ThisLord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerarticle contains spoilers.
And its consequences, ifJ.R.R.
Tolkiens writing is anything to go by, promise to be both devastating and far-reaching.
Its also something thats never been depicted onscreen before.
I just saw it for the first time last night, and it blew me away.
I wanted him to be desperate.
I wanted him to be not as skilled as the other elves around him.
(Elrond himself says its fall would be a mortal blow for all of Middle-earth.)
No wonder putting its destruction together involved months of filming and an equally expansive team behind the cameras.
I remember the first day they took me to the place where we were supposed to do the battle.
And it was just a very boring field in the middle of the woods.
And I thought, Oh, my God, we have to invent everything from scratch.
But, I always start by building miniature models to sort of decide how the battle should progress.
So you go from thereyou figure out the pieces and you build it.
Like building a house, one piece at a time.
I always make a run at tell a story, whatever I do.
And there is a lot of performance and a lot of storytelling in action.
So, I focused on that, Brandstrom says.
But it was tough.
That meant we needed a lot of mud.
Which made even more mud, Brandstrom says.
So even just walking around, let alone running, the actors would get stuck in it.
I fell half into a hole and someone had to come carry me out.
It waseverywhere, this mud.
It was up to our knees!
And it was raining, raining, raining, constantly.
Plus we were up all night, and it was like that for a whole month.
It was a really, really challenging period, Aramayo says.
There was so much fighting that had to change regularly.
There was a writers strike.
So many night shoots.
Episode seven, its very much about Elronds emotional journey, Brandstrom says.
Theres definitely an Elrond before this battle and an Elrond after this battle, Aramayo explains.
It brings something out in him that he doesnt expect, a sort of mortality, I would say.
It highlights the human part of him, which is very real.
Im never truly on the battlefield, but I was there in little scenes.
I got to experience little moments of [Eregion] crumbling all around me, Vickers says.
And I heard a lot of anecdotal things from people.
Rob was in the mudall the time, apparently.
But there were so many moving parts.
Charlotte did such an amazing job.
And thats on purpose, to some extent.
you’ve got the option to get used to anything.
And then you go back out [into the battle].
That constant contrast, I really, really liked that.
Its probably my favorite episode, episode seven, for that reason.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now on Prime Video.
