How “Rings of Power” Created Its Own Helm’s Deep: Chocolate Orc Blood and Explosive Cliffhanger

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Episode 6, “Udûn,” which is currently available on Amazon Prime Video, don’t read this.

 

The epic battle sequence that “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” fans had been patiently waiting for was eventually shown with three episodes left in its first season. The episode “Udûn,” which delivered nearly non-stop near-death moments and ended on a massive cliffhanger that also establishes one of the most significant events in the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, significantly increased the scope of the action for the series even though it wasn’t quite as massive as the Battle of Helm’s Deep from the 2002 feature film “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”

 

In the episode, the mountain fortress where Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), and the Southland people are meant to be holed up is attacked by the dark elf Adar (Joseph Mawle) and his orc army. When Arondir conducts a solo sneak attack and brings down the stone watchtower on top of a sizeable portion of Adar’s men, they discover it to be empty. The Southland villagers appear to win until they realise that some of Adar’s dead minions are actually their fellow Southlanders who swore allegiance to Adar in the (false) hope of saving their lives. Arondir and his troops reorganise before an even larger assault by Adar. As their captain hunts for and discovers the enigmatic Sauron blade he’s been looking for all season, Adar’s remaining men ambush the villagers in a hail of arrows.

 

When Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) charges in with her Nmenorean army, the day is (temporarily) saved. She captures Adar with the help of Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who turns out to be one of the first elves to be corrupted by the terrible dark lord Morgoth. The human traitor Waldreg (Geoff Morrell) sneaks inside the destroyed citadel with Sauron’s blade and exploits its enigmatic power to wreak havoc on Middle-earth as Galadriel questions Adar. A mountain lake that had been contained by a dam bursts loose, spilling its water into the magma chamber of a nearby dormant volcano after travelling through canals built by the orcs and their captives. It explodes, engulfing the Southlands in flames, ash, and night. We’ve just seen the emergence of Mordor’s fearsome Mount Doom.

 

Clark and Córdova, together with director Charlotte Brändström, who has worked on episodes of “The Witcher,” “Outlander,” “The Outsider,” and “Arrow,” discussed the making of the colossal episode with orcish invaders and mounted knights in an interview with Variety.

 

The Charging Horses of Númenor Brändström already knew “The Lord of the Rings” well and dove into action movies, like “Braveheart” and “Gladiator,” as inspiration, but she also researched real-life ancient battles.

 

She explained, “I had been studying a lot of the Ukrainian Cossacks and how they were battling on horseback, hiding behind horses, and attempting to avoid arrows and bullets. They had amazing horsemanship. When the Nmenoreans arrived in the village to save everyone, I wanted to act differently. In order to ensure that they were genuinely riding horses, we worked on that in New Zealand months in advance. That would be fantastic, I knew that.

 

The arrival on horseback of Galadriel, Halbrand, and the entire Nmenórean crew to save Arondir and the Southlands people from Adar’s orc army is one of the episode’s most breathtaking scenes. According to Brändström, the sequence required 20–30 horses and a staff of 150–200 persons in total.

 

Although, as with so much of “The Rings of Power,” the majority of the episode was filmed at the height of the pandemic, she would have preferred to utilise even more horses.

 

She said, “It was exceedingly difficult to acquire access to train horses to take part in this conflict. “I deceived it by coming in from a variety of different directions and using the same horses,” said the speaker, who then used special effects to increase the number of horses.

 

The horse riders trained for the scene for four months, putting in three hours per day of stunt work and three days per week of riding. Galadriel is a natural rider who gallops into combat wearing her glittering armour, but Clark had never mounted a horse before, so the instruction was extremely valuable for him.

 

Many of us had started the ride having never rode before, including myself, and we were extremely anxious and afraid, she recalled. “I rode a horse named Titan, who is reportedly one of the best and most trained horses they’ve ever owned. I believe that the horse I was on had a lot to do with my ability to ride, but I’m no longer scared. It’s the closest thing to enchantment I’ve ever encountered after you get used to being on a horse. Additionally, you have a bond with the past’s inhabitants, something humanity have done for all of time.

 

Galadriel deftly avoids the orcs’ spears and arrows by slipping off the saddle and to the side of her horse during the intense conflict, although Clark acknowledges that she was really replaced by a stunt person.

 

“I find it hard to believe it was possible. I assumed a lot of horse acrobatics were CGI before I did this, but they weren’t,” the actress added. There were many fantastic stunt riders on this, but their horses and the bond they shared with them were extraordinary. When we were done, it was incredibly heartbreaking to see the stunt team say goodbye to their horses.

 

The Bloody Face-Off of Arondir
Not to be outdone by Galadriel, Arondir uses his bow and arrow to dispatch swarms of orcs and brings down the enormous stone watchtower with one well-placed, blazing arrow. His most terrifying experience, though, is when he battles a huge orc who throws him about a clearing in the settlement. Arondir succeeds in stabbing the berserker in the eye, but he is trampled and nearly killed while dangling over a well. Arondir’s face is covered in filthy, black blood when the orc takes the dagger away from his face, but the elf is saved by his beloved Bronwyn, who kills the beast from behind.

 

Regarding his battle with the enormous orc, Córdova remarked, “There are no stilts or camera trickery.” The man is enormous and a fantastic fighter. I had to climb up on him, step on his hip and leg, then encircle and strangle him while he was still moving. It’s similar to riding a mechanical bull in several ways. We were not supported by any rigs, wires, or anything else. I was attempting to stay upright while riding on this huge man’s back.

 

The actor claimed that the preparation for the battle alone took three months and that his training for it eight months. He was “full of bruises” after all the archery instruction, martial arts practise, wirework, and battle choreography. He also “lived in a continuous state of discomfort.”

 

The hardest one, according to Córdova, was when he broke the column with my back. “I had to maintain a forward posture and lower my chin into my chest to prevent whiplash in my neck as he slammed me into the wall. Of course, it does occasionally. I was going around like a robot because my neck was completely shattered.

 

Córdova had to be coated in the orc’s blood, which he described as a mixture of gooey chocolate, gelatin, and food colouring, in addition to his injuries from the vicious battle scene.

 

When we were filming the night shootings, he remarked, “It was so sticky, so uncomfortable, and so cold.” “Everything kept slipping into my breastplate. I spent the greater part of two weeks with this pool of sweet goo on me.

 

Creating Mount Doom
The emergence of Mount Doom in the soon-to-be realm of Mordor brings the chapter to a grim conclusion.

 

When Brändström finally arrived in New Zealand, she only then did she learn of that crucial turn of events. She remarked, “I just thought, wow, this is just a director’s dream. “The pressure was on to make it as good as we could, and succeed. The combination of genuine stunts, special effects, and visual effects required a lot of the crew’s effort.

 

Brändström used actual natural disasters to imitate the ash and smoke rising from Mount Doom.

 

Brändström added, “I examined every volcanic explosion you can imagine. “We studied ash cloud forms from the Pompeii eruption to what occurred in New Zealand a few years ago, in the Canary Islands, and in Italy,” said the researcher.

 

One of the rare moments in the episode that took place during the day was the creation of Mount Doom. The remainder of “Udûn” takes place amid the dead of night and the grime of a winter in New Zealand.

 

The filmmaker claimed, “We endured months of muck and rain. “We just shot at night for seven weeks. I was never allowed to see the sun. I used to get home, go to bed, and wake up at night. There was only night, constantly.