LOTR Legolas and Bolg

The Lord of the Rings films were some of the best ever made, but The Hobbit trilogy didn’t measure up. It’s fair to say that they were a downright mess. For starters, they used too much CGI, but the films’ issues weren’t just in their production. They outright changed quite a bit of Tolkien’s material, and a lot of LOTR fans despised that — just like they disliked when The Rings of Power broke canon.

The most glaring issue was the Kili and Tauriel love affair. The Hollywood formula necessitates romance, so The Hobbit superimposed one. But a Dwarf and an Elf would never have been lovers in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Additionally, The Hobbit added rivalries for its main characters. Azog the Defiler was already dead in the book, but he showed up in the movies as Thorin’s nemesis. Meanwhile, Bolg developed a rivalry with Legolas, which ended when Legolas killed the Orc captain. However, Bolg’s death was much worse in the book.

Legolas Stabbed Bolg in The Hobbit Movies

The Hobbit movies made an overt effort to connect everything that was happening in Middle-earth. Sauron was revealed as the Necromancer, and he was actively ordering events. Midway through the trilogy, he commanded Azog to prepare for an assault on the Lonely Mountain. That left Bolg to continue hunting down Thorin, which led him to Mirkwood. When the Dwarves fled from Thranduil the dragon fighter’s Elven kingdom, Bolg’s Orc armies attacked.

Legolas and Tauriel helped the Dwarves escape and made a task of hunting the Orcs. Specifically, Legolas made a rivalry with Bolg. They fought in Laketown, and they fought on Ravenhill. The latter confrontation ends with Bolg’s demise. After a difficult fight, Legolas drove one of his long knives through Bolg’s skull and let the Orc commander plummet off of a cliff. It was a violent death, but a knife through the brain would have been a relatively quick death.

Beorn ‘Crushed’ Bolg in The Hobbit Book

Beorn from The Hobbit in front of a smiling Bolg

Unlike Bolg’s movie death, his demise in The Hobbit book was much slower. First off, the whole thing was set up differently. In Tolkien’s continuity, Azog was dead long before the Battle of the Five Armies. So, Bolg was completely in charge of the Orcs. Also, Sauron had nothing to do with the fight. The Orcs only showed up because they heard that Smaug was dead and wanted to plunder his hoard.

On top of all that, Legolas wasn’t in The Hobbit book at all. So, Bolg didn’t have a rivalry with the Elf prince. Rather, his demise came at the hands of Beorn — the skin-changer. After Bolg’s legendary bodyguard mortally wounded Thorin, Beorn showed up out of nowhere and helped change the tide of the battle. He dismantled the bodyguard of giant Orcs and personally mauled Bolg. The book says that he “crushed” the Orc captain.

All in all, The Hobbit films gave fans some cool battle sequences and some great rivalries, but it overplayed a lot of its material. As entertaining as Legolas and Bolg’s fight was, it would have been just as good to see Bolg mauled by a massive bear. That kind of slow and painful death would have been more fitting for the evil Orc commander.