Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - Amazon. Season 2 underway on Thursdays.

[Moggy]

Really great to see people defending it on social media from these self appointed guardians of Tolkien's mythology.

I think it's pretty safe to say Tolkien himself would despise this series. But he'd have also hated the Jackson movies.

The blessing and the curse for adapting Tolkien is there is a rich source material. But it's also quite empty of detail. The Silmarillion is basically just Christopher Tolkien's best guess of what his father would have wanted. But JRR was still tinkering and altering things right up to his death, strawberry float knows what it would have become if he'd lived another decade.

And the Silmarillion is extraordinarily empty of details on the Second age. It's got an ok amount of Númenor information, but leaves open a huge amount of stuff, especially when it comes to Sauron and Middle Earth.

So this was just a long winded way of saying that it's impossible to say if Rings of Power is faithful to Tolkien's mythology because not even he knew what most of it was.

All true but a lot of it stemmed from his perfectionism. H e was always adjusting and correcting. He would have hated all the films and TV series for very specific and contrary reasons.

I'm very happy with it as someone's take on an incredibly disjointed and complicated source material. I'm also a lot more forgiving as I get older. Of some things at least.

Yep. There's just no way to do an adaptation that wouldn't have made Tolkien furious. His letter on a proposed film adaptation gives a hint at the fury he'd feel if he was around for the Jackson movies or Rings of Power.

[Memento Mori]

Really great to see people defending it on social media from these self appointed guardians of Tolkien's mythology.

I think it's pretty safe to say Tolkien himself would despise this series. But he'd have also hated the Jackson movies.

The blessing and the curse for adapting Tolkien is there is a rich source material. But it's also quite empty of detail. The Silmarillion is basically just Christopher Tolkien's best guess of what his father would have wanted. But JRR was still tinkering and altering things right up to his death, strawberry float knows what it would have become if he'd lived another decade.

And the Silmarillion is extraordinarily empty of details on the Second age. It's got an ok amount of Númenor information, but leaves open a huge amount of stuff, especially when it comes to Sauron and Middle Earth.

So this was just a long winded way of saying that it's impossible to say if Rings of Power is faithful to Tolkien's mythology because not even he knew what most of it was.

All true but a lot of it stemmed from his perfectionism. H e was always adjusting and correcting. He would have hated all the films and TV series for very specific and contrary reasons.

I'm very happy with it as someone's take on an incredibly disjointed and complicated source material. I'm also a lot more forgiving as I get older. Of some things at least.

Yep. There's just no way to do an adaptation that wouldn't have made Tolkien furious. His letter on a proposed film adaptation gives a hint at the fury he'd feel if he was around for the Jackson movies or Rings of Power.

Page 15. The Ring Goes South. Z again showed his utter misunderstanding of the story by having Eagles serve as taxis.

Apart from when you need them to for plot reasons right JRR?

[Moggy]

Really great to see people defending it on social media from these self appointed guardians of Tolkien's mythology.

I think it's pretty safe to say Tolkien himself would despise this series. But he'd have also hated the Jackson movies.

The blessing and the curse for adapting Tolkien is there is a rich source material. But it's also quite empty of detail. The Silmarillion is basically just Christopher Tolkien's best guess of what his father would have wanted. But JRR was still tinkering and altering things right up to his death, strawberry float knows what it would have become if he'd lived another decade.

And the Silmarillion is extraordinarily empty of details on the Second age. It's got an ok amount of Númenor information, but leaves open a huge amount of stuff, especially when it comes to Sauron and Middle Earth.

So this was just a long winded way of saying that it's impossible to say if Rings of Power is faithful to Tolkien's mythology because not even he knew what most of it was.

All true but a lot of it stemmed from his perfectionism. H e was always adjusting and correcting. He would have hated all the films and TV series for very specific and contrary reasons.

I'm very happy with it as someone's take on an incredibly disjointed and complicated source material. I'm also a lot more forgiving as I get older. Of some things at least.

Yep. There's just no way to do an adaptation that wouldn't have made Tolkien furious. His letter on a proposed film adaptation gives a hint at the fury he'd feel if he was around for the Jackson movies or Rings of Power.

Page 15. The Ring Goes South. Z again showed his utter misunderstanding of the story by having Eagles serve as taxis.

Apart from when you need them to for plot reasons right JRR?

Memento Mori again shows his utter misunderstanding of the story by claiming Tolkien used the Eagles as taxis.

He used them as emergency rescue vehicles, not taxis.

[Memento Mori]

One of my favourite videos on YouTube:

[Denster]

This is why Moggy is the best and why we are Mellons.

Born in the blessed realm.
Now I have to get you the Barad Dur Lego.

[Moggy]

This is why Moggy is the best and why we are Mellons.

Born in the blessed realm.
Now I have to get you the Barad Dur Lego.

The blessed realm, also known as Bristol Maternity Hospital. O St Michael's Hill, may the light of Ilúvatar forever shine upon your steep slope.

Please don't buy me the Lego, it looks amazing but I have nowhere to put it!

[Denster]

This is why Moggy is the best and why we are Mellons.

Born in the blessed realm.
Now I have to get you the Barad Dur Lego.

The blessed realm, also known as Bristol Maternity Hospital. O St Michael's Hill, may the light of Ilúvatar forever shine upon your steep slope.

Please don't buy me the Lego, it looks amazing but I have nowhere to put it!

[Denster]

But I'm the Lord of gifts.

[Victor Mildew]

Buy him a giant Lego eagle so he can ride it to work.

[Squinty]

I thought the eagles were the same kind of spirit thing Gandalf and the other wizards are so would therefore be corrupted by the ring.

Maybe I am wrong.

[Moggy]

I thought the eagles were the same kind of spirit thing Gandalf and the other wizards are so would therefore be corrupted by the ring.

Maybe I am wrong.

No, they are sentient animals. They could be corrupted by the Ring though.

There are various reasons why the eagles couldn't fly the Ring/Frodo to Mount Doom. The most relevant one is it was a secret mission. And giant eagles aren't very secret. They could certainly take it easy to Mordor, but would be spotted pretty quickly and Sauron would have a force waiting for whatever desperado jumped off the eagle to throw the ring in.

[Zilnad]

They could have tried it though.

[Moggy]

They could have tried it though.

The real plot hole is why the Valar didn't give Elrond a jet pack.

[Imrahil]

I always just assumed it was a no-brainer: Gwahir would have simply been corrupted by the ring, therefore sending it via Eagle courier service would have made no difference to anything. It's why Gandalf didn't dare take it.

It was always going to take a freak event to get it actually dunked. We can assume Gandalf suspected something along these lines.

[Moggy]

I always just assumed it was a no-brainer: Gwahir would have simply been corrupted by the ring, therefore sending it via Eagle courier service would have made no difference to anything. It's why Gandalf didn't dare take it.

It was always going to take a freak event to get it actually dunked. We can assume Gandalf suspected something along these lines.

It's also that, but it's not the main reason.

1. A secret mission is ruined by using easily spotted giant eagles. Sauron would soon realise they were coming to Mordor and have a force waiting

2. The eagles would need to carry somebody all the way to Mordor, as the eagles would be too big to enter Mount Doom. They couldn't do that without stopping to rest frequently, giving the enemy chances to attack

3. The eagles are not taxis. They might help Gandalf occasionally (they owe him a few favours), but they are not going to put themselves in danger unnecessarily. They wouldn't know about the Ring and would not be willing to fly into Sauron's army without a damn good reason

4. The eagles would be at risk of corruption from the Ring. But it would be a small risk as they wouldn't be touching the Ring themselves.

5. The quest was impossible. Nobody, even Gandalf, would have the willpower necessary to chuck the Ring into the fire. If the eagles were willing to fly to Mordor, able to avoid all the danger on the way, got into Mordor without being seen and managed to drop the ring bearer right at the entrance...then the ring bearer would claim the Ring and the quest ends there. It needed Gollum to fall in, the Ring only gets destroyed that way.

[Victor Mildew]

Could have just flown really high like a spy plane so no-one could see them and drop the ring in the top of the volcano.

Check mate Tolkien.

[Imrahil]

Oh yeah, I'm aware of all the reasons Moggy.

But there's just a very common online meme about 'why doesn't an eagle just fly over and dunk it in?', etc. If Gwahir was somehow holding on to something with the ring attached ready to let go, he would just bagsy it for himself and fly off into the distance.

And I'm not even fully convinced he'd willingly drop off a hobbit bearing the ring at the volcano when it came down to it, but that's getting into conjecture.

[Moggy]

Oh yeah, I'm aware of all the reasons Moggy.

But there's just a very common online meme about 'why doesn't an eagle just fly over and dunk it in?', etc. If Gwahir was somehow holding on to something with the ring attached ready to let go, he would just bagsy it for himself and fly off into the distance.

And I'm not even fully convinced he'd willingly drop off a hobbit bearing the ring at the volcano when it came down to it, but that's getting into conjecture.

I wasn't having a pop at you btw! Not sure if my post came across that way.

Absolutely, any eagle personally carrying the Ring would have refused to drop it in. And I'm not convinced Mount Doom is a cartoon volcano with a big open top either. The only way to the cracks of doom (aka Denster's bum) was through the passageway which I doubt was big enough for a giant eagle.

[Imrahil]

Oh no, your post was fine, I agree with all the points you made.

I think the difficulty online with the whole Eagle Dunk situation is that half of us have read the books and the other half have only seen the films. I guess I can understand the question from a non-nook reader, since the film does gloss over the eagles.

[Denster]

No. Its just a stupid question either way.