Reflection and Analysis

Rings of Power - Galadriel's Troll Scene (9/4/2022)

So, yes - Rings of Power is bad and breaks Middle Earth lore big time. I did find myself liking Disa's "He will stay for dinner," lines, which is one of the few things I can see Tolkien having written, although in saying this, I am not fond of the actress or her accent.

This is about the troll scene and how people are like, "But Legolas did it too!"

Um, nope.

First off, while Legolas did feet of awesomeness, they were still feet of awesomeness that didn't break the audience's willing suspense of disbelief, and there are two reasons that the troll scene breaks the willing suspense of disbelief for people.

One is that, since people have brought up they don't see any differences between what Legolas did, Legolas didn't ever pull off any wuxia moves as Galadriel did, and if he did that, I didn't remember; it was heavily criticized in the show. Actually, even if he didn't, I do remember his action scenes getting criticized despite not ever having a problem with them. But on top of this, never did he randomly teleport instantaneously to different positions during battle as Galadriel did.

And yet these are compatible?

I don't think so, but I honestly do not know what kind of world one is living in that wuxia-type moves are okay outside of the wuxia genre. To say it is okay needs to ignore the fact wuxia-type moves work in the wuxia genre because that is how magic works on those worlds, but putting it into a world where magic doesn't work that way doesn't work.

And the teleporting to different positions, that's not even the result of purposefully doing it purposefully - that was done because the scene was poorly filmed and edited. Still, the other fight scenes are like this when the actions don't connect to each other, and it's going to stand out to fans of action scenes.

But...

The other issue is that people ignore everyone's real complaint - that Galadriel did what her men could not.

You know, men who are also Elves, yet those getting upset at us for disliking the troll scene like to ignore this, as they point out - but Elves can do amazing feats.

Okay, then why didn't those Elves that got completely flattened not do amazing feats? Truth - it was to make Galadriel, a female character, look good at the expense of male characters, to show just how amazing she is. Let's not forget the fact Tolkien never wrote her fighting in the war, she was never out for revenge, and she certainly wouldn't have been allowed to sail to Valinor as in canon. She was banned from doing so.

Let's not forget that it's supposed to be an amazing fight where all these Elves got smashed, and none of them died.

And let's ignore as well the fact we've got a leader, Galadriel, willing to leave her men behind to die because she is just that amazing, and as far as she is concerned, everyone else can just go die because only she has seen and knows what grief is like.

Yup. They're saying a female leader willing to leave her men to die is a fantastic female rep.

Princess Shuri never left men to die, but many of our favorite female characters would absolutely not ever leave others to die if there was a chance of saving them, so why is Galadriel doing this suddenly okay?

Oh. I guess it's because they're male, and they're white it's okay?

P.S. Her swimming all the way from Valanor back to Middle Earth - that's something I can't see even Legolas doing, so why is it okay when it's done another character?

And yes - Galadriel did try and leave her men to die. Galadriel did try to swim hundreds of miles without any form of training to do so.