> Snow-trolls are mentioned only once in Tolkien's works, in reference to Helm Hammerhand stalking his enemies "like a snow-troll" during his sorties against the Dunlendings in the Long Winter. The trolls who lived in the Coldfells in western Eriador may have been similar to these. [1]

And the actual passage, from The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl":

> Helm [Hammerhand] held the fortress during the Long Winter. He blew his great war-horn, and broke through the Dunlending ranks, clad in white, stalking men like a snow-troll slaying them with his bare hands. However, his sons Haleth and Háma were slain and Helm grew gaunt because of grief and famine; still his horn would fill the Dunlendings with fear each time it was heard. During one of his night sorties Helm died, possibly from famine and cold; his body was discovered frozen in the snow still standing. [2]

I would say the "stalking" and the subsequent "slaying" similitudes rule out the gentle qualities of the snow-troll.

For the record I haven't watched RoP yet; something feels wrong about this interpretation of Tolkien's work and I think I'll save myself the disappointment.

[1] https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Snow-trolls [2] https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Helm#cite_note-Helm-5

And there was nothing unnecessary about the fight scene. It’s unrealistic in the way that Legolas is unrealistic in Peter Jackson’s movies, but no worse.

I'll watch it if the writers room turns out to be staffed by weird old British Catholics though.

Bill Murray, Nick Offerman, and Steven Wright would all like a word.

However he regularly expresses emotions through gestures and subtle body language, so yes it’s close but not there over a full routine.

Aye! They write Fantasy like action movies.

I don't think you should take the longevity of each as a mark of popularity or quality. The British version wasn't cancelled - Gervais and Marchant ended it deliberately with a proper conclusion. I don't think anyone doubts more British series would have been commissioned if they'd wanted to carry on.

When Gervais was asked if he likes the American version his response was "Yes of course. It's made me very rich." That's his dry sense of humor, but I suspect it also hints at why they stopped doing the UK version and started on the US version instead.

And it has been said multiple times by people working on the American version that besides the inital setup, Gervais and Merchant had very little if any input and everything was done by the American wtiters/show runners.

The troll attack advanced the plot by serving as a catalyst for Galadriel’s troops deserting.

Unless you’re saying that just having a fight scene with a troll was gratuitous? But the books have plenty of battle scenes with trolls as well.

They are not elite fighters in the sense of, say, just being a Navy SEAL.

If you're looking at Rings of Power and expecting a being such as Galadriel to break a sweat fighting something like a troll, you have a strange set of expectations.

Which is why it's s suprising that a frost troll took out 3 of them in one lumpy throw of some packed ice

I don't think that's consistent with the fights in the books.

I mean Fingolfin physically fought a 40+ foot tall Morgoth in the Silmarillion. He was jumping around between huge pits that Morgoth's mace made when Morgoth tried to hit him. Fingolfin had a sword, while Morgoth held a mace that was bigger than Fingolfin, and yet Fingolfin was able to survive being beaten to the ground by said mace.

I don't think there's anyway to depict fights on screen like that without looking a bit silly.

If you start trying to realistically depict what it would look like to fight giant humanoids, you'd end up with something that is probably very interesting to people like you and myself, but that the majority of people would find boring. Plus that's not how the source material approached combat scenes.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/513872-he-was-tall-as-a-you...

In general, the elves, especially the older ones like Galadriel, are shown to possess super-human characteristics in all physical feats, including agility, stamina and strength (though the Men of the First Age apparently were stronger though less agile).