H one thing I'll say about rings of power is that it keeps finding new and creative ways to destroy my faith in modern entertainment and I think the best example of this is the latest episode doomed to die which is kind of an ironic title when you think about it because it pretty much describes the show's chances of success but whatever on the face of it this episode should be the one time when rings of power finally gets to excel yeah maybe it's not so hot when it comes to dialogue character development story progress ression
spatial awareness World building logic reason acting costumes or set design but surely to goodness with all the money they have at their disposal they can at least take a couple of CGI armies and Bash them against each other in something that vaguely resembles an exciting battle you'd think so wouldn't you instead what we got was a confused boring tedious laughably incoherent mess of disconnected events and desperate member berries that went on forever ever had no clear sense of progression or overall stakes and generally squandered what should have been the show's greatest opportunity to shine honestly
how can you [ __ ] up something as simple as this anyway because I'm all about making the world a better place one drunken rant at a time I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast this onscreen battle with one that actually worked well in this case the Battle of Helms Deep from The Two Towers why exactly did I choose that one well one because it's [ __ ] awesome but two because the the general setup and disposition of both battles is broadly similar in both cases a limited number of Defenders have to
hold a fortified position against a superior orc Army throughout the night until reinforcements can arrive the following morning to relieve them the difference though is in the execution and this is where one becomes a tense action-packed and extremely well-paced conflict that brings the dramatic tension to a perfect climax oh yes before ending with a big emotional payoff and the other one becomes doomed to die so what exactly makes Helms Deep such a good battle well in my humble opinion in order for a battle to work effectively it needs to deliver three main elements one a
logical Battlefield that the audience can easily track two understandable objectives for both sides three a clear logical sense of progression sounds easy right well let's run this up against Helms Deep and see how it measures up first of all we need a logical Battlefield to work on the Fortress of Helms Deep is located at the end of a steep valley meaning there's only one way for an enemy to assault the place and the two towers make sure that we get a good view of the fortifications well in advance so that we know the layout of
the place pretty effectively there's the curtain wall with an open space behind it where the bulk of the Defenders can assemble the main Fortress with its gate and approach ramp where they can fall back to if the walls get breached and finally The Citadel where they can make their last stand if the [ __ ] really hits the fan it's logical easy to follow and map out in your head and has obvious layers of defense that anyone can can understand then there's part two objectives well again this one's simple enough The Defenders know that Gandalf
has gone to round up reinforcements to relieve The Siege and Promises to return by Dawn the following day so their objective is basically just to hold out until he gets there the Orcs on the other hand have an equally simple objective break into the Fortress and kill everything that they see every action that they take is oriented towards that goal lastly there's number three the idea of progression a good onscreen battle should have an EB and flow to it throughout the battle the audience should have a good sense of which side is winning and losing
which army is in a stronger position and what each little Victory or loss means to the overall battlefields Helm's Deep absolutely excels at this because we know right from the start that the Defenders are badly outnumbered and their only real hope is the fortifications that stand between them and the massive orc Army bearing down on them as a result the defensive walls must be held at all costs and from the orc point of view they have to be overcome at all costs so the Orcs assault the walls try to scale them with ladders The Defenders
hold them off for a while before the Orcs breach the wall with explosives holy [ __ ] that's something that nobody accounted for now the Orcs are inside the walls The Defenders Counterattack them and drive them back at Great cost but there's too many to hold off for long forcing them to fall back inside the Fortress now their defensive power has been weakened because most of their archers are Deads now the Orcs Assault The Fortress by ramming the main gate and again they're pushed back tempor early but they can't be stopped for long now the
handful of Defenders that remain are hold up inside the Great Hall it's almost Dawn but they're out of time and resources and rather than wait for the end to come they instead decide to make a suicidal charge into the enemy hoping to buy some time for the women and children behind them to escape and at the last moment when all seems lost gandal finally arrives to save the godamn day there's a logical easy to follow progression to the battle both sides make smart and in some cases pretty inventive to pursue their goals because you know
the layout of the battlefield the objectives of both sides and the relative strength of the two armies it becomes easy to follow you know where everyone is at any given time and you can feel the growing desperation as the Defenders are pushed back and back it's great stuff that accomplishes everything a battle like this needs to and for those reasons it becomes an absolutely gripping spectacle nice one Peter Jackson now let's consider the Battle of Arion in the rings of power first up what's the layout of the battle field well straight away we're getting into
kind of murky territory because the full geography of the area is never really depicted as best I can tell you've got the city with a defensive wall and a river that surrounds it on two sides but then there's mountains and forests and stuff behind it are there walls there too I don't know could the Orcs theoretically assault from that direction maybe we'll never really know the orc Army itself is positioned roughly in the forest on the other side of the river which creates a visual problem for the viewer because there's no sense of the size
and disposition of the opposing forces are there lots of Orcs there I guess so because they'd have to know they're assault in a major city but we never get to see the full Army out in the open so I've got no real idea I don't know how much of a threat this Army actually poses to The Defenders and on that subject I don't actually know how many elves are defending a regon either because they're never shown in their totality but considering it's one of their biggest and most important cities I'd have to assume there's a
pretty strong force deployed there the upshot is that compared to the small group of old men and boys defending Helms Deep there's none of the tension and Dread we experienced at that battle because all we have so far are two armies of unknown size facing off against each other and it gets even more complicated when elrond and his army arried by Cavalry to assault the Orcs from behind which should be an absolute disaster for them but instead it becomes just another component of an increasingly confused battle when they get stopped in their attracts by the
appearance of gadriel as a hostage and this is where we're getting into motiv ational territor so let's move on to part two shall we understandable objectives for both sides so the basic setup here is that Sauron has infiltrated Aon so that he can forge the rings of power the Orcs are here to break in and kill saon and Elon is here to kill the Orcs And then somehow get in and kill Sauron as well hm kind of feels like overlapping objectives here if I'm honest but because the Orcs have gadriel as a prisoner he can't
attack them directly or they'll just execute her but then they have a conference because that's totally something that you can do in the middle of a Siege and as best as I can tell the bargaining session ends with elron walking out and saying well we're just going to go ahead and kill you anyway so you better watch out which begs the question why allow him to leave it all then you might as well just kill the guy right there and eliminate an important enemy Commander also if gadriel is clearly no use as a hostage then
you should probably just execute her too instead of leaving her alone and lightly guarded so that she can escape later and [ __ ] up your plans not to mention the fact that it's siron who's the biggest threat to both sides I mean if everyone involved is only really here because they want him dead then why not work together to take him out and then sort the rest out later the objectives of both sides here are as muddied and confused as the rest of the battle and believe me it only gets worse from here which
brings me on to part three a logical sense of progression as I said earlier the objective for Adar and the Orcs is to fight their way inside regon so they can find syon and kill the [ __ ] out of him to do that they have to cross the river breach the walls and their way through the city until they can get to him and this is where I pretty much lost what's left in my sanity because in order to cross the river they decide to bombard the mountains nearby with trebes which causes them to
collapse and block the river instantly turning it into an open field that they can easily move infantry and Siege engines across son of b b mountains do not work like this it would be like me punching an oak tree with my bare fists and expecting it to collapse Rivers Don't work like this either even if the mountain did somehow collapse into it where the [ __ ] do you think all the water would go then would it just like give up and go home lastly riverbeds don't work like this either even if all that other
stupid [ __ ] actually happened the riverbed would be an impassible Quagmire of deep mud and silt for weeks if not months afterwards there's no way you'd be able to get infantry across it never mind gigantic Siege engines anyway whatever let's just go with it so we can get through this so the Orcs cross the magical [ __ ] River and now their job is to breach the walls which they do with the world's least practical Siege engine I don't even really know how to explain this thing cuz I've never seen anything remotely like it
the best I can say is that it somehow hooks into the walls and Yanks bits out of it it takes forever to set up it can only be used like once an hour and it's made mostly of wood and is completely exposed to defensive fire from above I mean literally a couple of pots of burning oil and this thing is toast but conveniently enough nobody tries that so that the rest of the plot can happen well all this stupid shit's going on elon's Army seems to be fighting the Orcs in Woodland on horse back oh
come on now I'm no military expert but even I can tell you that the one place you absolutely don't want to send a mass Cavalry force is into dened Woodland where they can't charge effectively can get bogged down in rough terrain and easily ambushed and the horses and Riders can easily collide with trees and low branches it completely negates the purpose of even using caval I mean damn man I can only imagine how Shad must be losing his mind over stuff like this and because the Defenders of the city can't easily see them it never
occurs to them to send out an infantry assault to support them which in theory could have caught the orc Army between two powerful forces and absolutely crushed them as a viewer it also means that I'm never entirely sure where they are compared to the front lines of The Siege how many there are or whether they're even making much of an impact on the overall battle gilgalad is apparently there too but I don't know what he's doing most of the time or even who's in overall command of the Elf Army the battle which was already on
Shaky Ground from a narrative point of view has basically devolved into a bunch of smaller actions none of which have any connection to each other or contribute to an overall understanding of what's going on then there's the ridiculous stuff that either has set up with no payoff or tries to fake a payoff with no setup like at one point Adar sends in a big troll thing to [ __ ] up the Elf Army knowing it's going to cause a lot of collateral damage and it's built up as this big imposing threat but then it just
kind of dies without really accomplishing anything so like what was the point of that or Asian elf lady because I don't even know if she has a name at this point who gets turned into a human pin cushion but bravely gets up one last time to destroy the weird batter and RAM thing because remember Boromir remember how awesome His Last Stand was because he kept getting shot and standing up again and just refusing to quit well it's just like that except she's even more badass because she gets shot with even more arrows the problem is
boram 's death actually meant something Beyond a guy taking a lot of punishment it was a last Act of redemption for a man who had almost fallen into darkness and was given everything he had to protect his friends one last time going out as the hero that he always aspired to be this on the other hand is just some random chick whose name I don't even know and don't care about destroying a piece of Siege equipment that seems to be doing [ __ ] all anyway in a battle that I don't particularly understand because it's
so convoluted and poorly thought out they are not the same thing and lastly there's the climax of the battle where Adar himself leads the orc Army in a final assault against the cityy it should have been a thrilling moment but again I was confused about the Dynamics at play here because the show won't give me an overall sense of progression was this a triumphant General leading his Army to victory because he knows he has the decisive advantage or is it a desperate gamble by a leader who senses the battle turning against him like Napoleon throwing
the Old Guard into one last attack at waterl I don't know because just like every other aspect of this battle it's muddied by a complete lack of clarity in the writing and Direction the end result is that by every possible metric I can judge you on the Battle of oron falls short of everything they did in the two towers which was made more than 20 years earlier and probably on a smaller budget it's hard to follow the objectives are poorly defined and realized the geography of the battlefield is vague at best the decisions made by
both sides are nonsensical and the emotional payoffs fall flat because nothing it does is earns and and really it's a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with rings of power how it fails to even accomplish the things that it should find easy and it's just another reason why this story is being told by the most incompetent people imaginable to paraphrase the late great John Hammond of Jurassic Park our franchise is in your hands and you have butter fingers anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
