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Originally Posted by Squatter
Neither character ought to be where they are at the time they perform the action; they would probably have failed had Merry not in the course of his adventures, come by an extremely powerful weapon, but even so it is only Éowyn's final blow that finishes the job. By chance or providence, two people are in the right place at the right time and with the right weapon to make a difference, but this has nothing to do with their inherent power. It was simply that the application of that power at precisely the time and place they did had a disproportionate effect on larger events.
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But isn't that rather the point being made in this discussion? That, regardless of the relative "power" of the combatants, there is always remains the possibility that "circumstances" will allow the weaker to prevail. In any confrontation, it is not a foregone conclusion that the higher in relative (natural) power will gain the victory.
That said, I still fail to see the relevance of this dicussion to the scene in the film, since the Gandalf of the film is not necessarily of a higher order than the Witch-King of the film, and there is no suggestion that a more powerful Gandalf might be defeated by a less powerful Witch King in consequence of "circumstances". Jackson made the choices he did, including "adjusting" the relative power levels of these two characters, for film-based reasons, primarily (to my mind) those that I touched on earlier in this thread.