Great stories have great narrative momentum.
Whether they are high intensity rollercoasters, or slow burners;
they have a certain flow to it that draws you in, that gets you emotionally invested and eager to know what’s next.
And Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has a problem with it.
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I don’t dislike The Rings of Power, but I don’t love it either.
I couldn’t really articulate why at first. It felt like all the right ingredients were there,
and yet, something was off.
I wasn’t connecting with it as I had hoped I would.
I thought maybe it was just me expecting too much from this return to one of my most beloved story worlds,
maybe it really was just bad faith commentators who were infecting everyone with baseless negativity,
but then in episode six, there was an extended battle sequence that climaxed into what should have been one of the show’s biggest wow moments,
the culmination of built up narrative momentum,
and that’s where I realized precisely what I had been missing.
Though at the surface, my problem only seemed to be with a couple of false notes in the writing, staging and editing.
Each of which, on its own, appearing quite subtle, perhaps even trivial.
Indeed, the episode still is one of the better ones of the season.
But nevertheless, this accumulation of tiny flaws did reveal to me, in clear terms,
the larger storytelling issues that I think have been plaguing the show as a whole.
So let’s break it down. Obvious spoilers ahead.
How long?
Days. Maybe hours.
Episode six, titled Udûn, is centered around Adar and his orcs attacking the Southlands.
We have Arondir and Bronwyn leading the defense of their village,
and Galadriel, Halbrand, and a band of Numenor soldiers on their way to help them.
And it actually starts off pretty good.
We get a montage of the people setting up their defenses to give us some exposition on what is to come,
an encouraging speech to get us riled up,
and a heart to heart over slow motion shots to get us emotionally invested.
This shadow is but a small and passing thing.
Is it all executed perfectly? Not particularly.
But compared to similar scenes in The Lord of the Rings, it does have that same sincerity.
And more importantly, at this point, it still follows the same story beats,
it still has a similar sense of progression, of rhythm.
For great battle scenes are not just about displaying random action; they follow a structure, they have their own progression arc.
Just like stories in general, battle scenes have a beginning, a middle and an end,
they have inciting events, twists, and climaxes that get us engaged
and allow us to sort of connect our own emotional state to that of the story so that we can flow along with it and heighten the experience of both.
The Nerdwriter already made an excellent video about how the Battle for Helm’s Deep in The Two Tower does this really well,
and explains how, as a general throughline,
it moves from the excitement of small initial victories,
to the dread of unexpected new dangers, the descend into absolute desperation,
and eventually, to the catharsis of its grand climactic resolution.
Going back to The Rings of Power, that same progression seems to be there in the first phase of the battle.
We get some heroic moments, the twist where the initial victory turns out to be a false one,
and the rising desperation as our villagers are now trapped in a house with the orcs about to break in.
So far so good.
But then, we cut to this.
Now, what is wrong here?
Why does it feel like the sequence goes out of tune here?
It certainly has nothing to do with the charge itself,
it’s beautifully shot, has great music, and horses going in a full sprint like that will never not be cinematic.
No, the problem is that the placement of this exhilarating scene doesn’t align with the story’s progression in the village,
and therefore, with the emotional flow that we’ve been attuned to.
Because what happens right after we see the charge?
We cut back to the house where the orcs are now breaking in and subduing our heroes.
The momentum slows down greatly as we get an extended confrontation with Adar who’s looking for the McGuffin item,
which he is ultimately able to take.
And only then, more than 3 minutes later,
we cut back into the high intensity of the charging army as they enter the village and resolve the conflict.
In simple terms; what is happening here is that we see the moment of salvation before the moment of absolute desperation.
We go from losing hope, to excitement, back to losing hope, and then back to excitement again.
It just feels like such a strange editing choice,
especially because this would have been so easy to fix.
I actually tried to do this myself by cutting out the reveal of the Numenor army and inserting it back after Adar grabs the object.
This way, the sequence unfolds like this:
we have the twist for the worse, the entrapment of the villagers in the house,
Adar coming into the scene, having his confrontation, grabbing the object,
and then, just when he orders his orcs to kill the remaining villagers,
when the story has reached its darkest, most desperate moment,
that’s when we feel the rumbling in the distance,
that’s when we reveal:
When inserted at this point in the story, the charge would be combined with the clash into the village,
and so it begins like this,
and ends something like this:
And as such, the arrival of the calvary is no longer an interruption of momentum, but rather a progression of it.
Because this way, we can now actually feel the turning of the tide as the orcs are forced to move into a new attack position,
and Arondir and the other villagers can go on the offensive again.
I unfortunately cannot show you the entire re-arrangement without getting into trouble,
but I can assure you that even though it’s obviously rough around the edges,
the sequence flows much better, and maintains a much stronger sense of emotional consistency.
The order of the individual scenes, however, was not the only issue affecting the narrative momentum here.
As I was re-editing the placement of the Numenor army reveal, other problems came to light as well.
For one, the attack of the Numenor army lacks a strong moment of impact.
If you look at any great charging scene there is that distinctive “boom”,
you know, like this,
or this,
or...
you get the point.
But in The Rings of Power, even when you re-arrange the scenes leading up to the charge for a more optimal flow,
you’re still missing that climactic beat at the other end of it.
Because when I left the rest of the scenes as they were,
you had this weirdly prolonged sequence where,
just when you think the Numenor army is about to strike,
we instead only see them entering the village,
and then again, and again,
and again, and again,
and then finally:
In short, there are like 4 separate clips of the army moving into the village before we see them actually making contact with their enemy,
and that just doesn’t feel very satisfying.
So if it was up to me, I probably would have used a shot like this one first,
added some additional sound effects, just to emphasize that moment of impact.
Then show the villagers going into the offensive again, and then move into more specific images of combat,
like that stunt with the chain, which, I have to say, still is pretty cool.
Again, all this is very rough around the edges, but with these changes, it would have looked something like this:
The staging of the whole sequence also doesn’t quite come together as it could have.
I’m not too bothered by this one but I do wonder if it would have been better if instead of having the villagers trapped in a house
where they are cut off from what is happening outside,
they instead ended up being surrounding in the middle of the square, or some other exterior location.
That way, there wouldn’t have been that slightly awkward transition
where all the orcs that were fixated on the interior of the house had to move outside in order for them to be engaged with by the calvary.
Plus, if there was a clearer line of sight between the orcs, the villagers and the arriving Numenor army,
I think the catharsis of that moment would also have been much stronger.
If we take another look at the battle for Helm’s Deep for example,
Gandalf didn’t just come charging down, but is instead first spotted by our heroes and by the Uruk-Hai.
In the battle for Minas Tirith too, the arrival of the Rohirrim is announced by the sound of horns,
and there’s a function to this because what it does is it interrupts the conflict that has just reached its lowest point,
and then turns the tide around; not just plot-wise but also emotionally.
Because when get to see how the enemy that had the upper hand is again filled with dread,
and the heroes that were desperate are reinvigorated with hope,
we too feel that reversal, and can re-adjust ourselves to this change in momentum.
But as it stands in The Rings of Power, the villagers don’t even see their coming salvation, neither do most of the orcs.
There is that one shot of the trembling water, but it doesn’t seem to noticed by anyone except maybe that guy on the right here.
Anyways, Adar comes walking out, mildly suspicious at best,
and we then get the rather abrupt cut to the army already being right on top of them.
Again, it’s just one of those moments that could have been more impactful with the slightest of alterations,
just a few shots where we actually got to see that turning of the tide on the faces of the characters,
you know, that flash of fear going through the orcs, that rekindling of the light in the eyes of our heroes.
It’s hard to re-arrange this one when the necessary shots are not misplaced but missing entirely,
but I guess for now, I can add a few inserts of the orcs and of Arondir reacting to the Numenor army to get the point across.
To recontextualize all this in more general terms,
what we are essentially dealing with here is an issue of not properly conveying information,
of not carefully considering, at any given point, what we know, what the characters know,
and what should be known for maximum narrative momentum and emotional investment.
So far, we’ve been examining this as a more moment-to-moment problem,
but if we zoom out a little bit, the show also seems to have some trouble with this on a larger scale.
Let’s take a closer at the story of Galadriel, Halbrand, and the Numenor army for example,
and how they ended up in the charge towards the village,
Our enemy grows stronger every day, perhaps every hour we hesitate.
Before the attack on the Southlands, the last scene we had with the Numenor band was this one.
We get a little character moment with Galadriel on the boat,
followed by some exposition about how far they still have to go,
and... that’s it.
We don’t see them again until they come storming over the hill.
The issue here is that, as far as we’re told, these characters are completely unaware of what is actually happening in the Southlands.
We know they were going there to fight the enemy,
but we also know that to them, the threat is still rather vague at this point,
and not the concrete conflict that we get to see in the scenes with the villagers.
And so there is significant disruption in narrative momentum when we go from here,
straight to here,
without having made clear in any way how Galadriel, Halbrand or the Numenor army have learned about,
or are even aware at all of what exactly is happening at their destination.
There’s obviously more than one way to fix an issue like this, but
one thing they could have done is to begin the episode with the Numenor band having already arrived in the Southlands.
The episode before it already ended with Galadriel’s big hero shot as she steps onto the boat,
and the long awaited departing of the fleet,
which were sufficient to establish the story beat that they are now finally going on their great quest.
Therefore, more screentime of them travelling, of them going on their great quest again, seem unnecessary to me.
You can still have the same character-building moments, just have them take place after they have arrived at the next step of their journey.
Not only would a change of location like this add to the perceived momentum of their progression,
but more importantly, you can now also introduce an additional scene like the one in 300,
where Galadriel, Halbrand and the others suddenly encounter a child, or some other character,
who has escaped the siege of the village and warns the heroes of what is going on.
It’s a only small addition to the information they already have,
but it does transform the vague threat into a clear and urgent danger,
which would have made us more invested in their side of the story as well,
and which would have made their eventual arrival all the more intense and rewarding.
I do want to add here that I realize that it’s easy to judge in hindsight,
especially when you’re just looking at an individual sequence.
It’s the reason why I usually refrain from doing rewrites like this,
because while fixing a little moment here, or adding a bit more motivation there is relatively simple,
the further you zoom out, the harder it becomes to pinpoint precise problems, let alone offer easy solutions for them.
But still, in this case, I did want to share some alternative options not because I believe I’m a better writer than the showrunners,
I am most certainly not,
but because I believe that zooming in on the nitty gritty of storytelling like this illuminates something important about how stories function,
about how moment to moment storytelling relates to a story’s larger sense of narrative momentum,
and how small alternations can significantly change how we experience it.
I also want to emphasize that I’m not arguing that stories always have to adhere to the same conventional structure
in order to be engaging or to be considered good.
I am a big fan of stories that break the mold and experiment with subversive forms of storytelling,
but the thing is; I don’t think The Rings of Power was trying to do that here.
I think it very much tried to tell a classical story like The Lord of the Rings did,
and there were moments where it came close to achieving that,
especially in what I think was everyone’s favorite storyline, the one with Elrond and Durin.
For where there is love it is never truly dark. How could it now grow in a home like yours?
This story presented us with the same overarching threat of looming evil,
but whereas other storylines felt like they were mostly treading water until their big revelations,
here it felt like we were actually being connected to well-rounded characters,
and engaged in the struggle for and beauty of their unlikely friendship,
which wasn’t just presented with classic Tolkien-esque sincerity and humor,
but even came with some interesting philosophical tension as it invoked questions about the potential bond between two people
when the lifetime of one is but the blink of an eye to the other.
I journeyed here to see my friend who I've greatly missed. - Missed!? You missed my wedding, the birth of my children, two of them!
But alas, when looking at The Rings of Power as a whole, so far at least,
I think it simply fell short of achieving its full potential, of truly telling the kind of story it so clearly wanted to tell.
It is why I specifically referred to the show’s errors not as absolute mistakes or cardinal sins, but as false notes,
because it felt like they were trying to play a specific kind of composition, and just ended up playing it a little bit out of tune.
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