The Broken Sword, a Tolkien-focused YouTube channel I enjoy, recently posed these questions as research for an upcoming video:
What is your favourite scene in The Lord of the Rings? And why?
What is your least favourite scene from The Hobbit Trilogy? And why?
Having just rewatched the entire Lord of the Rings extended edition trilogy (to wash the taste of Rings of Power out of my mouth), here are my thoughts:
Lord of the Rings favorite scenes:
- the Bridge of Khazad-dûm for the epic threat of the balrog and the epic badassery of Gandalf fending him off
- Gandalf fighting the balrog all the way to the depths of Moria with gorgeous cinematography showing off the scale and profundity of the battle
- Gandalf riding out to fend off the Nazgûl and protect the returning Gondorians with magical light, again demonstrating Gandalf’s power of light against the darkness
- the lighting of the beacons showing off the distances across beautiful mountains – and Theoden’s “and Rohan will answer” response
Hobbit least favorite scenes:
Oof there’s too much bad here and accordingly I haven’t watched it recently. I would say anything with gratuitous, silly, physics-defying action and anything with Tauriel and Kili’s contrived love story. Those both pulled me out of the movie and felt counter to all of Tolkien’s writings, intentions, and tone. They felt more like pandering to what generic audiences might want vs faithful to the characters and story.
What do you think? What are your favorite and least-favorite scenes from movie adaptations of Tolkien’s Legendarium?