I pick on Rings of Power a (perhaps) unfair amount on this blog. I mean, I’ve written numerous articles meticulously picking it apart as compared to the books, making fun of the showrunners and writers, and in general beating it a ton to make sure it’s extra dead. But today, I’m back to break down the worst fight scenes in the entire show to make sure we all get a general idea of how never to write a fight scene, be that in books or T.V.
Not even fifteen minutes into the show, we get one of the cringiest fight scenes to have ever cursed our eyes and yes, the entire time I was watching this fight, I was rolling my eyes and giggling.
The first thing that made the entire fight boring was the crappy setup. One thing I forgot to mention in my blog on how to write a fight scene was that you really need a good setup for why your characters need to fight. In Rings of Power, the entire set-up is Galadriel (who’s so amazing that she completely ignores the safety of herself and her buddies, almost getting an elf killed in the process) needs to explore a mystery box fortress in the Forodwaith that Sauron allegedly lived at for a while mustering his forces (which makes no sense as the farthest north that he may have gone in the Second Age of Middle Earth was maybe Angmar) that’s totally covered in ice. It is there that while she’s exploring the fortress and running across yet another mystery, one of the elves runs into a Snow troll and things go to hell immediately. Elves are running everywhere or if they aren’t running, they’re just standing there – not even making an attempt to fight – being flung everywhere.
And Galadriel also just stands there.
She just watches her comrades get beat up before finally asking her manservant, sorry…estrogen-challenged fellow soldier… to make a ramp for her to jump off of and what does he choose to make the ramp out of?
He chooses a sword.
He chooses the giant sword that he’s been carrying for the entire journey that would realistically be very hard to draw unless he has a specialized scabbard for it. Then Galadriel runs and jumps off of it with her own giant sword drawn, somehow not breaking the blade in half and having an AFV-worthy moment. She goes flying through the air and swings the sword and misses the troll not by a few inches, but by a few feet. After that she just decides to do a baton-twirling routine with the giant sword she’s carrying (isn’t she just amazing guys?) and inhumanely hack the troll to bits before savagely finishing it off by stabbing her dagger into its head.
Somebody please call PETA. Forget the horse that died on set during Season 2’s filming. I demand justice for the snow troll.
If the showrunners had known how to properly write a fight scene, they would 1). know how swords and basic fights work in real life 2). know how to give the scene some good setup and 3). know how to put some pity in the fight scene.
While I can suspend my disbelief a bit given that ROP is a fantasy show, physics still work in Tolkien’s world. In the scene where Galadriel leaps off the sword, while it might look somewhat cool, in real life, it would have either severely bent or totally broken. Heck, in the movies and books, we see Sauron break a sword by just stepping on it. While you could make the argument that Sauron’s heavier than Galadriel, let’s not forget that swords can snap if enough weight is put on them and she was also wearing chainmail and some plate armor, making her heavier. In old fencing manuals, people wearing much less armor were taught to step on their opponent’s sword to break it, further confirming that the sword-as-a-ramp would not work.
On top of that, twirling your sword around pointlessly like it’s a baton is generally not advised for the sake of safety and I would not recommend it for the sake of good writing. While some people might like it, it often just comes off as cheesy, especially if the situation is life or death.
Also, like I said before, the setup to the fight was terrible. One of the reasons why the troll fight in the original movies was so good was because Peter Jackson – following Tolkien’s example of good writing – set up an ominous atmosphere. The Fellowship thought they would be safe as long as they didn’t stir up any trouble, but here’s trouble anyways and now, they have to fight for their lives. Meanwhile, Rings of Power just had Galadriel and Co. seemingly looking for a fight as they walked through the fortress and there was nothing in the atmosphere to really make us care that they were being attacked.
Furthermore, in the Jackson adaptation, we knew who the characters were and had an emotional connection to at least one or two of them. We cared for their safety. In ROP, there was no character development for anyone. Except for Galadriel, we have no idea who any of these characters are or why we should care for them, which means that there are no real stakes for the audience. If someone dies, we just feel apathy. We don’t care. We didn’t have a connection to them so why should we?
Lastly, in Peter Jackson’s adaptation, he made us pity the cave troll. It was clear that it was in pain and was being forced to attack the Fellowship by Sauron’s minions. When it finally dies, it’s a sad but happy moment for the troll because though its dying in a very pitiful state, it no longer is being tortured. The writers of Rings of Power, on the other hand, had no such qualms about characters being cruel to other species because they just wanted to put in a fight scene to prove how “powerful” Galadriel is.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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