Rings of Power Lifted a Battle Scene Stunt Directly from Indiana Jones
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power employs an experienced and famed stunt coordinator – Vic Armstrong.
Armstrong was a stunt double for Harrison Ford on the first three Indiana Jones movies, and experience he gained in the process allowed him to become one of the best stunt arrangers and coordinators in the industry.
He went on to work as a stunt coordinator on a number of James Bond movies, Charlie's Angels, I Am Legend, Thor, and The Amazing Spider-Man, among others, before eventually becoming second unit director and action director for The Rings of Power.
And in this position, his old experiences on Indiana Jones came to be of use.
For example, one of the famous stunts in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade directly inspired the scene in The Rings of Power, in which Halbrand rides directly toward Adar's galloping horse to take it down with a sweep of his lance while leaning circus-like to the side.
"There's another bit we stole, this time from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he's stolen the horse, catches up with the tank and shoves a rock in the gun barrel," Vic Armstrong explained to THR. "But I had to gallop along right up to the camera and grab the rock and get up before I smacked into it."
Of course, Armstrong was the one who worked on the original stunt – we cannot accuse him of stealing ideas from himself.
Another moment inspired by Armstrong's experiences on Indiana Jones was the scene where Arondir, a quick and nimble elf warrior is cornered by a massively huge orc, who sufficiently outmatches him in raw strength to throw him around like a rag doll. There was a scene with very similar vibes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones had to confront a jacked German Luftwaffe mechanic in a fistfight. As Vic Armstrong said, he borrowed the idea of contrasting an agile, swift-footed combatant against a lumbering wall of muscle from there.
Notably, Vic Armstrong avoided watching Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as to avoid referencing it too much, even subconsciously. As he said, "'What's the biggest stunt you've ever done?' and my answer is, 'Being original.' You come up with that original idea, that's the hardest thing in the world."
Well, and as it appears, when total originality is too hard, he would rather be inspired by his own early career.