Gandalf the White vs The Witch King of Angmar

[Chyll_Elite]

Gandalf wasn't supposed to directly oppose Sauron's power with his own; he wasn't supposed to fight on behalf of the Free Peoples, just to encourage and advise them. He stalled the Witch-king by just sitting there on Shadowfax (thus preventing the bad guys from entering the city until it was too late). He'd gone to the very limits of what he was allowed to do, just by being there. Had it been a matter of Gandalf being allowed to fight, well, if Gandalf the Grey could destroy a Balrog (after an epic struggle) then as Gandalf the White he could have destroyed the Witch-king. The thing is, he wasn't supposed to try. Neither was he 'meant' to be the one who destroyed him, that wasn't how it was fated to turn out and Gandalf had probably foreseen that. So he does what he can: he holds the Witch-king up until the appointed moment arrives, when the wind suddenly changes, the supernatural darkness lifts with the dawn, and the Rohirrim war-horns are heard in the distance.

That is the larger philosophical argument, certainly, originating from the Silmarillion rather than the story text of LotR, per se.

*shrug* I'd still like to think there was more free-will involved in the setting than everything being ordained in stone down to the second.

The movie went the way it did because the average movie-goer wouldn't have understood why Gandalf didn't fight the Witch-king himself.

Which was largely my point, it was an artifact of the story telling medium of the film, and hence a reasonable presentation.

Even though the Witch-king had been empowered by Sauron, as he was later in the book, he couldn't have been as powerful as a Maia.

Right, I don't think there is any dispute that Gandalf > WK should it have come to that.