“The Rings of Power” finale director breaks down that Sauron/Galadriel duel (exclusive)
Charlotte Brändström talks the rehearsals and in-camera trickery that went into this shapeshifting swordfight between Middle-earth's two biggest power players.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, episode 8, “Shadow and Flame.”
Hell hath no fury like an elf spurned. One of the stronger character relationships in season 1 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was the friendship between Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand (Charlie Vickers). When Halbrand turned out to be Sauron in disguise, their partnership came to an emphatic end. Ever since then, these two power players have spent season 2 on opposite sides of the board. So when they finally came together again in the season finale, director Charlotte Brändström knew the reunion had to make an impact. You can watch their fight above.
“I feel like we’ve been waiting for the confrontation between Sauron and Galadriel throughout the season,” Brändström, who directed half the episodes of season 2 including the final two, tells Entertainment Weekly. “This is the first time they’ve see each other again since she was deceived by him in the first season. So I said, nobody else can touch that one. I really need to work with the actors on it.”
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After swaggering through season 1 as the scruffy rogue Halbrand, Sauron has spent season 2 disguised as a beautiful elf noble named Annatar. But in this fight with Galadriel, he brings back his Halbrand form to unnerve her. For the cast and crew, this transformation was easier said than done.
“Everything was done in-camera, there’s no VFX at all,” Brändström says about Sauron’s shapeshifting. “It’s all planned ahead, but it wasn’t easy. Switching between Annatar and Halbrand takes hours in costume and prosthetics, plus he has beard stubble as Halbrand. It was really a puzzle and a process; we had to find the most efficient method. It took about four or five days to film because of all the makeup changes and the wire work. When Galadriel jumps down the wall, that’s Morfydd on the wire. The only thing that Charlie didn’t do himself was his fall.”
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For Brändström, a good action scene is all about performance and rhythm. She cites the swordfight between Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie as a model, since those two are constantly stopping and starting their fight, and many of the beats are based on the characters’ personalities. Similarly, Brändström wanted there to be a reason that Sauron starts shapeshifting — which entails him changing not just into Halbrand, but also Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Galadriel herself. Brändström captured those changes by filming Clark’s reactions while Vickers switched places with other actors as needed.
“I wanted the fact that he starts changing shapes and becomes all these different characters to be motivated by something. He’s not just doing it for fun,” Brändström says. “So he was doing it because she managed to kick him down and he fell on his back. He needed to reassert his power. He felt weaker, so he wanted to destabilize her, and that’s why he’s doing it.”
The duel between Sauron and Galadriel makes an interesting contrast with the epic Siege of Eregion that took place between armies of elves and orcs in the previous episode. The epic battle featured one long take to capture the scale of the fighting, but that kind of bravura single-take shot wasn’t going to work for this carefully coordinated one-on-one bout. The choreography had to be very precise, especially since Sauron is wielding not just a sword, but also the heavy crown of Morgoth.
“Once we trained the actors in all the moves, I had to go through all the dialogue with them because I needed to place the lines in certain areas and it had to come at logical moments when they actually stopped and looked at each other,” Brändström says. “And he's obviously using the crown a lot, which was actually a very difficult move, for him to play around with the crown. That took a lot of rehearsals. It was probably the most difficult element for Charlie, to make sure the crown came in at the right moments when she was hitting him. So we filmed it in small pieces, because it was an exhausting fight for them. They would have to stop, and then we would go back and make sure we got all the right moves.”
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Over the course of season 2, viewers have seen just how skilled Sauron is at manipulating others. He managed to corrupt not just Celebrimbor, but also bring every other elf in Eregion under his spell. He turned the orcs against their leader, Adar (Sam Hazeldine). This duel proves that Galadriel is one of the few beings in Middle-earth capable of directly resisting him — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for her.
“It was really important that we felt the tension, the provocations, and how destabilized she felt because she was very much in love with Halbrand,” Brändström says. “I mean, there was almost like a love story. He really seduced her. He really got into her head and it destabilized her, so she knows she needs to be strong and stand up to him. So I love the moments when she reacts to something he’s doing. When I'm editing, I love to have characters react to something and then show what they’re responding to.”
Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.