‘The Rings of Power’ Stunt Coordinator Vic Armstrong Sampled Some of His Greatest Hits for the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel

On the sixth episode of The Rings of Power — the first in Amazon’s mega-budget The Lord of the Rings prequel to truly erupt in action as Adar’s rampaging orcs finally come face-to-face with Galadriel and her fresh-off-the-boat, battle-hungry Númenóreans — there are a few moments where viewers over a certain age may experience a sense of déjà vu.

In one sequence, Arondir — Ismael Cruz Cordova’s extremely nimble, sharpshooting elven warrior — falls from a roof only to be cornered by a huge lumbering orc who proceeds to throw him around like a rag doll. Stunt coordinator and second unit director Vic Armstrong says he got the idea — which contrasts the quick-footed physicality of Arondir against the slower but more brutal moves of the orc — from a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Indiana Jones comes up against a stacked German Luftwaffe mechanic in a fistfight around a revolving propeller plane.

“That was the thought process behind that, where he’s getting pummeled by [late actor] Pat Roach,” he says.

But for Armstrong, if it was a bit of creative theft, it was only from himself: He was the one taking the punches in Raiders, having doubled for Harrison Ford in the first three Indiana Jones movies. A legendary British stuntman who has stepped in for the likes of Christopher Reeve (as Superman), Roger Moore (as James Bond), Gregory Peck, Jon Voight and Donald Sutherland across a career spanning more than 50 years, Armstrong admits that the fight wasn’t the only moment for which he turned to his time sporting Ford’s famed fedora.

“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,” he says. “But I had to gallop along right up to the camera and grab the rock and get up before I smacked into it.”

Armstrong says he explained this sequence to his team on The Rings of Power, resulting in the scene — not long after the orc battle — in which Halbrand rides directly toward Adar’s galloping horse and takes it down while leaning circus-like to one side and sticking out a low-placed lance.

Sometimes, it wasn’t only Armstrong cribbing off his own work. For the scene in which Galadriel climbs up a frozen waterfall using only her dagger (seen in the original Rings of Power teaser), episodes one and two director J.A. Bayona, who had worked with Armstrong on Penny Dreadful, called with an idea after watching a film shot in South America.

“I said, ‘J.A., I shot that movie, it’s The Mission, isn’t it?’ ” he says. Armstrong had spent two months at the Iguazu Falls, plotting the route (and putting in the hidden climbing rings) for Jeremy Irons’ Father Gabriel to ascend in the famed scene from Roland Joffé’s 1986 period drama. In Bayona’s Middle-earth alternative, he changed the water falling in the background to icy water falling in the foreground.

“It was a revamp, but it all looks different,” says Armstrong. “Because they’re good ideas, and you want to use them again!”

For Armstrong, revitalizing stunts and sequences in a world where so much has already been done is key. “Given my background, I’m always asked, ‘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.”

This was one reason he intentionally didn’t rewatch any of action in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, films he wanted to avoid referencing, even if subconsciously. “Because it’s great stuff and probably would have influenced me a lot, but I thought that was one way of keeping it fresh,” he says.

Armstrong is now shooting and writing sequences for season two of Rings of Power and claims efforts to “up the ante” on the first are all part of the challenges that he loves. And he says he has dipped back into his own repertoire again, having pitched something that he then admitted came from 2002’s The Four Feathers. “But that was a revamp of something else,” he says. “I just love the creativity of trying to come up with something new, and even if it’s something old that you’re recooking and revamping and restyling, it’s still going to be new.”

One significant new element for season two is the location. The first season was shot in New Zealand, meaning several long-haul back and forths for Armstrong from London in 2020 and 2021 (and, thanks to various COVID-19 lockdowns, several weeks spent in quarantine along the way). For the second outing, the production has shifted to the U.K., the majority taking place in Bray Studios on the banks of the Thames in the county of Berkshire.

“And it’s literally seven miles from my door,” says Armstrong. “I’ve been telling everybody that they moved because I live here.”

This story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.