We already have a Prime Account (we got it for the delivery, but also use Amazon Music, the TV, the free Twitch sub, and my wife uses the kindle unlimited, so for us it's more than just the TV and is worth it, but I wouldn't have it if it were just for the TV streaming alone.

-M

I'm sceptical but I'm sure I'll give it a look. I don't think there's much to be judged from the picture - stills from movies or tv don't always capture what it'll look like or feel like when watching the thing as it unfolds. There's nothing especially or obviously bad about it that leaps to the eye, so that's something.

Re-reading the chapter The Bridge of Khazad-dûm, I realized how much scenes from the Peter Jackson movie had replaced my memories of the book. The balrog in the film (or in the Baks=hi one, for that matter) is quite different from the one in the novel, though closer to what I recall from The Silmarillion.  

Durin's Bane strikes me as being much closer to the Christian image of a fallen angel (what balrogs are, in a sense) than the monster on steroids we saw in the movie. He's described as having the shape of a man, shrouded in a billowing darkness; not described as having wings either, although at one point darkness spreads from him like wings. No fire bursting spectacularly from his body; his nostrils do emit flames in one paragraph, but his being draped in flames at one point is apparently caused by his jumping through the fire coming from a chasm.

More importantly, he's a powerful sorcerer more than a hulking beast. Gandalf tries to block the exit from the chamber of Mazarbul with mighty spells, and the balrog uses counter spells strong enough to send Gandalf reeling.

I really enjoy these little re-discoveries. 

Yes, absolutely! The movies' orcs just scatter as if the balrog was some uncontrollable force of nature, like a wild bear let loose. In the novel, their sense of awe is palpable.

I think Jackson wanted to emphasize the raw power of the balrog, while Tolkien showed his great antiquity and quasi-divine status (for all that the balrog is sort of a fallen angel).

Perhaps the best solution, given the ambiguity of Tolkien's description, would have been to use this vagueness as an advantage and not to show too much or too clearly what the Balrog looked like: a vast shadow that sometimes seems to take the form of spreading wngs, some kind of "mystic" flame ... the unseen/unknown is often more frightening and awe-inspiring than the defined, no matter how terrifying.

Speaking of "mystic flame", reminds me how disappointing the "mystic" effects were in the Doctor Strange movie - too bright and tinselly, to my mind. And looking at images of Jackson's Balrog, I fnd the flame too realistic, too earthly to achieve the effect I think is called for.

^^ That's great Roquefort Raider. ...and no wings!

I don't presume to place myself in the mental shoes of the young RRtist, but could it be that a justifiably confused idea of Tolkien's confusing talk about the Balrog's wings made itself felt in the shadows behind the Balrog?

Also, they make me wonder if the 1978 RR had been reading Lovecraft as well as Tlkien around that time, since they look more like tentacles than wings!