Ringus Ex Machina

Filed under:Cool — posted by Anwyn on March 20, 2007 @ 9:48 pm

As soon as I saw the title of Dave’s post, “How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended,” I knew what the projected ending would be. We used to get this question an average of once a month back at TORn: “Why didn’t the Eagles just drop the Ring into Mount Doom?”

Well, whether you buy my answer from back then or not, the movie’s cute.

4 comments »

  1. The Eagles could have at least flown them over the mountains, say to Lothlorien, thereby avoiding both Saruman and Moria.

    They had good intelligence that the flying Nazgul didn’t cross the river.

    :-)

    Your answer makes sense, but I’m not sure the Eagles would have been such push-overs in battle – Gwaihir’s ancestor Thorondor nested on Thangorodrim, slashed Morgoth’s face, and the Eagles got down-and-dirty with the Army of Valar (which was a pretty tight outfit) during the War of Wrath (which was no Elfscout picnic). Nine eagles vs. nine flying Nazgul might not have been a sure thing, but presumably they could have brought dozens, if not hundreds, of Eagles…

    But, the question assumes that the Eagles would have agreed to it, and that seems like the weakness of the idea. Assuming Gwaihir was a wise old bird, like Gandalf (and Elrond, and Galadriel, and Faramir, etc) he wouldn’t have trusted himself to come into close contact with a power so evil and corrupting.

    Comment by LagunaDave — March 21, 2007 @ 2:19 am

  2. %*&$#@! school computer won’t let me watch. Humph.

    Comment by Anwyn's sister — March 21, 2007 @ 11:59 am

  3. “Can you imagine what it’d be like if we’d walked the whole way? One of us might have died!”

    *snork*

    Comment by Anwyn's sister — March 21, 2007 @ 6:32 pm

  4. LagunaDave, I agree with most of your points. About the Naz crossing the river, though, they didn’t find that out until weeks (months? not going to look right now) after the Council of Elrond. Shooting my own point in the foot, though, I will say that had Eagles bearing warriors, Gandalf, and Frodo with the Ring set out from Rivendell within the week of the Council, they would’ve reached Mordor before the Naz managed to make it back in their bedraggled state.

    Ultimately my original answer and your last paragraph point to the same thing: Eagles were a special case and not to be made use of to interfere in the concerns of the mortals of Middle-earth. At least, so it appears.

    Comment by Anwyn — March 24, 2007 @ 12:05 am

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