[Zigûr]

I sometimes wonder if the films or other elements of popular culture have caused a tendency to somewhat fetishise the forces of evil, i.e. creating a perception that Sauron/Morgoth had these incredible "living weapons" (balrogs, dragons, olog-hai, etc) and therefore must in some strange way have "deserved" to have won (a bit like the pop-history obsession with German tanks of WW2) and that the free peoples of Middle-earth, especially Men, despite their self-evidently strong track record of victories, were somehow weak and pathetic because they're not "cool" enough or something, i.e. "Men are weak."

EDIT: See also the perception of events in Professor Tolkien's legendarium as being dictated by "power levels" rather than decisions, fate, chance, historical forces etc., as if, say, Sauron put 3000 pts of miniatures on the gaming table and his opponent only had 2000 or similar.