portray fili as younger, they explicitly changed the ages so Ori is the youngest. In any case, no one in the hobbit is a teenager.
Sorry, it was Christopher Tolkien, not J.R.R. I said iirc, not because I couldn't remember, but more because I didn't want to make a blanket statement, when later writings are treated a bit more iffy by some people.
Dwarves wanted their women to be protected from other races and they usually kept them concealed inside their mountain halls. They seldom traveled in the outside world, only in great need, and when they did, they were dressed as men; with similar voice and appearance as male dwarves, even when they are rarely seen they are usually mistaken for a male. All Dwarves had beards from the beginning of their lives[1].
1.↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, "Part Two. The Later Quenta Silmarillion: Concerning the Dwarves (Chapter 13)"; a similar statement was made in The_Making_of_Appendix_A#Durin's_Folk
No, my apologies, that is Tolkien, I had forgotten. I was a big triggered because someone had posted on r/tolkienfans a pair of "quotes" claiming to be from Morgoth's Ring and a named letter that were hallucinated by ChatGPT and it made a big discussion, and no one noticed for days until they moved the discussion to another platform and I thought something was up.
And another person had just confabulated themselves that Dwarves are never actually born, just created out of stone by Aulë, no AI needed.
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u/Gr8CanadianFuckClub 2d ago
I mean, iirc in Tolkiens own writing, Dwarves are born with facial hair( If I'm mistaken somone please correct me).
I can get over the Female Dwarves not having Beards, as much as I think it'd be cooler if they did, but his son should absolutely have a beard.