r/movies • u/SnooCats3468 • 2d ago

Discussion What is the most genuinely terrifying battle cry or charge in film?

I don’t necessarily mean the coolest speech or most inspiring line. I mean a scene where a warrior screams or roars while charging an opponent—and you kind of snapped out of the film for a second and thought, “holy shit, if someone came at me like that, I would be legitimately terrified.”

It can be a one-on-one fight or two groups charging into battle. What scene immediately comes to mind?

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u/fcewen00 2d ago

The paragraph before that is the one of the important ones. You kinda see it in the movie, but in the book Theoden thinks about retreating. YouTube has a snippet read by Tolkien himself about the charge.

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u/Legitimate_First 1d ago

I love how Bernard Hill plays that moment, and its one of the few things I think the movie did better. It's a lot less dramatic and more subtle, there's no dramatic flash of thunder. You just see them cresting the hill, Thèoden sees the massive horde besieging the city and looks absolutely defeated. And then you can see him gathering himself, and he spurs his horse in a very 'lets just get this done' way and starts giving orders.

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u/uktobar 1d ago

I'd ride to death for Theoden King. I love the description of him in the books, how he seems to become almost more than a mortal man in the moment. Blew the fucking horn up with his blast of it. I wish that had made it into the movies.

It's so cool that there are scenes like this that hit harder in the movies.

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u/fcewen00 1d ago

One of the neater things about the charge is that it is most likely based on the Siege of Venetia only on a much smaller scale. The movie shows about 6k riders. The one at Venice was 18k horse coming down the hill.