Poll of the Day > I love how people complain about the length of the ending of Lord of the Rings

(+) Yeah! (+)

TheCyborgNinja posted...

My only complaint was at "oh, right! The invincible ghost army that owes us a favour! Instawin!"

At least foreshadow it well in Fellowship. Jesus.

It wouldn't make sense to foreshadow it early because it was never part of the original plan.

If things had gone the way they were planned, the entire Fellowship would have avoided Moria entirely, skirted their way into Mordor, and gotten the Ring to Mt. Doom before Sauron attacked Gondor at all, or with the understanding that Gondor would have to be sacrificed because destroying the Ring was more important than winning wars.

Defending Gondor only became a goal once they realized that 2/3rds of the Fellowship were functionally useless, and that the only way they could really help would be to provide a distraction for Frodo and Sam to exploit, while coincidentally saving lives. At which point the motivation shifted to save Rohan, so Rohan could help Gondor in turn, so they could stalemate the evil army there long enough to buy Frodo time.

Aragon remembering (and successfully acquiring) the magic ghost army was more of a late-game desperation play that turned what would otherwise have been a stalemate for the good guys into an actual unexpected victory. But narratively, it happened mainly to help demonstrate (one of the many ways that the story actually does this) that Aragon WAS the rightful king.

The fact that saving Gondor was only an improvised distraction play is obvious when immediately after winning, Aragon basically leads the entire combined army straight to Mordor, in spite of knowing that they absolutely cannot win, solely to help distract Sauron even more and prevent him from realizing where the Ring actually is.

Basically, the entire first book of Fellowship is the hobbits improvising a desperate escape after Gandalf's actual plan gets completely ruined, and then everything post Rivendell is basically everyone desperately improvising after the new plan gets ruined about 20 minutes after starting.


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Metalsonic66 posted...

Also they would still be shot out of the sky before they could get close.

explain how the eagles came and got them then
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helIy posted...

Metalsonic66 posted...

Also they would still be shot out of the sky before they could get close.

explain how the eagles came and got them then

Because Sauron was dead, the Nazgul were dead, and the entire power structure of Mordor collapsed into chaos (and literally collapsed in some cases, as shit started falling down).

No one's going to shoot at you when there's no one left to shoot at you.

Sure, there were still orcs and evil men around, but most of them would be panicking at that point, and wouldn't be making a concerted effort to bring down the eagles. As opposed to Sauron, who absolutely would have, especially once he realized WHY they were flying into Mordor.


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yeah i don't buy that

the eagles would still have been shot down
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helIy posted...

yeah i don't buy that

the eagles would still have been shot down

The movie explicitly shows it, you can't not buy it.
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the movie took liberties.

they know it makes no sense that the eagles can just come get them, so they had to come up with a reason.
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It's ok. The way helIy is saying it just sounds like he's being... helIy or whatever...
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Metalsonic66 posted...

I understand fine. You don't understand why physics won't help in that situation.

Especially since he's either assuming you can get to the lava from directly above (which you can't), or that things like gravity and wind-resistance don't exist, and that you can magically coast straight into the opening on a dead eagle, as opposed to plunging to your death.

EDIT: He's also assuming that the eagles can fly higher in the air than Nazgul's riding evil dragon-bat things can, which is probably not true.

He's ALSO also assuming that the eagles would have been willing to do any of this in the first place, which they probably wouldn't have been, because their attitude was mostly that their sole purpose was to be scouts for the gods, not to solve all of the mortals problems for them. If Manwe wasn't going to march straight to Middle Earth and kick Sauron in the balls himself, the eagles probably weren't going to get directly involved either (especially since the OTHER servants of the gods - the wizards - were explicitly told their job was to inspire and advise, and NOT oppose Sauron directly).

If the people of Middle-Earth weren't good enough and determined enough to save themselves from Sauron, they kind of deserved to be conquered by Sauron. That seems to be the general mindset the gods had after the Numenoreans turned against them.

And that's all.
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