Perhaps Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy didn’t underline this enough, but everything the Fellowship does on the Ring Quest is to maintain Sauron’s ignorance of its existence. Movie fans should be able to figure it out on their own I myself fell prey to this trap for many, many years, before I realized that the book explanation of the eagles question isn’t the real answer. How dare you suggest! Movie viewers will keep asking, and book readers are going to keep answering, and we will never escape the “Eagles, Explained” cycle. The Lord of the Rings doesn’t have plot holes. This is the real reason the eagles question will never die: It’s too appetizing for The Lord of the Rings fans. Previously apathetic players would leap to “correct” your friend and demonstrate their far superior knowledge of Ashenvale Forest or whatever. But the real problem is that book fans are always there with the answer.īack in my World of Warcraft days, I saw it demonstrated that the best way to get useful tips out of a disinterested zone-wide chat was to ask your question about the location of that quest NPC, and then have a buddy reply with something you knew was not the right answer. Without a throwaway line or a hung lampshade from Boyens, Jackson, and Walsh, it’s reasonable for movie fans to wonder why the Fellowship can’t ride eagles to Mordor. The eagles can’t carry the Fellowship to Mordor because Gandalf can’t simply summon a squadron of birds to divebomb Mount Doom. And just like literally everyone else in the story, it takes a lot of work to get them to care about all this Dark Lord stuff until it affects them directly. The giant eagles of Middle-earth aren’t beasts to tame, like Shadowfax they have their own society and concerns. Like most of how Gandalf flexes power in The Lord of the Rings, it’s not about magic, but about politicking. Tolkien’s illustration of an eagle and its eyrie in The Hobbit. “Twice you have borne me, Gwaihir my friend, Thrice shall pay for all, if you are willing,” he said to the Windlord in The Return of the King. When Gandalf asked Gwaihir to help rescue Sam and Frodo from Mount Doom, it was with a promise to never ask him for anything else ever again. Then, he noticed Gandalf on top of the peak of Zirak-zigil, after he defeated the Balrog, and agreed to take him on another short trip to Lothlorien. Gwaihir noticed Gandalf on top of Saruman’s tower and agreed to rescue him, but would only take him as far as Edoras in Rohan. When Gwaihir gives Gandalf a ride in The Lord of the Rings, he’s doing the wizard a favor. Gandalf’s particular eagle friend is Gwaihir the Windlord, who owes Gandalf for some service the wizard paid to him in the past - possibly a life-debt, though The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are somewhat contradictory on this. This is one of the many bits of Tolkien lore that Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh decided would stay on the cutting floor of a trilogy that’s already over nine hours long. The giant eagle that Gandalf calls up in The Fellowship of the Ring is sentient, one of an entire race of giant eagles that’s as old as the dwarves or the ents. Gandalf isn’t just burning a spell slot on Summon Nature’s Ally III So I’m going to answer it, and prove once and for all that it doesn’t fucking matter why they didn’t just ride eagles to Mordor. That is, if Gandalf can ask a moth to bring him a giant eagle to rescue him from Saruman in The Fellowship of the Ring or pick Sam and Frodo up from the lava fields of Mount Doom in The Return of the King, why couldn’t he summon some giant eagles to carry the One Ring to Mordor itself, shortening the Ring Quest by months? Why didn’t the Fellowship just ride eagles to Mordor? So each Wednesday throughout the year, we'll go there and back again, examining how and why the films have endured as modern classics. 2021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in just one story.
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