The DUMBEST battle ever! - Rings of Power Siege of Eregion FIGHT SCENE AUTOPSY 

Not just trying to claim 4 Km of range on that trebuchet but by the looks of it shooting upwards a very very long way too - that city looked to be full of mulitistory buildings and now looks so tiny and low this mountain must be a few hundred meters tall at least. So that trebuchet actually has a range of probably more like 15 Km - the rocks are still arcing upwards or at least not clearly decending yet and at insane distance already, so if the mountain wasn't there to hit minimum 8Km range... Making it somewhere in the range of a battleship gun or modern artillery in performance, well in excess of any black powder cannon I'm aware of... Even more stupid if your trebuchet can shoot that far why would you bring them that close! Its so much easier for your opponents to target the siege weapons if they are visible - they are in range of a sally, visible to the defenders so as they might just have a siege weapon or two of their own...

Critical Drinker said you would have a few um... "notes" about this battle. I see he wasn't wrong.

Talking with my wife, I think the best explanation for modern literature, movies, and television is that they are created by people who have never actually done anything. It's not that they're unintelligent (well, OK, maybe); they have no experience in anything. Force-feed those guys false narratives about the nature of the world and humanity, convince them they write real good-like, and you get The Rings of Power.

It blows my mind that not a single orc has a shield.... they're just standing there, waiting to get shot.

Warhammer 40k Orks have better logic and consistency, and they can believe things into existence

As soon as Drinker name-dropped Shad I couldn't wait for this video ! The best part, Shad doesn't mention Twilight.

You can't expect people who deny the very facts of reality to be able to comprehend the basic functions of Science

A certain level of unrealistic physics and tactical grey areas are fairly normal in most films, but this is so profoundly dumb and poorly planned it offends the intelligence of the audience. And they're trying SO hard to be Battle of Helms Deep 2.0. Its just sad at this point.

What could have been done was: - 1) Elven scouts discover the large orc army approaching. Elves are confident that between the river, the defensible bridges, and their approaching dwarven allies they can win out. They only need hold out until dawn. 2) Night bombardment commences. City is targeted, not walls. A charge is anticipated on the bridges. No charge occurs. 3) Bombardment continues devastating the city. Many citizens, not soldiers are killed. Elves cannot simply sit back. Cavalry is sent to engage the trebuchets. 4) Orcs retreat back into the forest. Cavalry chases them expecting to find the Orc encampment, but desperate to stop the bombardment. 5) Cavalry find the forest creepily empty, aside from evidence of a large camp and the abandoned siege engines. 6) Reveal. The ground beneath the city shakes, a large sinkhole appears and the huge orc army flows out of the hole. The bombardment was a cover. First to create noise of the target area to give the tunnelling orcs information on where to tunnel up to (as foreshadowed in Season 1). Second to drop fire sources for light and for a future purpose later. 7) Orcs swarm out toward the two bridges in order to gain control of the city. Interior defenders fight bravely but are easily overwhelmed. Elon's cavalry are trapped outside the walls, their defences now working against them. 8) Elon's cavalry desperately use the orc's trebuchets to breech the walls or gate and fight into the city, fully expecting the dwarf reinforcements to arrive soon. 9) Orcs set the city ablaze (with the fires launched in the night before). Thick ashen smoke fills the atmosphere as the last of the elven defenders are slaughtered. 10) Dawn comes, and through the thick haze of ash the sun takes on an ominous red hue (reminiscent of the Eye of Sauron) and in the red glow of burning dawn it reveals... the dwarven reinforcements are not coming. Elon, Gilgalad and the remaining cavalry flee the ruined city as it finally is totally overrun by the Orc army as overhead burns the red sun and the fires of destruction.

I wonder when Hollywood will understand that people interested in historical and fantasy movies often overlap with people who have some understanding of basic strategy thanks to strategy games and wargames. Thus, some tactics that make sense are expected by a significant portion of the target audience.

They are throwing the same stones that made the temple of the Acolyte.

Orc Trebuchet: I can't break through those walls! Also Orc Trebuchet: I can break through an entire mountain!

The orks waited until the cavalry got THAT CLOSE without killing or ditching their hostage? What was their plan if the cavalry did the objectively right thing and continued the charge? Get lanced? And why on Earth was the elven cavalry formed like that? They were about to slam into the back of eachother's horses as they made contact with the ork formation. Top to bottom incompetence from everyone involved!

Imagine thinking you can stop an entire army from attacking you just by taking a single hostage. And worse, Elrond knew that Galadriel went to fight Adar, so he could have known there was a large chance she had been captured by him. This shouldn't even surprise him, let alone cause him to stop the charge.

Aw yeah, I've been waiting for this every since CD mentioned you.

From the show that brought you simultaneously both the weakest and most devastating pyroclastic flow ever, created by the largest steam induced volcanic explosion, from a non sealed/pressurized vessel, ever. Is this 'battle' any surprise.

You want to expect that something dropped will fall? - You do remember why boats float...

Rings Of Power is an insult and abomination to LOTR, The Hobbit & anything related to Middle Earth.

Todays writers seem to think they can bash out any old rubbish and leave it down to editors and CGI to make them look good, not realising how well educated some of the most beloved story tellers of the day were and the crazy amount of research many of them undertook before producing their books and films.

Is there anything that locks the siege engine into the ground? Because aside of the stupidity of hammering nails into the stone, the thing my brain kept coming back to was the fact that even if the nails did stick, the engine would activate and launch itself right into the wall and self-destruct because the wall is far heavier than a big crossbow with a log. xD

Shad could have done a full hour just on the calvary scene...I've seen children playing with action figures do more coherent battle scenes

Even if accept all the BS of that wall breaker, so it doesn't pull out the nail and give them every benefit of the doubt of putting the nails in (perhaps a team a masons were drilling that hole in advance or whatever) that siege engine can't weigh so much more than the wall that it isn't going to be pulled violently back into the wall itself. At best its a single use weapon suicidal weapon as Newton still applies so that weapon is going to really move and splatter itself against the wall bits its pulled out.

The damming of the river would be even more uneffective than you think. Water has weight, and a lot of moving water has a lot of force behind it. Those falling rocks would be swept, if not long way downstream, at least so far out of the way until the same amount of water the river carried before could continue to flow unimpeded.

Here's something Tolkien once said regarding a proposed film adaptation script that never saw the light of day, which also played fast and loose with time and distance: "days are days, miles are miles, and weather is weather."

BREAKING NEWS: Experts have confirmed that Rings of Power S2 does, in fact, contain the dumbest battle scene.

It's like this was written by someone with a child's understanding of warfare, physics and geography, which is most likely true. I can only imagine the script reading like this: "And then... And then... And then... And then...".

Thank God for shitty movies! We get the Ultimate Shad video: Fight scene autopsy! Almost as good as his castle reviews!

Remember: Guyladriel dealt with a troll by herself, while three male elves need to team up to do it...

Shad was so very calm and composed that I did indeed think he was making an inhuman effort not to reeeeeeee for one hour straight. Bravo sir, bravo.

And you know what the defense will be? “We’ll the LOTR trilogy was dumb too.” First: No. while it is true there were silly things like the Legolas shield skateboard, overall the battle tactics were FAR more logical and realistic than this mess. Second: It’s interesting that the defense of Rings of Power always has to consist of tearing down what came before. It’s never defending the show on its own merits.

Its AMAZING that we live in a time where there is now a second season of Lord of the Rings, and I dont even care to notice that it exists... Just incredible.

I've seen Bollywood battle scenes that make more logical sense than this.

Ever since Critical mentioned Shad I was like the poor dude must be in a padded cell over this. This looks so bad

A large counterweight trebuchet might push 400 yards, iirc. Saruman was noted for developing incendiaries and explosives, implying that such weapons didn't exist until then. The walls may have been enspelled to make them stronger, which would explain their resistance to artillery. The nail engine shouldn't work against real fortifications, let alone elf-crafted ones. These elves are supposed to have fought and won the wars against Morgoth. Yet instead of superhuman experts with maximal veterancy, they're behaving like unblooded amateurs who haven't even read about warfare, let alone fought for literal centuries against the greatest foe ever to appear on Middle Earth. Roman military manuals discuss cavalry and woods at length. Woods require dismounting and switching from bows to darts and javelins. Elves are immortal and are reborn if killed. Holding an elf hostage should be worthless. Galadriel grew up empowered by the light of Valinor and was as pure and virtuous as any elf (and thus maximally powerful). How mere orcs could take her prisoner and hold her hostage without supernatural backing on the scale of a dragon or a balrog is beyond me.

I'm never going to punish myself and watch this joke of a show, but man.. a few minutes only of the critics and I sill feel insulted by the showrunners. It got worse, I'm legit upset at what they put Shad and every spectator through. It's sickening.

It isn't hubris, it's toxic positivity. They're so busy clapping each other backs in fear of offending one another that they can't write anything half decent anymore.

25:50 that scene, would've had medieval knights on horseback cooming in their armour! Flat plain, far spread targets, no battle lines or pikes...

"Rings of Power" was the final straw that caused me to stop doing business with Amazon entirely. For quite some time I wondered how they had become so stupefyingly stupid. Conclusion: It's the drugs.

That intro got me, I thought drinker swapped his name & icon as a late april fools, I need schleep

The makers of this non-show clearly looked really hard at the PJ movies and sought to copy it. But lacking the skill to do so (being diversity hires and Jar Jar Abrams rejects) they could not pull it off, and lets face it, the battle scenes in the PJ movies are deeply flawed as well, full of Hollywood tactics. But PJ made it work because we had an emotional connection to the characters and stories. Things that are completely missing with this non-show. Gilgadaddy can't hold a candle to Theoden. When you like the characters and story you can get away with plotholes big enough to drive a Death Star through. When you despise the characters and story EVERY plothole will grate on you and annoy you.

6:30 It's quite simple, really. If no "magic system", "sci-fi tech" or other special worldbuilding detail is in effect, then you should always defer to the natural laws of physics.

Lord of the Rings (visual adaptation): 1) Also a fantasy, like Rings of Power 2) Also has sieges 3) During the siege of Helm´s Deep, the uruks are unable to destroy the mountainside, the Deeping wall, and even struggle against the gate. Its only once they lay explosives directly underneath the wall when they can finally bring it down (or more specifically - blow up). 4) Their long ladders cannot be erected by sheer manpower, they require a pulley and anchor system. 5) During the siege of Minas Tirith, the orcs are unable to destroy the city walls. They are limited to shooting off the crenellations, and wrecking city houses. Their catapults have a short range, and are limited to the lowest level of the city. Their firepower initially also significantly lags behind the firepower of the massive defensive trebuchets on the city walls. 6) The battering ram made out of an iron braced wooden log is unable to break the huge city gate. 7) They require a huge battering ram with massive steel head and incredible inertia. ... All in all, its very obvious that you can make a fantasy siege look believable and logical. These show makers however clearly decided to make it ridiculous. The most likely reason for it that first comes to my mind is just cultural vandalism - the desire to destroy the legacy of established works.

It amazes me how much money ROP costs to make and they get such basic "Technical Consultant" things so dumb. Do they not have technical consultants or are the technical consultants tearing their hair out at not being listened to?

Just think about the attack on Gondor when it comes to Artillery: Trebuche with Heads, Trebuche with rubble, Towers, Battering Ram, Fell Beasts. You know what each of these attacks are trying to do, how good they are at doing it and how succsessfull the plan was.

Having spent a lot of time undamming rivers in the swamp I agree with you Shad, likely the daming of the river would fail. The soil composition judging from terrain would not be suitable to assisting in daming those minigaps and microfissures as you mentioned. In looser soils the dirty, mud and clay would actually make it to where they become a natural cement

I still can't get over the fact they put horse armor only on the horse backs (i suppose to protect from falling arrows) but not in the front or sides where they are more likely to get hit with spears/pikes/long swords and even arrows, wtf 😅

Pulling stones from the wall? _Pulling_ ? There is no word in the tongues of men for such stupidity.

Amazon wanted its own Game of Thrones and they delivered... Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3 to be precise xD

The oil exploding is the best. Shad's reaction is priceless. There's even a blip of the wounded archer with a "huh!??" look on her face while it's going on!

Don't forget, Alexander the Great during the siege of Tyre had his army build a land bridge over the OCEAN with the length of 1km (0.6 miles) over the period of seven months, through storms and enemy artillery. He did that in 332 b.c.!! And it was so well built that it never fell apart, but instead became part of the topography and today Tyre is not an island, but part of the mainland. But I guess that was not fancy enough for Amazon to recreate.

Who knew orcs in Mordor had modern petrochemicals, modern propelents, and explosives?

on the siege device: even if the nails magically gripped the stones, the moment the "crossbow was released... wall vs. machine ... which would more likely be thrown towards which (SPLAT! XD )

I think what’s happening here is that this show is the history of Middle Earth as told by an orc scholar, at the very end it’ll be like Never Ending Story where it cuts to a book (made of human leather) shutting and an old orc saying “An dats da troof of it awl”

I Can not understand how that show made it to a second season. EVERYONE hates it. The only thing I ever saw of the show was the trailer. Everything about the show is STUPID.

I am very much doubtful of how much of the "High" part of the "Budget" went in to actual production and costume design and fight choreography, and most importantly the Lore. Compared to some guys pockets.

I'm SO tired of seeing these unorganized battles that turn into a melee. No battles in history ever looked like that. And wedge formations are just dumb. Elrond is literally at the mercy of the entire orc army by being in front of the wedge. It's such a stupid formation that never would work. The armor looks like some weird samurai armor or something too. Everything is just so bad.

During production of LOTR, John Howe had the production design of Helms Deep change to make the deeping wall bend inward instead of outward in the original design, as archers could have line of sight in all parts of the deeping wall…a simple but effective tactical approach to design you’d want to have…nothing like that was EVER thought about in ROP clearly

Lets not forget that Elves archers failing to put proper volley after volley of arrows into the enemies pushing the "remove nail machine", those werent scared humans from a random town, but 2nd AGE ELVISH ARCHERD FROM A CAPITAL CITY! ...

THE worst? As in, even worse than Mulan? Dang.

the "nail" siege engine felt like it was just a macguffin to wind the troll. So I imagine there was a meeting where they wanted to take the (underused, miss opportunity) troll out for heroic purposes and then tried to reverse engineer how that would happen. A lot of of TROP(E) seems to have been written with plot points and copied / poor attempts at heroic key frames and then these were linked by someone without logic, research or advisors...just convoluted amateur fan fiction for effect.

I knew it was going to be a bad fight scene when the elven army stopped charging. 22:59 There is a perfectly usable bridge, RIGHT THERE. Why didn’t they use a battering ram…on the most likely wooden doors???

Before I saw this, I believed that the Battle of Winterfell was the worst castle siege/defence scene anyone could have ever pulled off. I was deeply mistaken...

You know what I'd really like to see, after all this? An analysis of the major battle scene in Jackson trilogy, explaining how much they are unrealistic and how they manage to be great cinema scene nonetheless

I love it when my favorite unrelated RU-vidrs talk about each other.

there's one more thing to laugh at with the she elf archer scene, she got shot by 6 arrows but she could still got up again, but nobody shot any more arrows at her until after she magically shot a laser guided missile at the target.

When Alexander besieged Tyre in 332BC, he build a massive causeway so he could get his siege towers to the walls of the island fortress. That causeway actually still exists today 2300 years later... permanently connecting the original island city to the mainland.

Watching this I was reminded of a quote from DragonBall Z Abridged Vegeta's nose starts to bleed Nappa: "You ok ?" Vegeta: "Yes just an aneurysm out of sheer stupidity."

20:00 Even if those nails held, the laws of physics dictate that the massive wall would have just pulled the device into it rather than it pulling the stones out of the wall.

The "bucket of oil" has the same stuff that was in the Numenorian ship's barrels. Too bad they won't think to weaponise it for thousands of years to come.

That scene where the elf chick gets hit by arrows from all directions, the one striking her lower left side literally comes up from the ground lol

Even if the battle of this episode were to be reviewed, it would take an autopsy beyond reckoning! 30 minutes at least! An entire hour! But my lord, there is no such autopsy! *AUTOPSY HORN SOUNDS*

The stupid wall pulling machine would have every component break before it was able to pull one stone out of that wall. We are supposed to be able to suspend our disbelief when a rope and log are pulling down a giant stone wall.

The river damming even more stupid as the city is position where 2 very large rivers met so the other river would just taken over.

One thing i realized when Shad was mentioning the river blockage. With how the episode ends i wont be surprised if in the next episode theres a "salvation" from the river breaking through the rubble and washing away the orcs so we can get yet another call back with Elrond and the water in fellowship.

Thank you for torturing yourself with Rings of Power Shad. It has helped me avoid it like the plague.

It's AWESOME to see another Autopsy!! I love these, and this show has earned it in spades!! Thank you Shad!!

That was a funny intro, thought i had the wrong vid until you had your moment shad :)

"So in this scene they defend the wall - What wall? - Shut up Tommy, there's now a wall." And THAT is how Eregion got a wall in one day.

can I just point out, although they do call them trebuchets in the episode... they're definitely not trebuchets, they're catapults, trebuchets behave like a sling almost, these are literally just a bowl attached to an arm aka catapult :D

The drinker has called..Shad has answered the call to arms

I'm sorry but where are the siege towers, the machines that throw up ladders you see Peter Jackson's orcs got the job done properly. Gothmog actually understands strategy and tactics, and was able to continue the siege AND meet the riders at the same time. That the orcs eventually panicked in the face of the Rohiram cavalry is a matter of morale, if they'd stood their ground then they'd have prevailed.

When the Orcs turned their trebuchets, my mind went, "They think their going to damn up a river with trebuchet shot? That's stupid." What actually happened was even dumber.

You missed an alternative tactic to deal with the river, divert it. In season one we were shown that the Orcs are really, really, good trench diggers. In fact it was a key part of the creation of Mount Doom. Adar getting the Orcs to dig a trench to reroute the river would have been a perfect call back to Season one.

Appreciate how you break these scenes down. It's easier to watch you talk about them than watch the scenes themselves

I have one questions... why they dont use TROLLS with for example hammers rams ramps etc those big boys will change siege, they show only one Troll. What a stupid scenario FFS.

One redeeming feature of the magic seeking orc arrow hitting the elf on all sides at once is, at least it wasn't massacring the supposedly competent male turning them into a punchline while bigging up the plot armoured girlboss for once... At least she dies as a punchline...

Just got to say, I love this little corner of YT where great minds think alike. I saw that clip from the Critical Drinker on his channel and hoped Shad would have a follow-up. Glad to see sanity prevailing here, in an era where it isn't always clear what information is good or bad. Trust with the creators is very important, and seeing creators with integrity working together gives me a warm fuzzy feeling!

It should become mandatory for People that write such Battles to have at least 100 Hours in any Total War Game.

They also do not have a sling on the trebuchet, id wager about 90% of the distance is because of that rope at the end. They also placed the weight on the wrong side, and curved the arm backwards, so it basically slows down and stops moving at the point when it should be going its fastest. So they did 3 moves that would not even make the stone leave the basket. This is worse then just a regular catapult. Clearly the ones who made this gave 0 fucks about asking a expert, let alone do a google search. The rocks are also coming from the wrong direction on the shot from the mountain, you can clearly see the angle would place the origin in the water. I would also say this is the worst battle ever put into a movie.

Mountains, Gandalf. I want to see mountains again. Yes. Those crumbly-ass mountains that are about as strong as an old brick wall. Glorious.

To think that gil galad wouldn't join in the fighting is insane. He a warrior as well

I mean, this is sort of a metaphor for the entire series. Nothing about it was even remotely necessary.

The elves have bows ... do they not know how to use them on horseback? Just shoot the ork thats endangering Galardiel and wipe them out ... what a dumb show.

48:17 Love the Orc casually walking by with his weapon raised like he's at a rally or something. Didn't notice the Elf with 1 health left with bleeding on her, guess he didn't want to kill steal.

Personally would have accepted the orcs (who from season one are know for digging tunnels) digging a large tunnel network to redirect the river, at least that would have fit better with the story so far, plus that material could be used to make a land bridge at the same time… the damming of the river just made no sense 😂

One of the funniest things is that all these characters trying to get into Eregion via "dwarf tunnels" while the orcs don't even have the bridges guarded. Between scenes the number of bridges changes like you mentioned, walls appear between seasons, and the one bridge they do show I think changes between being damaged and undamaged. But yeah, the shoddy orc trebuchet shots are up there with people surviving a direct volcano eruption.

Agreed this is some of the worst arms and armour in a production for a long long time. If this was an 70's or 80's production I'd have given it a pass, perhaps for two reasons as before more modern techniques mass production of a good actor safe stuff would be expensive and challenging, and to look good or even visible on the smaller lower resolution camera and screens details need to thicker and more exagerated (depending on the shot of course)

Thank you - I was so hoping you'd break down this battle. Great analysis.

It truly does amaze how utterly incompetent these writers are. There are numerous historical sieges you could just lift from the internet or books and plonk it straight into your fictional one. Literally don't even need to use a brain cell, this could be the easiest part of the writers work. There are many sieges that take place where a city has a large river protecting it, and was successfully taken. Want an easy example, Paris. There you go, even the Vikings besieged Paris using their boats as their primary transport. My god, boats... you're telling me orcs can construct trebuchets but not a simple raft? Stick some shields as a roof and easy-peasy, you can take a city. Also want happened to those Wargs, what they had a grand total of two? one? Wow... what a great breeding program they have. "Siege of Paris 845, The Vikings defeated half of the Frankish army and reached Paris in March of 845, rowing up the Seine, during Easter. The city was plundered and occupied by the Viking forces. Charles the Bald ultimately paid a ransom of 7,000 French livres in gold and silver to the Vikings, who then withdrew from the city."

20:00 The orcs are also super intelligent. Calabrimbor said this was the weakest point of the wall, other elves were unaware, but orcs somehow knew it.