The Lord Of The Rings - Television Tropes & Idioms

(Split into general Discussion and further down specific Discussion/Questions of adaptations for convenience.)

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

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Eagles "The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness." (Letter to F. Ackerman, June 1958)

Why didn't Frodo take the ring to Mt. Doom on an eagle? Or, at least have the Fellowship fly all the way to Mordor, if Mordor itself has some air defenses?
- This one has Just Bugged people for years. Personally I think that the evil eye would have spotted them approaching and sent the flying wraiths to intercept. Even worse, seeing the ring being carried towards Mount Doom could have allowed Sauron to realize the heroes planned to destroy it (they were counting on the fact that as an evil creature, he would never expect that).
  - Exactly. The reason for the Fellowship was to sneak into Mordor and arriving with the Air Cavalry would probably have drawn notice.
  - See How Lord Of The Rings Should Have Ended on youtube. "Well, that was surprisingly easy."
  - Also, there was an Epic Thread on the Internets several years ago called "Lord of The Rings By Other Authors". The Tom Clancy, Lensman, and George Lucas versions were hilarious and involved eagles. "You're all clear, kid! Let's blow this joint and go home!"
- Two reasons. Eagles aren't immune to the Ring and they only work for Manwe. Gandalf can't just whistle up a eagle whenever he likes.
- None of these reasons make sense to me. Evil eye spot them? Somehow the evil eye never saw Frodo with the ring when he walked, so how is this different? The evil eye is like radar and only sees things in the air? lol. If the evil eye might be keeping a watch on the airspace of Mordor, then they could have flown up to it and gotten off, but no way that the evil eye was keeping watch on all of Middle-earth airspace. As for "Eagles aren't immune", Frodo will still be the ring bearer, he would just be carried by an eagle. As for "Gandalf can't whistle up an eagle", I think that he did when he had the eagles save Frodo and Sam in the end, didn't he? I think he could have visited the king of the eagles and told him the fate of Middle-earth depends on this, please help.
  - Giant flying things are a heck of a lot more noticeable than little orc-sized things on the ground.
  - Exactly. It's instructive to note that the one time Frodo stood on a hill tall enough to have a clear line-of-sight to Barad-Dur, at a time before Sauron was massively distracted by Aragorn's strategic diversion, it took the Eye about half a minute to pick him up. After that little episode on Amon Hen, its not surprising that he'd spend the rest of the books staying low to the ground and keeping some nice solid opaque terrain features between him and Sauron's field of vision.
  - Indeed. There are a lot less flying creatures about than there are walking. Also, Sauron has lots of airborne beings in his service, from birds to Nazgul steeds. They couldn't have crossed the mountains without being molested and as mentioned, Sauron controls the storms in the mountains surrounding Mordor, as well as the fires of Orodruin. Lava flying in your way would be a good deterrent and no, it wouldn't have destroyed the Ring in itself. It needed to happen in Sammath Naur, the Chamber of Fire where it was created.
  - Boromir never touched the Ring, but it still got to him. Any eagle carrying Frodo might well decide to drop him from 2000 feet, and claim the Ring for itself. Also, if Manwe doesn't want his eagles to intervene, they won't, and they are his eagles.
  - Remember the incident in the pass of Caradhras? You know, the horrible snowstorm that nearly buried them alive? While in the book it's not caused directly by Sauron and Saruman but rather by Caradhras itself, they still do point out that Sauron can govern the weather. Do you really want to be in the air in the middle of a magically-conjured thunderstorm, say?
- Nerdanel wrote ( http://forum.t-o-m-e.net/viewtopic.php?t=3324&start=9 )
- The Fellowship was an all-volunteer force. Perhaps the eagles simply did not volunteer?
- This is one of those things you can see the author's problem. On the one hand, during the council of Elrond, they bring up and discuss almost every conceivable solution to their problems (even Bombadil). Except for the eagles. Why? Remember that at this time, the Nazgul had just been swept off their horses, which means they soon (or probably did) have their flying fell beasts by this point. Thus, if the Fellowship had used eagles, they'd be delivering the ring straight into Sauron's "hands" as they Nazgûl would just fly in and take it (remember also that the Witch-king was still alive). Not to mention any anti-air forces (archers) that Sauron would have been able to assemble. But of course, logically in the story, no characters would know that the Nazgul are flying now, so I theorize that Tolkien just let the idea slide to avoid writing himself into a corner. You also have the fact that Frodo was only able to get inside Mt Doom because Sauron's attention was elsewhere. If they had flown in with eagles (which would have taken less time), the Sauron's forces would all still be massed within Mordor instead of spread out over Middle-earth attacking everybody. Thus, if they had also taken the eagle route, Sauron could have just put every orc and troll he had in front of Mt Doom's entrance and said "Alright little hobbit: your move." (since, most likely, they would have to land and go into Mt Doom's entrance as any attempt to "fly over" the mouth of the volcano and drop the ring into it would have had too high of a fail chance)
  - At the time of writing (of the Council of Elrond bit), airborne force mobility was a far less understood and far less used military tactic than it is today. The Germans stopped preferring paradrop invasions after the huge casualty rate of their invasion of Crete, and the Allied airdrops for Operations Overlord and Market Garden also suffered high FUBAR rates. Small-scale commando raids were often successful, but most of the time insertion was by boat or submarine, and retrieval was either by the same method, or non-existent - and would have received almost no public exposure until at least late 1945
  - Seconded. Air travel occurs immediately to us because we live in a world of jet travel. Gandalf and the others at the council weren't used to thinking in terms of moving by air(although Gandalf had some experience with eagle airlines) More to the point, Tolkien himself lived in an era before widespread air travel, and was noteably anti-technological. I personally think it just never occurred to him.
  - That's just a silly argument - not only did the Eagles transport Bilbo et all. in The Hobbit, but Tolkien has the Eagles fly Frodo & Sam back out of Mordor. It's ludicrous to assume J.R.R. didn't get the idea to fly them in. This Troper's personnal fanwank is that the Eagles were simply too high profile and would have been spotted, then attacked by the Nazguls before they even got halfway (among other scenarios), but the objective truth is much easier : otherwise there'd be no plot, and slogging through Mordor on foot is integral to Sam and Frodo's characterizations. So... A Wizard Didnt Do It for once ;)
- Why not have the eagles attack or distract the fell-beasts while soldiers kill the other monsters?
  - Flying Eagles are extremely visible creatures and would likely be noticed from far away, even before they reached Mordor. After the destruction of the Ring it was different as all credible opposition was gone. Sauron could have:
  - sent the Nazgûl on Fell Beasts to attack
  - send any other flying things he may have had, such as bats
  - made a storm (documented ability)
  - used some damaging spell with distance effect, such as lightning (documented ability)
  - used some mental magic, such as illusions or the power of his gaze (documented abilities)
  - made Mount Doom erupt fully at an inconvenient time (documented ability, probably not too effective in this scenario, would have harmed him too)
  - tried to hit with any conventional siege weapons he had handy
  - put quickly a guard on Mount Doom or even gone there himself
  - Some spell choices may have needed several days or more to prepare though, but we just don't know. Also, potentially Eagles could be corrupted by the Ring.
- The entire strength of the Company was in secrecy and misdirection: "The number must be few, since your hope is in speed and secrecy." Sauron managed to figure out fairly quickly that the Ring had left Rivendell, and that a hobbit had it. As Gandalf said, he "knows now the number of our Company that set out from Rivendell, and the kind of each of us." But Sauron's mistake was that he thought the Ring was going to Minas Tirith, and that it would then be used against him by some mighty lord. Had the Company left Rivendell on Eagles, Sauron would have noticed... and wondered why the Ring wasn't going towards Minas Tirith, but was instead heading towards Mordor. The notion that someone would try to destroy the Ring had "not yet entered into his darkest dream"... but that was because he had no reason to think that might be a possibility. As soon as he knew the Ring was headed to Mordor instead of some bastion of the Free Peoples, it's entirely likely that he would have realised what they were trying to do. And at that point... everything is pretty much lost, eagles and armies or no. People also forget that the decision to have Nine Walkers, in opposition to the Nine Riders, was deliberate. It wasn't a matter of chance that there were Nine, it was pre-meditated... Merry and Pippin were chosen to fill in the empty slots. Sending eagles along would have completely messed that up.
- While all of the above are good reasons, and add up to enough of a reason (IMO), the sad fact of the matter is that Tolkien just didn't think of it—it Just Bugged someone who knew him personally, and they asked, and he said, essentially, "Oh."
  - As I recall, in the book Gwaihir actually mentions the possibility to Gandalf, and flatly refuses to fly into Mordor, though he would willingly carry him anywhere else. I believe Gandalf mentions it when the topic is brought up as well. For whatever reason, the eagles are not willing to fly over Mordor while Sauron is alive. Maybe they're just afraid, maybe they know the Nazgul would get them, whatever, but they will not do it.
  - Sauron couldn't see the hobbits in Mordor because his ENTIRE will and attention was focused on Gondor. The reason? Aragorn used his authority over the Palantirs to look into the Orthanc stone and successfully challenge Sauron's will, being able to use his mental victory to trick Sauron into thinking that Aragorn had the Ring, and was heading for Gondor with it. This is why he attacked before his forces were entirely ready, because he believed that if hecould wipe out Gondor before Aragorn arrived, he could then easily defeat him and reclaim the Ring. So his entire attention was on Gondor looking out for Aragorn, rather than his own realm, looking for insignificant mortals. Even if Aragorn had tried this gambit while they had the Eagles, Sauron would still have noticed quasi-divine beings entering his realm when they had never dared to before, and would have instantly been aware that they had the Ring. This on top of all the other problems (the pssibility of the Eagles being corrupted, the fact that they likely would have refused or been forbidden etc).
- This is all fascinating and well-known and fun to think about, but it is important to note that, within the confines of Tolkien's sub-creation, it is Ontologically Impossible To Fly An Eagle To Mount Doom because if you did, there would be No Story and therefore there is no alternate version of Middle-earth in which the heroes, having attempted to take the path of least resistance, would not have run into far more serious consequences, such as (according to Tolkien's Letters) everyone else being killed by the author and Aragorn having to choose between tossing Frodo into the fire or claiming the ring for himself.
  - An alternate, more positive outcome described in Letters: Had Gollum's near-repentance at Cirith Ungol (a scene moved to after the spider attack in the film) not been interrupted by Sam (book) or by Frodo telling Gollum the purpose of the mission (film), Tolkien says that Gollum would have taken the ring and thrown himself into the fire ~~to save Middle-earth~~ to keep Sauron from getting it.
  - I recall, that scenario had Gollum realizing there was no way he would be willing give up the Ring but realizing the Ring was pure evil. I think that too had Gollum saying goodbye to Frodo before he jumped.
- Therefore, Tolkien had to present obstacles and a series of Evil Overlord tropes serious enough to justify what would, in Real Life, be an impractical means of delivering a special forces team into enemy lands. See Walk Into Mordor — the enemy lands are NEVER easy to get into in literature. In Real Life it is quite easy to sneak into, say, Hitler's Germany and a lot harder to get into places like the Sammath Naur (which, on a related note, the places at the heart of the kingdom always seem to be left unguarded...)
Why not just fly all the way around the outside of Mordor and approach Mount Doom from the East side? We don't know how far East the Easterlings were or even if they were directly east, but I doubt Sauron would have had that side guarded, surely they could have just flown in that way. Dropped the ring in from the sky like in that Youtube parody and flown away while Sauron died. Or they would have flown low from the North maybe and used the mountains as cover. Surely even if Sauron detected them entering his realm they would almost have been on top of Mount Doom to chuck it in and scarper before the Nazgul had time to react.
- As mentioned, it doesn't matter in this Troper's opinion but Gandalf did mention approaching Mordor from the East. Or rather, Tolkien mentioned Gandalf mentioning it off-screen in Letters. Long and short of it was, that is the route Gandalf preferred to take on foot, being unguarded, but it would have required Aragorn or Gandalf remain with the party for a long trek thru enemy territory while the two decoy hobbits and surplus warriors proceeded to Gondor. Unfortunately, since the Ring's powers increased, having two walking power beacons to protect them might have been a bad thing, leading the hobbits to get captured, or worse, Aragorn or Gandalf might have been tempted to take the ring to "protect" the helpless and slow-moving Hobbits.
In the end, absolutely none of the alternative methods of travel would have worked. It was specifically stated by Tolkien that Sauron NEVER suspected they were going to destroy the One Ring since he thought it was impossible for everyone to resist its temptation. In fact, he was absolutely correct. Isildur and Frodo, they were there and their wills failed them (even though it was mentioned that Hobbits seemed to have a particularly strong-will against its temptation). The only reason that the One Ring was destroyed in the end was because Gollum intervened and ACCIDENTALLY fell off into the fires of Mount Doom. So, Yeah.
I honestly think that most of the reasons above are just excuses for people who think Tolkien loses credibility for not having thought of this. There are more eagles than Nazgul, so taking a platoon would have worked to defeat them. They could have approached from the East side. As far as Sauron guarding Mount Doom—the Men were helpless against the Nazgul, why would Orcs be any different? Tolkien simply didn't think of it—if he had, he would have made up an excuse for why they wouldn't. Fans will just have to deal with that. If you just ignore this aspect, the book is still completely readable.
- "Tolkien didn't think of it"? Look at the quote on the folder. Which was, like the Bombadil quote, put there to avoid avoidable "what did Tolkien think" edits.

Close Eagles "The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness." (Letter to F. Ackerman, June 1958)

Eru aka God, the Ainur, and Theodicy

Sauron, Saruman, Gandalf and the orcs were fallen angels of Eru Ilúvatar, right? Why did Gandalf not beg his God for help?
- How many ideas did Tolkien steal from Paradise Lost?
  - Because Eru doesn't intervene. If his goal was immediate extermination of evil, he would have blasted Melkor on the spot after the Music. He's an eventualist, not an immediatist — and he knows that eventually, after Dagor Dagorath, the world will be reformed with the Second Music. (Note also that Eru did intervene when he resurrected Gandalf, but that was it.)
  - Neither Saruman, Gandalf or the Orcs are anything even closely resembling "fallen angels". Saruman and Gandalf might qualify as the non-fallen kind (allegorically), but I don't know where that idea comes from regarding Orcs. If you want to know why Gandalf didn't ask "his god" for help, consider that Gandalf is the help provided to Middle-earth by that god.
  - Note that Eru intervened constantly in the course of LOTR, and Gandalf was well aware of it. That's what "you were meant to find the ring, and I find that very encouraging" and "Gollum still has a part to play" and other such statements are all about. The whole course of the books describes the unfolding of Eru's plan, and the lucky chances are his methods. Its subtle, not flashy
  - There's also the fact that Eru knows that ultimately, no matter what Morgoth and Sauron do, no matter how much they divert the world from his original plans, the fallout ultimately leads to the glory of His work. An example: Melkor tries to disrupt the creation of the world with extreme colds and heats. Eru points out to Ulmo, Valar of Water, that now water's beauty is far greater than Ulmo had planned, for now there are the beautiful manifestations of steam and frost. Eru is an eventualist because he understands that tragedy may occur that nonetheless is good to have happened, even if the Valar themselves both don't quite get it and find themselves unable to accept it because they love the world they've made so much.
  - Eru could also be said to be a Magnificent Bastard who would rather ruin the plans of others indirectly and watch them fail slowly, even going so far as to cripple their ability to make free moral choices or come up with original thoughts.
Why did the Valar not pitch in to help fight Mordor themselves? They had kicked the ass of Morgoth, a guy who was bigger, badder, and had kicked more puppies than Sauron could ever hope to. They could've easily annihilated him and his armies. But nooooooooooooo they just had to send five minor powers and on top of that, told them not to take any direct action! Bastards...
- Simple enough. The Valar weren't free to act nor all powerful. After all, they had to call upon Eru to beat off the Numeanoreans. So, more than likely it's a Prime Directive Issue. After all, Gandalf himself stated that the wizards' role was not to control Middle-earth or match force with force, but to lead and guide the people against Sauron.
  - They could have done something to help out, like simply show up in force to march on Mordor. They did that exact thing when Morgoth was threatening the world, and thus could have done it again. The fact that they didn't means they are little bastards. If I were a human king then, I would have followed the elves across the sea to meet the Valar... and then brutally killed them all while laughing manically.
  - And then been crunched pitifully, probably breaking the world again in the process, assuming you could even get there (only the elves know the secret of the Straight Path.) Sauron is Middle-earth's problem; the Valar are not there as a cure-all every time something goes wrong.
  - Crunched. By a guy who could never hope to be as powerful as a guy they had already beaten (Morgoth). Although this was with the elves' help (who were fleeing like spineless ninnies for no apparent reason). And how did they get to Middle-earth to fight Morgoth earlier, if they didn't know how? These bastards refuse to help fight against a guy weaker than the one they had already beaten. If he was only Middle-earth's problem, then why did the show up to fight Morgoth? He was Middle-earth's problem too.
  - Yes, crunched by the Valar, who are, after all, thoroughly destructive and can call upon the One. Remember, the Valar fighting in the final war against Morgoth broke the world from the destruction. They chose not to fight Morgoth because of a complicated series of events that estranged them from the Eldar, and furthermore because they were afraid they would destroy Men by acting. They only intervened at last because Earendil pleaded for their help. Seriously, have you even read the Silmarillion?
  - And the five Wizards were by no means "minor powers". As stated elsewhere, they were limited by the Valar to not match force with force, which, in my reading and understanding of the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings they certainly could have done.
- Part of the plot of Lord of the Rings is that magic is gradually leaving the world (ie, Middle-earth is becoming the Earth we know). That is why the Elves are all leaving, they are being called away, not "fleeing like spineless ninnies." This transition is part of the natural order, and if the Valar, who were powerful magical beings not seen since the beginning of the world, returned and started to act directly again, it probably would have broken the world worse than Sauron could have ever hoped to.
  - Plus, Morgoth had originally been one of the Valar (he was in fact by far the most powerful, back when he was Melkor), but he had suffused his power throughout the fabric of creation, substantially weakening him. The Valar were still willing to fight him directly, but doing so ended up causing untold destruction, and irreperably ruined the beginning of the Elves. When the High Elves left Valinor in exile after Morgoth escaped again, they decided to leave the mortal world to its own devices, until it was thoroughly proven that they were the only ones capable of permanantly stopping Morgoth. After this, they were committed to never directly interfering in Middle-earth again, because to do so would finally and completely ruin the world and Eru's plans for it (particularly that it should pass to the dominion of Men). They were however still compassionate to the plight of the mortal world, which is why they sent their greatest and wisest emmissaries (appropriately limited) to guide them to victory (a victory which, if you will remember, would not have been achieved without them).

Close Eru aka God, the Ainur, and Theodicy

Sauron and the One Ring

Sauron's whole idea of even making the Ring was throughly moronic from the start. I mean, putting your immortality on the line for a chance to mind control, at most, 19 people. What kind of an idiot does that?
- An idiot who needs to keep his mystical power from fading away to nothingness in the Third Age, as it would have had the Great Rings not been forged. Also, an idiot who remembers that those 19 people, collectively between them, possessed virtually all the political and mystical power in Middle-earth.
- Exactly. The Rings of Power were a way to preserve might that would otherwise have been lost. And rather than 19 people, it would have meant ruling 19 nations, had the plot been succesful.
- Plus, as far as Sauron was concerned, his immortality was never on the line. He believed that it was beyond the will of any being to harm the Ring, and very few would have been able to bring its full power under their control, in which case there remains the possibility of it being reclaimed by its true master. Its worth noting that in the end, Sauron was right about noone being able to willingly destroy the Ring. It was only destroyed because Gollum, a mortal being (who was unable to do anything with the Ring other than fawn over it), had possessed it so long, and had lost it for so long, that when he reclaimed it at the Crack of Doom, all he could do was dance around in jubilation, which led to him losing his footing, destroying the Ring.
If Sauron knew that the only way to defeat him in combat was to remove his Ring, why did he wear it on his finger, thus risking it being cut off (which happened, conveniently)? Would it have made more sense to, I dunno, swallow it?
- He can't use it if he doesn't wear it.
  - OK, a) why would he design a tool so that it can't be used unless it is on a vulnerable part of him b) where does it say he has to have it on his finger instead of inside him?
  - Ahem. The One Ring was made specifically to control the Elven Rings of Power, so it had to take their form and functionality.
  - Because of the other Rings of Power ("Three Rings for the Elven-kings...", anyone?), which were designed to be given as gifts that were actually baited traps and thus had to appear innocent. The Master Ring was built in secret, to dominate the other rings, and the principle of sympathetic magic would make the best shape for it also be a ring.
  - Between reading "on his finger" and "inside of him", this troper had the awful idea of Sauron wearing the ring on a part that could be protected by a codpiece. Although if the Ring could be small enough to fit a hobbit's thumb/ring finger/middle finger while large enough to be worn by a human, why it couldn't just be worn on his second toe (or first, it's “One Ring fits all"), where it wouldn't be found so easily. There's the possibility that the sympathtic magic required him to wear it like the other ringbearers would have, on his hand, but it still wasn't explained.
  - Umm... I really doubt that Sauron had "cough" that part that could be protected at the point he lost the ring, and probably never had it at all. Also, I don't think the rings would work unless put on at least a toe or finger. So, don't worry about that thought.
  - Why, thank you very much for that imaginative and vivid depiction that will no doubt give me food for captivating reflections, especcialy in sleep. Now, pass the Brain Bleach please.
- Keep in mind that in the books, Sauron was wearing the Ring when he was defeated, and Isildur cut off the Ring-finger afterward, to claim the Ring as a trophy and payment for the deaths of his father and brother. The whole "Sauron is invincible while wearing the Ring" thing and Isildur severing his finger with a lucky strike was only in the movies.
- It occurs to this troper that it would have been smart for Isildur to cut off Sauron's HEAD while he was at it.
  - Sauron was already dead at that point, but would eventually regenerate as long as the Ring existed. Cutting off his head (assuming he still had it) wouldn't have helped at all.
Sauron's eye could clearly see the entire world. How the Hell did it not see through a rock 100 feet away? Rocks do block energy but his eye clearly created a very powerful beam.
- How the fuck could Sauron see the entire world? Is Tolkien's Earth flat?
  - It used to be. As one of Tolkien's rare non-Ring stories says: "Westward lay the straight road; now it is bent."
  - The Eye is a metaphysical thing, a manifestation of Sauron's will observed by those he seeks. Making it an actual, physical eye surveying Mordor's surroundings from the top of Barad-dur in the movies was apparently a genuine misunderstanding of the books.
  - On that note actually, how in the hell did they let such a monumental fuck up through? Don't get me wrong, I liked that The Eye became an actual physical thing in the movies, it was a great visual effect, but given that (allegedly) most of the production team read and reread the book constantly and one of the screenwriters is a passionate fan of Tolkien's works, you'd think that some time in the development they would have pulled Jackson aside and said "Umm, actually Pete...". Or am I misunderstanding and it was a mistake that they caught early but just went with anyway because it worked?
  - I've always taken it as a physical entity, just with a little more visual flair thrown in for the movies. On Amon Hen for example: "And suddenly he felt the Eye. There was an eye in the Dark Tower that did not sleep." There's also mention of the top of Barad-dur in the book as consisting of nothing but windows so that Sauron could look out upon his lands and those of his enemies.
  - Like Jackson's version needed more exposition? Film is a visual medium. Showing the Eye as a visible entity was a lot more evocative, in that format, than trying to cram a chilling description of something entirely ephemeral/metaphysical into the dialogue.
- I'm pretty sure the "Eye" is the palantir. Sauron has one, and that's one of the reasons Saruman became corrupted.
- 'Sends out a powerful beam'? Eyes do not work that way!
- The Eye of Sauron (however you want to take it) can potentially see anywhere. Its gaze can be blocked or redirected by a powerful being (namely the Bearers of the Three Rings (Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond), but otherwise it is explicitly stated that he can only focus on one place at a time.
(Maybe this was movie-only? I'm not sure) How was Frodo able to simply walk right up to the Crack of Doom? I understand that Sauron and co. were distracted by Aragorn etc., what I mean is: Why isn't there a door on the side of the mountain? Ya know, like "Here's the Crack of Doom. You can't get in unless you know the secret password", and only Sauron knows the password. It's not like the area had heavy foot-traffic or anything. Imagine Frodo getting all the way to the mountainside and then....there's a big ol' iron door in the way and he doesn't have the key. That would have really screwed the Fellowship. Maybe there was some magical reason why the chamber couldn't be sealed? My best guess is that Sauron was really confident that no one would be coming in this direction. Yeah, I understand that he never expected anyone to attempt to destroy the ring, but you'd think that, with all the time on his hands in all the years since the Last Alliance, he might've built a simple door at some point. Just sayin'.
- Cracks of Doom. More than one. It. Is. Also. A. Volcano. You try blocking all the shafts of an active volcano.
- Yeah but, in the movie at least, there was a big friggin' doorway. Maybe the crack(s) can't be blocked up, but did we have to build a giant doorway just to point out the best location for ring-destruction?
  - The movie also had Barad-dur as a lighthouse which could be seen from the edge of Mordor. The Men of the West in the films are also fireproof enough to sprint across a gigantic courtyard while on fire. Don't take the visuals too seriously. The sets for the last two films were made for good cinematography, not for utter realism.
- Heh heh, "Crack of Doom". (I'm so sorry)
I don't know if this was addressed in the books, but what was the point of making a ring that turns the wearer invisible...unless that wearer is you, the creator?
- Invisibility's a side-effect. The point of the ring is to serve as a focal point for his power so it wouldn't fade when the other magics did, and to control the other rings of power.
- This troper's theory is founded on a comment Gandalf made about the Ring, that it "grants power according to its bearer's measure, and that one would have to devote years of study to bending the will of others before being able to control it." It's notable here that Sauron doesn't turn invisible when he has the Ring on (which is rather a pity, seeing as sneak attacking Gil-galad and/or Elendil seems rather a better idea than taking them on in single combat. Anyway, on any of the occasions where the Ring made its wearer invisible, there's an argument that it was accessing some deep, primal need of the current bearer to do so. Isildur was ambushed and put the Ring on, seeking to escape: the Ring granted that request, albeit that it was making a Xanatos Gambit to betray Isildur in doing so. Frodo, Bilbo, and Gollum are of a similar species in that hobbits try not to be seen by big folk and manage to disappear when they choose. When it's worn by one of these individuals, the Ring — in service of its own Xanatos Gambit to get back to Sauron — grants expression to that primal need and renders the wearer invisible.
- Also there is probably the meta-argument: the book The Hobbit, and therefore also the magic ring of invisibility, were not written as part of Middle-earth. After writing the Hobbit he retconned it into taking place in his established Middle-earth universe, and integrated it as a creation of Sauron. He later did make a few changes in the Hobbit to make it fit better with how he wrote things in theLotR, but something like the invisibility would have been hard to delete from both stories.
- Out of universe, the ring is a reference to the Ring of Gyges, which is stated in Plato's Republic to be a ring that makes you invisible. In the dialogue in which it is mentioned, Plato's brother Glaucon argues that because the ring removes all the consequences from your actions, no one would be able to resist the temptation to use it for their own benefit, even to the harm of others.

Close Sauron and the One Ring

The Rings of Power

(Having not read the books) We know the rings of men turned them into Nazgul, but what happened to the bearers of the other rings? Two of the elf rings' owners appear in the movies none the worse for wear, and the dwarven rings are never seen at all.
- Dwarves are explicitly referred to as being incapable of becoming Wraiths; their natural strength of mind and body repels it. The primary corruption of their Rings is to make them insatiably greedy, never satisfied with the wealth their powers bring them. The elvish rings are completely incorrupt; their powers are tied to the One Ring but they themselves do not corrupt. (As the Rings of Power were originally made by elves for elves, this makes sense.)
  - Wait a minute. How can the Three Rings be tied to the One Ring in any important way if the One Ring can't influence or corrupt the ones who wear them? It sounds like the Three Rings aren't rings of power at all; they're just nice Elven magic items that happen to be ring-shaped. Otherwise, the verse should have read "One ring to rule them all, except for three of them, but whatever."
  - The Three are subject to the One, but only when Sauron is actually wearing it. Fortunately, Sauron miscalculated, and the three Elf-lords immediately realized their danger as soon as he put the One on for the first time; they then took theirs off before he could control them, and never used them again until the One was cut off his finger and lost.
  - The Dwarf Rings were said to become the basis of their future treasure hordes. In this case the "corruption" manifests as greed - the Rings increased their natural lust for wealth and this was eventually their undoing when their cities were overrun by Orcs or Dragons who wanted their stuff. Supposedly, many of the Dwarf Rings were therefore consumed by Dragon Fire and the rest were simply lost (one ended up in Dol Guldur, if memory serves, when Thorin's father was held captive and died there).
  - Sauron had four by the start of Fellowship, including the one taken from Thrain in Dol Guldur. The other three were unaccounted for, presumed consumed by dragon fire.
- All three bearers of the Three Rings show up, actually, but that's not exactly made clear in the films. For the record, the last bearers of the Three Rings were Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf.
- The Three Rings are governed by the One because all the Rings of Power were made using techniques that Sauron taught the Elves in the first place. The Three were the only Rings Of Power which he did not have a personal hand in making,hence why they didn't corrupt, but they still were governed by the One because of the fact they existed.
  - To clarify in modern terms, the Rings of Power are computer programs. The Nine Rings were loaded down with viruses and other malware that corrupted their users. The Seven Rings came packaged with adware of the Nigerian Bank variety, that the dwarves foolishly clicked on. As for the Three Rings, Sauron gave the elves the code for the program, leaving himself a back door to gain access whenever he wanted. Luckily, the elves' virus protection was up to date.
Wasn't it a little daft for Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf to keep wearing the Three Rings, even when Frodo had made his way into Mordor and Sauron stood a very good chance of getting the One Ring back? Granted, Middle-earth would be pretty much screwed no matter what if that happened, but by getting rid of the Three Rings they would get the chance to die honorably rather than be corrupted. Did they need to wear them for some reason? What do the Three Rings actually do?
- If Sauron gets the One Ring back, everybody's pretty much screwed anyway. They can take the Three off immediately after Sauron puts his Ring back on; they can sense it if he attempts to dominate them. The Three Rings have varying, but subtle powers, and only a few are expanded on in the books; Gandalf's ring lets him be inspiring, and Galadriel's preserves Lorien's timelessness. The specific powers of Elrond's ring is never made clear.
  - And the "sensing Sauron's attempts to dominate them and taking the rings off" is exactly what happened after Sauron first forged the One.
- Is Gandalf's ring still lying around in a pit in Moria somewhere, or did it come along with him when he was promoted to Gandalf the White?
  - He didn't lose it in Moria. He fought the Balrog in Zirakzigil, the mountain peak above Moria, and died there. When he came back (naked) he probably picked up his ring before he got on the Eagle. The ring is not something he would tell his friends about casually, so it's not surprising he left it out of his account later on.
  - Gandalf did wear Narya when he left at the Grey Havens at the end of the LotR, so he would have either recovered it or never lost it in the first place.
Oh, hey that's right, dragonfire. Gandalf did mention that a dragon's fire was enough to destroy a Ring of Power. That doesn't actually bug me, I'm just getting a kick out of imagining his face after confirming that Bilbo's ring was the One Ring. "All right, where's that guy with the Black Arrow? We're going to have words..."
- You're joking, right? Try rescripting the War of the Ring, only with the addition of Smaug to Sauron's forces. It lasts about half an hour each at the Hornburg and Minas Tirith, plus flight time from Erebor. Do you think it was a coincidence that Gandalf suddenly manipulated an expedition against Smaug into existence shortly after Gandalf's first experience in Dol Guldur had let him know that "the Necromancer" was in fact Sauron? Smaug had to be taken out of the picture before Sauron could get his own operations moving, or else the next thing you know the Witch-king of Angmar would have been out there riding not on a Fell Beast, but on a scaly tactical nuke with wings.
  - Someone at some point mentions the possibility of an alliance between Sauron and Smaug, but it doesn't seem like Smaug would have been entirely Sauron's to control. I certainly can't see him taking orders from a mere Nazgul.
- Gandalf did say dragonfire was enough to destroy the Seven, but he also said that not even the greatest dragons of legend had fire hot enough to melt the One Ring. The only place in Middle-earth the Ring could be destroyed was Mount Doom. Now, in his notes, Tolkien did say a smith of sufficient skill could unmake the Ring, but only Feanor and Aule are said to be skilled enough. Neither of them were available to help the fellowship, and I wouldn't trust Feanor anywhere near the One Ring anyway.
  - You cannot rob me of my entertaining image of Gandalf's incredulous face. Though I will wonder what exactly Aule was doing at the time. I know, I know, the Valar were staying out of the whole thing, but I'm trying to remember if Aule actually did anything after making the dwarves.
  - They discuss this during the Council meeting. Even if they had tried sending it to the Valar, it wouldn't have reached them, as anybody they could have sent would likely be corrupted en route, the ring's own malignant nature ensuring that it would fall into the Sea or return to land, and, either way, eventually reach its master.
  - There is that theory that Aule is Tom Bombadil...
What, so Mount Doom was the only active volcano in the entire world?
- The only active volcano in range.
  - Also, if it was said that it could only be destroyed where it was made, that would probably exclude any other volcanoes.
What would have eventually happened to Gollum, had he kept the One Ring and stayed under the mountain? The nine kings of men turned into the Nazgul under Sauron's influence, and Gollum had gradually changed from the hobbit-like Smeagol into an immortal, goblin-like creature by its influence. Would he have kept changing under its influence, until he slipped into the realm of shadows and become some sort of miniature ring-wraith (and, at that point, probably fallen under Sauron's direct control and handed the Ring over)? Or had the Ring already done as much as it could do to him?
- It probably did all that it could to him. When Sauron woke up he started "calling" the Ring back to him, but he couldn't directly control the Ring's holder for whatever reason. Since Gollum hated to leave the caves, the Ring waited for the appropriate opportunity to get itself found by somebody who would pick it up and take it elsewhere.

Close The Rings of Power

Nazgûl

If the Nazgul are invisible except for their clothes, than why not have them strip naked most of the time? It would really help stealth operations if no on could see them. Here is a practical application: during the battle of Minas Tirth, have a fell beast with one visible and one invisible Nazgul fly over the wall. Have the invisible one jump off at a low distance and them quietly sneak up to where the gate wench was. Have him kill the guards with his fists of death (or just strangle them) and then open the gate for the massive orc army that was waiting outside.
- Because without their robes they are "empty and without shape", as Gandalf explained. They travelled a great deal of their journey towards Shire unclothed, as an invisible aura of fear (they can travel invisible, but not undetected), but in that shape they don't have power to affect the physical world. It would seem that the robes give them the memory of physical body, which allows them to do physical things. Remember that in the book the Nazgul did very little physical fighting. That just isn't their forte; their greatest power is always fear.
- Given that the Nine are apparently so rubbish, why didn't Sauron send more effective agents after "Baggins"?
  - Who would be more effective? You want agents who are intelligent, can cover large distances quickly without being noticed, will know the Ring when they find it and be completely loyal about returning it. The Nazgul are pretty much perfect - the only drawback is that they're not very subtle, but the fear effect is effective for extracting information, and hardly anyone is going to try to fight them. Besides which they aren't the only ones out there, it's often stated that Sauron has many spies, and we know that e.g. Bill Ferny works for Saruman at least.
  - There's also a problem of geography. In order to get to the Shire from Mordor you have to either go through the gap of Rohan, the Mines of Moria, or the pass through the Misty Mountains at Rivendell. The only servants Sauron has capable of surviving any of the above besides the Nazgul are whatever Black Numenoreans might still be serving him, and Sauron would be an absolute idiot to let any of them get a moment alone with the Ring of Power several thousand miles from Barad-Dur.

Close Nazgûl

Orcs and the nature of Evil

What exactly is it that makes Orcs irredeemably evil?
- From what the Silmarillion says, Orcs hate everything- even their creators, because all they have done is make them live in misery. As mockeries of the Elves and Men, Orcs are twisted half-imitations, and thanks to the ultimate impotence of evil in Middle-earth, cosmically denied the ability to create or appreciate beauty. That's putting aside their savage societies and their near-constant state of warfare with the rest of the world. Is it really so surprising they're such hateful, sadistic things?
  - I was given to understand that they were outright created by Morgoth (or Sauron, I forget which).
  - Evil cannot create in Middle-earth. It lacks the Secret Fire- the divine spark, if you will. In fact, strictly speaking, no new thing can exist in Middle-earth without Eru Ilúvatar (God) granting it His blessing- the only reason he allows the creatures of evil to live is the principle that no evil can exist in Middle-earth without in turning greater glorifying His work. As a result, Morgoth had to have bred all of his monsters from warping the originally-intended creatures of Middle-earth, so it's certain orcs are warped versions of something. The Silmarillion says elves- Tolkien wasn't sure about that, but that was his most solid idea.
  - Then how were the Dwarves created? Some blacksmith god made them, not Eru.
  - Because, after he created them, as sort of puppets, extensions of his own will, Eru breathed the divine spark into them, bringing them to life.
  - How then could Sauron create the Rings? Most of the bad guys were fallen angels, right? Would they not possess a, "Divine Spark" by definition?
  - Celebrimbor made the Rings, not Sauron. The One Ring may be an exception to that (I forget...) but, if it is, it's probably because Sauron made it using his own power, pouring his own soul into it - which is why his fate was linked with it.
  - Exactly.
  - By the way, trolls are supposed to be warped versions of ents, in case anybody's wondering. It's in the Letters.
  - It's in Lot R as well, when they talk to Treebeard. He also mentions that orcs were corrupted from elves.
  - What are dragons, then? They seem to be Always Chaotic Evil in Middle-earth. Are they just really, really corrupted lizards? Or are they originally good creatures who went bad, like the balrogs?
  - It's also worth noting that Tolkien's uncertainty on this is why it took so long for the Silmarillion to be published; see the Always Chaotic Evil page.
- Sounds like Eru has one hell of an Omniscient Morality License.
  - Such is a traditional perk of omnipotent creators of all existence.
  - He's also the god of Fantastic Racism.
  - Eru isn't racist. He didn't create the Orcs to be Always Chaotic Evil. He created Elves who were turned by Morgoth into Orcs. And who says all Orcs are evil? It's quite plausible that there were many dissidents from evil that we never learn about because Sauron and Morgoth would have purged their ranks of any dissenters.
- Just as an interesting corollary, the Silmarillion mentions that, when the Numenoreans came back to Middle-earth at the end of the Second Age, that all races participated in that huge war. He mentions, briefly, that every general race had members on both sides, excluding the elves, who only fought in the Last Alliance. This rings true when you go down the list:Men, Dwarves, birds (Eagles and crows, for example), beasts (horses or wolves), and others all make sense. But this implies that some Orcs fought on the side of Elendil's banner. It's important to remember that The Silmarillion and most of the lost tales written by Elvish authors, while the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are told directly from Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam's hand, in the Red Book of the Westmarch. And Tolkien loved to mention just how many unknown and unexplained things existed in Middle-earth (like Tom Bombadil, the Watcher in the Water, etc.)Heroic Orcs could've been an intentional oversight by biased authors. Though they may get acknowledgment, like in the aforementioned line, they would be in no way lauded. This makes sense when you take into consideration in how many letters Tolkien showed sympathy to the Orcs. He said that he regretted painting them in such black and white shades, and added that they were probably misunderstood or misrepresented. As he didn't write himself as an omniscient narrator, this leaves a good backdoor explanation.
  - "All living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save the Elves only. They alone were undivided and followed Gil-galad. Of the Dwarves, few fought upon either side; but the kindred of Durin of Moria fought against Sauron."
The racism. The racism bugs me. The Orcs, in addition to representing the industrial working class in most readings, are explicitly Asian. Going of of Tolkien's letters and the content of the book, we're told that they're "sallow skinned" and "slant-eyed" and "the least lovely of the mongol type". They look more like Tokio Kid than the Green Tusky Warcraft orcs we know and love. The High orcs are the result of interbreeding between orcs (Asians) and men (Whites, implicitly British or Nothern European Whites depending on whether you're giving creedence to allegory or to linguistics). They're products of miscegenation, which is treated as an abomination. The racial dimension of the book, which is pretty damn explicit, is just totally ignored by 90% of readers despite the fact that anyone who's taken highschool level english should be able to pick up on the racial dimension of the narrative. Personally, this troper puts it down to the prose, which makes any real interpretation beyond the surface level a bit of a chore.
- Look up your quotes at a reliable source before basing your opinion on them. The quote you apparently read leaves out parts, and without marking it no less. Tolkien once wrote (Letters #210) about the Orcs: "they are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." Tolkien stated they are like "degraded and repulsive versions" of humans, he did not say 'like Asians'; the reference about the Mongolic appearance explicitly acknowledges that the it is viewed from a subjective European perspective, as cultures have different views of what is beautiful, and a person that might be considered beautiful to some might be ugly to others. The characters and peoples appearing in the stories being alike to north-western Europeans is the result of being written as an artificial myth for that region; it would not make sense to suddenly have a mythical Europe populated by Token Minorities. And Tolkien did not have a time machine at hand to go to the future and steal Blizzard's green War Craft-Orcs; even if he had, he undoubtedly wouldn't have used them for the Orcs made by Morgoth as his mooks.
Tolkien played around with another concept: that the Orcs were really animated by bits of spirit shattered off Morgoth's own. Since he's Chaotic Evil, that follows.

Close Orcs and the nature of Evil

Power and "Magic"

Why didn't Saruman use his magic? After turning evil, I doubt he'd care very much of the restrictions the Valar put on him. Why didn't he cut loose and blow and nuke Helm's deep?
- It's all about how much you can get away with before you attract too much attention. Melkor/Morgoth, the Big Bad before Sauron, trampled Middle-earth freely until the Elves showed up, and then the Valar tied him up and held him captive for a few millenia. And then, after doing some more major destruction, got himself tossed out in the Void. Not cool. Granted the Valar weren't really active at all by Lord of the Ring times, but a confrontation with a suped up Gandalf (dun dun dun daa!! Back from the Dead and in all new white!) probably wasn't high on his "to do" list either.
- Plus, magic in The Lord Of The Rings isn't exactly a powerful force - having Saruman actually zap Gandalf in the Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition was, in this troper's opinion, a step too far. Magic in Middle-earth should be subtle.
  - Gandalf's magic wasn't exactly subtle when he fought the Nazgul on Weathertop; Aragorn and the hobbits could see the flashes of light from three days' hike away.
  - It's only subtle because the Wizards were limited by what the Valar let them get away with most of the time. When Gandalf let loose against the Balrog they both made a lightning storm on a mountain top, and Galadriel used her ring to blow up the Necromancer's fortress in the Back Story.
  - I've always been under the impression (and it's some years since I read the Silmarillion) that, even though the various magic-users were capable of some quite impressive stuff, it was still low on pyrotechnics. The "lightning storm" wasn't lightning bolts being thrown from staffs and Galadriel didn't literally "blow up" anything - she just undermined the magic that held the tower in place or whatever. The wizards might have been intentionally limited, but there doesn't seem to be any reason that anyone else doesn't chuck fireballs around, except for the fact that the setting is generally low on the flashy magic that comes up so often in later fantasy.
  - Indeed, there hasn't been "flashy" magic in Middle-earth since the Elder Days, or possibly even the times right after the world's creation. Remember that even the Valar, effectively gods, relied mostly on hand-to-hand combat, although extremely massive and impressive kind, when they went to open battle. Even Morgoth, Sauron's old master never used any nuke 'em all-kind of magic. Gandalf speaks of his own limitations in the books: he can create fire and lightning, but not without something to work with. As he says, "I can't burn snow".
  - That was due to physical limitations, in this case. Recently, Galadriel had used the power of her Ring to blow up the Necromancer's fortress, so nuke'em magic was present.
  - Nowhere at any point was it ever mentioned that Galadriel would have blown up anything at all with magic. She even mentions that she holds no powers of war, that her power while great, acts in more subtle ways - none of the Three Rings holds the power of combat and subjugation of others, in any case. The Council of the Wise drove the Necromancer off from Mirkwood, but the methods were never specified. Magic was undoubtedly involved, but not of blowing stuff up-variety.
  - Whatever other magic existed in the world, Saruman's powers were always rooted in deception, manipulation and control, not out and out firepower. Creating a gigantic army of supersoldiers (all the strength and ferocity of orcs, but with the ability to go out in the day) out of nowhere, and unleashing them on his enemies WAS Saruman cutting loose with his powers.
  - Galadriel's power was in no way destructive. She was able to destroy Dol Gulder by using the Ring to cleanse it of the evil power that was holding its rotted and corrupted structure together. The things Sauron was doing there were so atrocious that the building would never have been held together were it not for evil magic. The same goes for Sauron's stronghold in the Silmarillion, and how Luthien was able to destroy that.
Saruman's title is "Saruman the White." Upon defection, he became "Saruman of many colours." Now, white is every colour combined, so didn't Saruman take a few steps down the ladder, from all colours to many colours?
- Well, think of it as a mirror shattering in many pieces as symbolic of Saruman's original purpose and intent.

Close Power and "Magic"

The Dead Men of Dunharrow

Why did Aragon agree to let the ghosts go after the battle for Minas Tirith was won, instead of just initially negotiating so that he would let them go after they trashed the Witch-king's army and Mordor's?
- In the book, he didn't even take them to Minas Tirith: he took them to Belfalas on the southern coast of Gondor, which they liberated from the pirates of Umbar, and then released them.
- What an idiot. Those guys could've trashed all of Sauron's army except for his Nazgul.
- He probably didn't think of it until later, and by that time it was too late. A deal is a deal and all that.
- ...and who's to say Sauron didn't have some "Ghost Repellant Spray" stored away in that eyeball of his? That's the excuse I always used.
- http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1249
- Leading an army of malevolent ghosts into the home turf of the most mystically powerful and utterly evil being on the continent, who at one time was known as 'The Necromancer', strikes this troper as a great way to get eaten by an army of malevolent ghosts.
- Also, the ghosts didn't really, you know, do anything. Any physical fighting, at least. Their main contribution was just terrifying the ever-loving crap out of their enemies.
- From what I recall, the dead army was bound by two oaths: the pledge to defend Gondor, and their secret dark bonds to Sauron. They worshiped him, performing rituals and sacrifices in his name. I'm guessing that's a large part of what prevented them from dying in peace. Aragon summoned them to fight in Gondor's defence, but they probably couldn't actually attack Mordor because they were tied to Sauron as well. After fighting for Gondor, they no longer had two conflicting oaths because they'd fulfilled their duty to the Steward, meaning they could vanish in peace.
- The ghosts DO do something! They cause the Corsairs to flee their ships in terror, allowing Aragorn and the Grey Company (a group of Northern Rangers) to convince the local armed forces (also Gondorian) to join them in taking the ships, and using them to sail to the Pelennor Fields to reinforce Minas Tirith and the Rohirrim, their support being crucial to the victory. The Dead Men would have been ineffective at the battle, as everyone would have been terrified of them. Aragorn could technically have kept them around, but part of fulfilling his duties as a king (a major theme of the book) was in being true to his own oaths.
- Oaths clearly have power in this context. Considering what happened to the dead when they broke their oath, what do you think would have happened to Aragorn if he broke his? Not only might he lose all power over them, but they might gain power over HIM.

Close The Dead Men of Dunharrow

The Quendi (Elves) and other peoples

Since (in the books at least) it is established that any elves who die eventually end up back on Middle-earth anyway, why would the have lost strength between the ages? What with being immortal and having children, shouldn't their strength have been greater than ever (at least in numbers)?
- The elves don't return to Middle-earth, they stay in Aman (where the Valar are) in all but one case. (Glorfindel)
- The elves also weren't ones to just go around and spout out a trillion babies. They understood the "balance of nature" stuff that humans invariably always never understand.
  - True, men are invariably always never better than elves.
Just curious, does Tolkien ever explain why the elves have such long hair, and why dwarves have uber beards? I know lots of people copy off of Tolkien, but is this just how the original legendary races groomed themselves, or did Tolkien think it was a good idea "just because"?
- Dwarves do traditionally have beards, I think. As for the elves... I'm not sure.
  - Elves have long hair because everyone has long hair (except possibly the Hobbits). Short hair was more of a Greco-Roman thing, whereas LOTR generally draws its inspiration from Northern Europe.

Close The Quendi (Elves) and other peoples

The place formerly known as Khazad-dûm, aka Moria

An elf built Lothlorien's mines and the inscription included an antidwarf slur. Why the Hell would he write such an inscrption? He must have been surrounded by dwarfs and had any recognized this slur the builder would have been lynched!
- What are you referring to, the fact that the door calls the place Moria instead of Khazad-dûm?
  - That's probably what the OP was referring to, given that Khazad-dûm means "mansion of the dwarves" and Moria means "black pit".
  - The inscription did read 'Khazad-dum'. Gandalf was translating from the elven tongue into the common tongue and simply gave the wrong translation.
  - Did not, the inscription reads "Ennyn Durin aran Moria". As Khazad-dûm was not yet named "Moria" at the time the door was inscribed, is is safe to assume that it was a slip on Tolkien's part. (Yes, he did make mistakes and oversights and acknowledged it, and corrected them if he could.) Also, please note: Khazad-dûm aka the Mines of Moria were a Dwarven realm, friendly to the Elves of Eregion. It never belonged to Elves nor had any special connection to Lothlórien.
  - An "anti-dwarf" slur? Which was engraved by a dwarf, who probably knew the language, since he signed his name afterwards in the same tongue? It may well be that "Moria" was an affectionate, ironic nickname for Khazad-dûm, which might have been used only by the capricious elves; or, more likely, a name which was used ironically (or at least tolerated) by the dwarves themselves at the time the inscription was engraved. Remember that dwarf-halls are actually very well lit, and Khazad-dûm was considered one of the greatest halls in Middle-earth, so calling it a "black pit" would be ironic indeed.
More on Moria that bugged me ever since I saw it. The entrance itself. "Speak friend and enter." How the hell did it take Gandalf that long to figure out what that meant? He seems like an intelligent person, and he couldn't figure out that "Speak friend and enter," meant, well, speak the elvish word for friend and you may enter? Not just Gandalf, but everybody else in the group except Frodo couldn't figure it out, and even Frodo took awhile. Did the door have a "make everybody within range too stupid to speak a password" enchantment on it?
- Gandalf was expecting some cunning password, which dwarves are notorious for by the way, instead of something so simple.
  - Its not that unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that if the door is magically locked, you need some kind of key. The idea of a locked door being openable by a simple password that's written directly on the door for anyone to read is actually counter-intuitive, because if the door's meant to be opened that easily then why have a lock on it at all?
- In the book, it is Gandalf that figures it out, not Frodo.
  - After Merry suggests that the phrase on the door is a riddle.
- Of course, Gandalf suffers from being too bloody clever for his own good in that scene, as he translates the inscription. If he'd simply read what it said (in Elven), the door would have opened right away.
The Balrog of Moria was accidentally set free by Durin's tribe several hundred years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, right? So why was he still hanging around in Moria after all that time? He couldn't have been trapped there, because he knew an escape route that he used during his fight with Gandalf.
- He was afraid of the Balrog-killing superelves that wait outside.
- Superelves? The Balrog made short work of a whole society of dwarves - it seems like the only beings who pose any threat to him have to be Maiar or better. Too bad he chanced across the only Maia who was present and accounted for on the side of good in Middle-earth.
  - Dwarves don't have elven superpowers. And, yes, superelves. Glorfindel, otherwise known as "That Guy Who Gave Frodo A Lift Once", is also known as "That Guy Who Killed A Balrog By Himself But Died In The Process (He Got Better)".
- Maybe he didn't want to lower himself by cooperating with Sauron, who after all was just a toady of his old boss, but didn't quite have the power to oppose Sauron directly. So he thought he'd just hang around and eat some goblins.

Close The place formerly known as Khazad-dûm, aka Moria

The Hobbit and Gandalf's epic Quest of Erebor-gambit

If Gandalf is one of the wisest and most powerful people on Middle-earth, someone who's basically needed to keep things running as they should, why exactly does he spend so much time in The Hobbit just hanging around with a bunch of dwarves? Doesn't he have better things to do than find them a burglar and periodically rescue them from the trouble they get into? It's not so blatant in The Hobbit proper but once you start reading the other books you really start to wonder.
- See above regarding the vital strategic necessity of making sure that Smaug is dead before Sauron can recruit him. Remember that by the chronology the events of the The Hobbit occur almost immediately after Gandalf has just finished confirming that 'The Necromancer of Dol Guldur' is in fact Sauron, and not some lesser evil.
  - Didn't a simple hobbit kill Smaug?
  - Nope. Smaug was killed by Bard, a guardsman from Esgaroth who just happened to descend from the King of Dale. All Bilbo did was flatter Smaug until he stupidly showed off the weak point he didn't know he had, information that reached Bard at the 11th hour.
  - And both the simple hobbit being in position to speak to Smaug and Smaug's follow-up attack on Esgaroth, where he died, were both a direct result of Gandalf helping manipulate Thorin's expedition into existence in the first place. Left to their own devices, Smaug would have spent the next several decades peacefully sleeping on his pile of gold, until the War of the Ring started and Sauron made him an offer.
- In one of the Unfinished Tales, it's stated that Gandalf had two reasons for helping Thorin on this quest. First, he knew Smaug needed to be dealt with lest Sauron come up with a way to use him. Second, he wanted to re-establish a Dwarf kingdom at the Lonely Mountain. He was afraid that Sauron would use the same route that Bilbo and the Dwarves used in order to attack Rivendell, and that without the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the men of Dale, there weren't enough "good" people in the North to stop him. Finally, it's also implied that on some level, Gandalf had retained enough of his divine knowledge to have an inkling that something else important was going to happen if Bilbo came on this quest.

Close The Hobbit and Gandalf's epic Quest of Erebor-gambit

Tom Bombadil "And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)." (Letters, #144)

Tom Bombadil. Just Tom Bombadil. I have listened to all the theories, but still, the guy makes no sense what so ever. I've read the books, and he is the worst part of all the books, and the only thing I was glad to be cut from the movies. Biggest problem: Why doesn't Tom help with the quest besides with equipment, when he is described to be almost all powerful? Even if he will be affected if Sauron gets the ring, unless he really is "God." Anyone have any defense of Tom? And, why include him in the first place? Even if he is "not important to the narrative" and "a mystery, even to the maker," then he still shouldn't influence the plot that much.
- ~~Tom Bombadil was originally the main narrator of the stories that Tolkien told his children, that eventually evolved into the Middle-Earth legendarium.~~ Tom isn't "all-powerful", he's got great power within the limits he has set himself. He can't help the Fellowship with the quest of the Ring, because his way isn't direct confrontation. They spell this out very clearly in one chapter.
  - Struck out portion of above comment is incorrect. The character Bombadil existed before the LotR and there are several stories with him, but he was not part of the Middle-earth universe.
  - This is the key to the reason Bombadil Just Bugs so many Lot R fans. He wasn't designed to belong in Middle-earth. He is from an entirely separate set of stories written by Tolkien long before Lot R, and shoehorned in for reasons Tolkien himself doesn't really understand. In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the first things he does are fight Old Man Willow, fight the Barrow-Wights, and meet Goldberry, who is explicitly a river-nymph.
- He clearly is extremely powerful, seeing as Gandalf says "Sauron wouldn't want to meet Tom in a back alley." The point is, why include someone so powerful, so mysterious, when you don't reveal him?! It would be as if Merry and Pippin went and found an Entwife, but nothing was revealed about them. If you include all poweful charecters who don't care about the fate of the world, at least give an explenation for them, don't just have them "be."
  - No, if the character's limitations are made clear, then you don't have to provide an explanation, especially in this case, where it's a stylistic choice. There are dozens of beings in the legendarium that Sauron wouldn't be able to defeat. There are good reasons why they don't just show up and put the beatdown on him as well. In this case, Tom isn't a guided weapon system. He has power over a limited area, and even that would fail if Sauron gained supremacy.
  - Yes, but there are reasons why the Valar and others would not interfere. Also, (more importantly) they have a backstory, and are not randomly written in, (even Tolkien himself says he does not know who Tom is.) The whole thing comes of as a Big Lipped Alligator Moment, and doesn't seem to fit the tone or style of the rest of the ~~Trilogy~~ book, and seems like something out of the Hobbit.
- Personally, I think that Tom Bombadil would be more tolerable if Tolkien had done a better job of incorporating the idea of nature spirits into his overall mythos. Maybe if he had mentioned similar enigmatic beings in the rest of the stories, Tom would be more plausible.

Close Tom Bombadil "And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)." (Letters, #144)

General criticism of Tolkien's style and worldbuilding

What really "Just Bugs Me": how many illiterate, lazy douchebags in this world are going to think that now they've seen the movies there's no need to read the book?
- Because the books are overdescriptive (he spends a whole page, in the smallest font possible, describing a cliff) and filled with boring and unnecessary songs (and in that topic, feature Tom Bombadil),thus making watching three 3-hour-long movies a reasonable choice?
  - Isn't that what the first poster was doing (in the nicest possible way, of course >:~])? I honestly don't want to tick anyone off, but I do think the above chap was just saying they were "denecessary" in that they had very little relevance to...well..anything in the book. Perhaps nice as an added feature, but having eleventy-billion pages of them is a bit much. Of course, that's just my view - many of my mates love that stuff. Mad, the lot of them >;~P .
  - Hey, I like Tom!
- Sorry, but this troper agrees with the above. He has read the trilogy (and the other books) many moons ago, but really wishes he hadn't. The backstory is absolutely magnificent, no doubt at all about that. The actual story itself...is just too much. There are many other books in the world that need reading.
  - It's called different tastes.
  - Which is why I never said they were actually bad books, just not for me (sorry, I guess I was a bit vague wasn't I?). Good number of my mates eat that stuff up and think I'm bonkers for not loving it. Which is fair enough.
- On the subject of the prose and the songs, Tolkien wanted to literally create an actual world filled with vibrant, believable cultures, which is why he spent years meticulously developing their languages. He didn't believe in suspension of disbelief as a literary technique, preferring "world building" because he believed it made for more compelling literature. Tolkien, as a linguist, believed that a culture's most important defining characteristics were its music, its poetry, and its stories. The colourful, highly descriptive prose was to help readers clearly envisage the world he had lovingly created for these cultures to inhabit.
  - There's a reason why the saying 'Tolkien spent more time and effort describing 6trees and leaves than describing the final battle...' sticks around.He was a great writer, but he definitely went overboard sometimes which is why some people are unable to dig his writing. I've read both Hobbit and the Fellowship, and while Hobbit struck me as a boring book that turned really interesting around mid-point, Fellowship had a good background but became really dull around the time they made it to Moria.
- You know you've spent too much time on TV Tropes when you're trying to instruct Tolkien on how to write.
This kind of sums up a lot of Just Bugs Me points, but it just bugs me how so many "important" things in the story are only All There In The Manual. Any outsider who picks up the three main books and nothing else will have an entirely different vision of Middle-earth than the average member of the Tolkien in-crowd. The Tolkien fan community uses things like letters and books that Tolkien never finished or published during his lifetime (like the Silmarillion), not just as Word Of God, but as actual parts of the story.
- Well, that's what Tolkien was shooting for when he wrote The Lord Of The Rings. He was really big on letting the readers have their own unique vision of Middle-earth.
  - Then it's the hardcore fans and the "canonists" who are going about it the wrong way and need a dose of the MST 3 K Mantra?
- In all fairness, when asked a question about Lord of the Rings, such as, why didn't the wizards do this or that, if you want to actually answer the question, you need to delve into all this extra stuff. This troper admits that it would be unnecessary to demean a person for ignorance of Tolkien's letters and the like, but if someone asks a question that Tolkien already answered in his unfinished works, one can't be blamed for citing them.
- Tolkien was trying to create an entire world, not just a single story about a ring. The three main books are long enough without including the rest of the history he imagined for Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings was just the tip of the Middle-earth iceberg. If he'd lived longer, presumably he would have written other stories for it. After some final editing the letters and books would have become part of the story, too. Unfortunately, fans aren't ever going to get that editing, so they just go with what Tolkien left.
One thing that really, really bugs me is how tobacco is native to the Shire. Here we have a story that's largely about how the Good Old Days were better and industrialization tends to ruin things, and also a story that's supposed to be an alternate prehistory of Europe, and everybody smokes something that was only introduced to Europe because of colonialism, much later than the Middle Ages. Bloody hell. I bet the Shire has tea, too, which would be even worse.
- The tobacco the hobbits smoke is made from the plant galenas (which the hobbits call "pipe-weed"). Galenas is not native to the continent Middle-earth, but, like many other things, was brought there from the western island of Númenor by the Númenóreans sometime during the Second Age. It is therefore also found in the area of the kingdoms founded by the Númenóreans, Arnor and Gondor. The hobbits had apparently already been smoking other plants, before they discovered that galenas could be uses this way. (For a full account, read the section Concerning Pipe-weed in the Prologue of the LotR.)
- Tobacco isn't native to the Shire. ~~It's native to an area in Gondor.~~ (wrong, see above) And Middle-earth isn't explicitly Europe, so it's alright if they have tobacco. Remember, "alternate prehistory", not our prehistory. If it doesn't ruin Suspension Of Disbelief, (like the ~~mammoth~~ mumak) it's fine. (Tolkien noted that the geology was wrong too, but he crafted his universe around his languages and the culture needed to produce them; he was a linguist, not a climatologist.)
  - It still feels kind of hypocritical that Tolkien makes special exceptions for the material comforts that he himself enjoys, all while decrying the systems and practices that brought them to him. Can you imagine a Gondor East Rhun Company, exploiting the Easterlings for the sake of bringing massive amounts of tea into the West? Or tobacco-growing hobbit colonies in... I guess it would have to be Valinor? Heh, maybe they can steal some land from the Valar in exchange for a handful of beads.
  - That's a wee bit odd choice to call hypocrisy. By that logic you shouldn't be enjoying your own comforts because the economic situation that allows you to enjoy them only exists on top of a history of ruthless colonialism and native exploitation.
  - The key is that I'm not writing a book about a world of black-and-white morality where all the things I like miraculously fall into the "white" category. Say what you will about the unrepentantly wicked, but at least we have integrity.
- And yet no one is complaining about the 'taters'.

Close General criticism of Tolkien's style and worldbuilding

Additional Comments — General Discussion

Why weren't Gandalf and the others allowed to have a direct confrontation with Sauron? Why would the Valar forbid them from beating the shit out of Sauron, bringing him back in chains, and tossin' him in the ol' Void, like the did Morgoth?
- Out of worry the power would corrupt them like Sauron and Morgoth were corrupted. Incidentally, the last time the Valar directly intervened in a gods' war the collateral damage took out entire continents, so they're quite understandably reluctant to ever authorize such action again. Also, it's not clear if the five wizards combined could take on Sauron at his peak.
What was Gandalf's original plan for getting the Ring into Mordor? As far as we know, there are only two ways in: The Black Gate and Cirith Ungol. Did Gandalf count on everybody climbing up those stairs right under the nose of the Witch-king at Minas Morgul? And why didn't he let everybody else in on the plan before they left Rivendell?
- Aragorn was of the opinion that Gandalf didn't have a specific plan beyond Lorien - he was intending to talk to Galadriel and possibly take a gander in her mirror, and see if he could cook up a plan on the way.
- There's also that Aragorn himself is the one person other than Gollum to have successfully snuck into Mordor and back via Cirith Ungol — its mentioned in the ROTK appendices. Gandalf had a reasonable presumption of being able to duplicate that feat with the full Fellowship, especially given that the Witch-king would be leaving Minas Morgul at some point... or, if not, Gandalf could easily decoy him away with a show of power.
  - A suicide mission is sometimes the only option. Put the ring-bearer in back and shove everyone else into the meat grinder until it clogs. 100,000 dead soldiers is better than Sauron destroying the world.
- Maybe he wasn't going to take the path at Cirith Ungol at all. Mordor isn't completely surrounded by mountains.
  - Like Aragorn's player said in DM Of The Rings, "I'm entering a country. You can't put a door on a country."
  - Also, the 'pass' at Cirith Ungol wasn't just the winding staiway cut into the mountain on a sheer vertical face, there was a rather wide pass that lead up through the mountains from Minas Morgul to Cirith Ungol, it just would have made no sense for the Hobbitts to take an extremely well-traveled, militarily strategic, pass.
Why exactly did Saruman decide to steal the Ring for himself?
- Study of the Ring and the 'arts of the Enemy' apparently corrupted him. Gaze too long into the abyss and all that- and Saruman's one big flaw always was pride.
  - Plus jealousy towards Gandalf. Saruman always knew that Gandalf was mightier of the two, although Gandalf didn't and wouldn't have cared if he did. As a result Sharky was always demeaning Gandalf with his words, while imitating him in secret.
What's the deal with Minas Tirith? I've heard good explanations about how not all of Mordor is blasted wasteland and the orcs actually do have land to grow food on, but I still don't understand how Minas Tirith can function as a major city. Carrying stuff up and down those seven hundred-foot-tall levels all day, in such an incredibly cramped space, would just be way too difficult. And where do all its food and supplies come from? I'm not sure if it's exactly the same in the book, but in the movie there are no nearby farms or anything as far as the eye can see. Even if everyone retreated to the safety of the city walls during the events of The Return of the King, there would still be at least some evidence that people recently lived outside the walls.
- In the book, the Pelennor Fields immediately outside Minas Tirith are a vast expanse of farmland.
- So it's just laziness on the part of the filmmakers that the fields just happen to look like a lot of uncultivated New Zealand scrubland.
  - In the section about location scouting from the extended R Ot K Peter Jackson comments that one of the things about the site that appealed to him was that it looked like it might have been farmland during a better time.
- It seems likely that most of the city's population and industry is on the lowest levels, while the upper levels are reserved for armories, garrisons, and major civic buildings. In which case most of the goods moving into the city don't have to go up more than a level or two. Still a problem, but not such a big one.
  - A hundred feet is a lot! That's about eight stories, or two 50-Foot Women standing one atop the other. Whether they're using stairs or very steep ramps (and they'd have to be steep with that little area to work with), it would be nigh-impossible to take anything with wheels up even one level. There's a reason why 700-foot-tall structures didn't exactly catch on until the invention of the elevator.
- Minas Tirith is built in rich farmland, it is built near a river and goods can travel to it(albeit, this is less valid in Denethor's time because the Enemy controls the East bank). Even if there was no farmland that would not be a problem as long as there was trade and many of the most famous cities are built in deserts. Being built on a mountain isn't a problem; Jerusalem has a vaguely similar arrangement.
- In any case Minas Tirith was built originally to be a military depot and the rest of the city grew up around it. Naturally it would put millitary considerations first. Which is a good reason to build on a mountain.
- Because Minas Tirith was originally the summer home of the Kings of Gondor. Osgiliath was the original capitial city but that got wasted during a civil war.
- Valparaiso, Chile reputes your baseless assertion!
- Truth In Television. Italian hill-towns are like this, as are Ethiopian and Anasazi cliff-top dwellings (some still occupied) and ancient Inca fortress cities (they used the differences in altitude within city limits to grow different crops). It's only modern Westerners that prefer to build on the flat lands, ironically because we have elevators for tall buildings. In ancient times, they needed that land for farming, and the steep hills for defense.
If Men are supposedly the most susceptible to power-hunger of all the good-guy races, then why did the Stewards of Gondor never once, in five hundred years, say to heck with musty ol' traditions and have themselves proclaimed Gondor's new royals? With humans' short lifespans, it's hard to justify most of Gondor's inhabitants even knowing they'd had a king once, let alone awaiting the royal line's return; it'd be like modern-day British citizens honestly believing in King Arthur and being eager to swear fealty to him. The Stewards had led their people in warfare, ruled like kings, were buried with all the honors due to kings. Plenty of real-world regents have seen fit to usurp power from heirs who were still alive at the time, so why did Gondor's interim rulers bother to maintain a pretense that they were just managing the kingdom for a hypothetical "true king"? Why didn't the first one to beat back an Orc raid declare himself King, by right of military triumph? Or do ambition and political corruption in JRRT's world only exist if a Dark Lord's whispers put them there?
- In all aspects, they pretty much were kings. Keep in mind how languages change over centuries- the word "steward" had pretty much come to mean "king" in Gondor, with "king" being the equivalent of the modern "regent". Note how Denethor was reluctant to allow Aragorn the throne, and cited how he and his had ruled for centuries, and he didn't want to stop that now.
- Boromir once asked his father how long it takes for a Steward to become a King. Denethor's reply was along the lines of, 'a few years in places of less nobility, but a thousand lifetimes isn't long enough in Gondor.' So it was a pride thing.
Staying with Bree, Aragorn knows the Nazgul have pursued the Frodo there, so he moves Frodo... to another room in the inn - or possibly to a room in a different inn, but all of about fifty feet away. He certainly doesn't take the hobbits out of the town, or even pick a particularly well-hidden nook within it. The Nazgul must have been informed, presumably, that their prey was in a particular room. But when he's not there, they just... go away, leaving Aragorn and the hobbits to wander off into the wild at their leisure? Why don't they tear the town apart? Threaten to kill people until someone talks? I can't remember if it's any different in the book, but I rather think it's pretty much the same.
- In the book, Aragorn discusses why the Nazgûl won't attack in Bree ("That is not their way. In dark and loneliness they are strongest; they will not openly attack a house where there are lights and many people – not until they are desperate, not while all the long leagues of Eriador lie before us.") However, they're not above putting people in Bree who are working for them (Bill Ferny, for one) up to a little mischief – sacking rooms, loosing ponies – which has the dual benefit of being intimidating and making the journey to Rivendell that much more dangerous.
I never read ~~the trilogy~~ LotR, and only read the beginning of The Hobbit, so I'm curious. In The Hobbit, trolls turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. Yet in the movies of the trilogy, trolls move around freely in the sunlight. Are they just different types of trolls? If so, what happened to all the stone by day trolls? Did they go extinct by all turning to stone?
- There are different breeds of troll, only the weaker varieties of which turn to stone. The ones in Sauron's armies are the much-improved Olog-hai, who (like orcs) dislike sunlight but are not harmed by it. (Incidentally, you can see the three stoned trolls from The Hobbit in the Fellowship movie.)
- Also, The Hobbit was not originally part of the Middle-earth setting when it was published. Tolkien only moved the Hobbit to his (already existing) Middle-earth legendarium when he began writing The Lord of the Rings, which is the reason for inconsistensies in plot and style between the Hobbit and the other Middle-earth works.
  - Including some things so plot breaking (like Gollum willingly giving up the ring) that the original had to be altered.
How exactly did Morgoth make dragons? We're told he cannot create anything, only corrupt and alter existing works (incidentally, making the weaker in the process). He made orcs by corrupting elves; trolls were likewise once ents. So, where do dragons come from? They're much too large and powerful to have been made from eagles, and we know that they're not corrupted Maiar like the Balrogs if there was a "father of dragons".
- Tolkien himself never really decided. It's not inconceivable that Glaurung was an incarnated Maia, and that the race of Dragons was bred from his physical body, though that brings up questions about whether dragons have souls and where they come from. In Morgoth's Ring, there are essays about the origins of Orcs that relate to this. (Note that Melian, an incarnated Maia, was able to conceive and have a child with an Elf-King.)

If the Lot R takes place 3000 YEARS after the first war of the ring, why is gunpowder the only advancement?

This bugged me from the first moment I heard about it. After THREE THOUSAND YEARS nothing has been accomplished and no advancements have been made save for the discovery of gunpowder or at least a similar substance by Sauromon. In 3 thousand years, the earth went from fighting with spears and swords to using nuclear bombs. Additionally, the population of Middle Earth, especially of humans and elves seems so tiny and limited compared to the newly formed population of Orcs which makes absolutely no sense when you realize most characters in the novels are hundreds of years old, in some cases thousands. Was no one doing the horizontal shuffle? The population should have been in the millions, if not low billions by the time the trilogy began.

The Red Book, anyway?

We know that Professor Tolkien supposedly didn't invent any of it, it all came from the Red Book of Westmarch, which contained There and Back Again, The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King (split by modern publishers into three books), and The "Translations from the Elvish". The first two components alone would put it beyond most concievable books in size. The last bit adds on the entire Silmarillion, the Narn i Hin Hurin, the lay of Beren and Luthien, and a story about Queen Beruthiel's cats. How big was this book, exactly? The same stuff can take up the better part of a small shelf on a bookshelf.
The copy that was supposedly found was copied at the behest of Pippin's grandson. Even allowing for 70 years or so that this gives, it was still printed at least nine thousand years ago, and kept in the damp climate of Western Europe- probably somewhere in either Britain or France, neither of which are exactly ideal for preserving paper that long-term (the only place on earth that WOULD be ideal for such preservation is the inside of a desert tomb, notably lacking in Britain and France). How the smeg did the book not disinitigrate and rot to nothing over the millennia?

Close Additional Comments — General Discussion

Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings:

Animated Adaptations

In the 1980 Hobbit movie, in the song where the party is captured by goblins, why the fuck do they all run right into the exact cave that the ponies just got dragged into? They clearly realized from the start that it was goblins at work. Seems like the only sensible thing to do would be to get the hell away from that cave, not run right into it, regardless of the ponies. Here's a linkto the song if you've never seen it.
- Weren't all their supplies on those ponies? They were a little too far up in the mountains to make it back without any food. Not to mention that Thorin the exile and his compatriots could only afford to fund one expedition. If they lose all their resources, then even if they avoid starvation on the trip back they've still failed in their quest.
  - On closer inspection, Thorin actually shouts something like protect the ponies, it's just really badly muffled by the music.
  - He says "The goblins are upon us! Save the ponies from the goblins!"

Close Animated Adaptations

Peter Jackson's Adaptation of Lord of the Rings

I do remember there's a more or less decent explanation in the book as Frodo's first brush with the ring happens differently, but in the film, do the patrons of the Prancing Pony have short attention spans or what? The ring falls onto Frodo's outstretched finger. Everyone reacts with the sort of shock you'd expect and stare down at the empty space. He's invisible for no more than about ten seconds. Yet by the time he takes the thing off everyone's forgotten all about it and is chatting mildly as if nothing has happened.

The patrons of the (movie) Prancing Pony are drinking copious amounts of beer of the Prancing Pony. Would you care about such trivial a thing as a vanishing midget if your tankard was running empty ? Priorities, man. Priorities.

Two things bugged me about the entry to Moria. One, why didn't Gandalf tell the Fellowship 'oh hey, I've heard Khazad-dûm isn't exactly a swinging place these days? They could still have chosen it as the least treacherous route, but it seems somehow cruel to let Gimli build up their expectations of feasting and fun for no good reason. And two, how did Gimli not realize something was up a lot sooner? Okay, maybe the lighting was bad and they didn't see the dwarven bones, but shouldn't he have noticed it was awfully quiet?

The dwarf who attempted to retake Khazad-dum was a family friend. Gimli was far too optimistic about it. In the books, the entire Fellowship was aware that Moria was a hellhole, but it was literally their only route.

Okay, I'll just spit it out - the movies made Legolas into a Marty Stu (even if he's a likable one) while poor Gimli got turned into a joke.
- That's my major problem too. My guess is that while it's easy enough to show Legolas stabbing and arrow-ing bad guys, having Gimli rip Orcs in half with his axe would have been harder to animate. Plus he's short, and gruff, so PJ decided to turn him into the comedic sidekick. Which completely sucked donkey balls, to be blunt. Otherwise though, the movies were great.

After the victory on the Pelennor Fields, they hold a council to decide what to do next. Present are Gandalf and his cronies (Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Pippin) and King Éomer. No-one is there to represent Gondor or Minas Tirith (surely Denethor had deputies beyond Faramir?)

It's just not believable that a city that was taught to see "Gandalf Stormcrow" as an untrustworthy villain would all of sudden accept him and his protégé as their leaders, and follow them on a suicide mission, the purpose of which was not explained to them.

Which is why some of us believe the entire War of the Ring was a fairy tale cooked up by Manipulative Bastard Gandalf in order to effect regime change across Western Middle Earth while siezing control of the pipeweed trade. And it worked!
In the original the city is under the command of another Gondorian noble (Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth). Considering the movies seem to mess up any social hierarchy and relationships, taking away the reasons for some and making up other things, this is one among many. "Why don't the elves come to help us Rohirrim?"/"yadda-honor-Last Alliance-yadda" Remember that to you elves are fearsome mythical creatures you better stay away from? The ancestors of the people that would eventually become the Rohirrim had no part whatsoever in the Last Alliance? Damn, the conscious memory of your nation has things half a millenia ago filed under "ancient times, mists of", and the Last Alliance was over three thousand years ago! "Why should we help Gondor?" Oh, perhaps because that is the rent you pay for living in the Gondorian province Calenardhon?
- In an interview, Peter Jackson and the writers talk about how they wanted to add in Imrahil, but it seemed like too late in the game to add in another main character.
- They also claimed that they wanted Imrahil to be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Really technically, Imrahil is in the movie but never named and never given his due, he's that unnamed guy who seems like a sergeant at times and as a whiny fairy at others (he says "It is as the Lord Denethor predicted! Long has he foreseen this Doom!") who survives far longer than an unnamed character has any right to.

What is Merry doing at the battle at the Black Gate towards the end? I mean, I get how affecting it is to have the remaining members of the Fellowship there and all. Just a nitpick that if Eowyn is stuck in the Houses of Healing, Merry should be too.

Merry didn't get his arm broken, just magically burned/shocked and a little bit squashed. He would have been fine after a day or two rest.
Hmm, not in the book he wasn't. I think it would have preserved the tension if Merry had stayed behind and Pippin, not Aragorn, fight the Troll. But PJ loves his Big Damn Heroes so...

What the heck is with PJ's misunderstanding of basic military tactics, especially in the final battle of the Black Gate? This (and the poorly animated horsemen on Pelennor Fields, and the reliance on ghosts instead of fortunes of war to kill all the bad guys) take me right out of the movie.

For the Battle of the Black Gate, everyone is fully aware that they are not going to win, they are simply bait to draw out Sauron's army and give Frodo a chance to reach Mont Doom, so they don't really need to bother with intricate maneuvers. If I remember, the entire Gondorian army was positioned in a large circle, which is a good defensive position and can drag out the battle as long as possible (to give Frodo as much time as possible).
- It's actually worse in the books: rather than stand-to in a Spartan ring of death like they do in the movie, the army of Mordor crashes out so fast they break the Gondor army into two rings based around two small hills — Aragorn's standard on one, Dol Amroth on the other. I think this might be a reference to the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, where the Crusaders wound up in this position and Salah-al-din's forces slaughtered them en masse.

This probably isn't the correct folder, but since I've only read The Return of the King and a while ago at that, I'm not totally certain about whether this particular line actually appears in the book. In the extended version of the third film, Saruman reveals the palantir and boasts that something is festering in the heart of Middle Earth, which Sauron is supposedly turning to his advantage. What exactly is he referring to?
- As I recall, the insanity of Denethor.
  - Or, more generally, despair.
The problem I have with the Return of the King film is that the trilogy as a whole makes us more sympathetic to the Rohirrim than the Gondorians. Since PJ had to pad out the length of The Two Towers, he was able to add new Rohirrim characters like the old men and boys arming themselves before the Battle of Helm's Deep. On the other hand, by removing Gondorian characters like Beregond, Bergil and Ioreth, we lose a chance to make a human connection with regular Gondorians, and it becomes hard to understand why Aragorn would want to be king over these people. It doesn't help that the Rohirrim have more colorful costumes and decor — red, gold and green, wood and straw — while everything in Minas Tirith and Osgiliath is black and white (the Gondorian national colors) or gray, made of stone, marble and slate.

Am I the only one who thinks the Fellowship is struggling to control their homicidal but entirely justified hatred for Pippin?.Think about it some of the major problems in the first movie are caused directly by Pippin's actions.

Revealing Frodo's identity when they were supposed to be traveling in secret,causing him to put on the ring alerting the Nazguls to his presence.
- this one is more implied but Pippin was probably the one who suggested making a campfire on Weather Top leading to Frodo getting stabbed.
- Disturbing The Watcher in the water forcing them to go the Moria route,after they took three steps and found it to be corpse and goblin filled hell hole.
- Dropping an entire SUIT OF ARMOUR/ Small stone down the well alerting all the goblins in Moria and by proxy the Balrog leading to Gandalf's avoidable death.

Seriously how do Gandalf and Merry put up with it? This guy is like the Gordon Frohman of hobbits.

If the Half-Elven have to choose which race to belong to, which one do they look like before they choose; and what's the deadline and what happens if they don't choose?

Half-elves look like regular elves, the choosing of races involves joining the elves and becoming immortal or staying human and be able to live and die a mortal life. The deadline is usually decided by the time they leave for the Gray Havens. This was covered in both the books and the movies.
We don't really know what the deadline was for Elrond and Elros though. Interestingly enough, Tolkien mentioned in an early version of the Akallabêth that Elrond always had the possibility to go among Men and die ("yet a grace was added, that [Elrond's] choice was never annulled, and while the world lasted he might return, if he would, to mortal men, and die", Sauron Defeated, Ho ME 9, p333) but struck out that idea pretty quickly. The eventual fate of Dior and his sons is still mysterious as well.

Why on earth did the movies make Frodo a foolish coward?

Seriously, considering his track record throughout the trilogy, it seems downright uncharacteristic for him to accept the dangerous task of taking the Ring in the first place. While in the book he keeps his wits and tries to stab the Nazgûl on Weathertop, thus saving his life by preventing its knife from striking his heart, in the movie he drops his sword and crawls away in panic. While in the book he tries to stave the Nazgûl back at the Ford, in the book he remains unconscious and helpless, only saved by Arwen. In the book the hobbits try to stay out of the way during the fight in Moria, and only Sam scores a kill, but Frodo still manages to give a neat strike to the cavetroll, which is apparently too large to enter the room completely, or else is disgouraged by this stab and stays away. In the movie all the hobbits enter the fray and score several kills, save for Frodo, who again tries to run and hide. In the book Frodo immediately sees that Gollum is treacherous and needs to be carefully watched, in the movie, the greatest Wall Banger of all, he trusts him more than Sam! Yes, the Ring makes you paranoid, but definately not less towards the creature who had previously made it pretty clear that he very much disagrees with the current property arrangements. In short, Elijah Wood's Frodo feels more like payload for Sam to lug around, and keep out of trouble with varying degrees of success.
- Not to mention that in the book, Frodo makes a very dark threat, telling Gollum that he will never ever have the Precious back; if Frodo had no other choice, he'd put the Ring on and command Gollum to kill himself, knowing that Gollum would have to obey. Awesome, if dark, and I can't see Jackson's Frodo even coming close to that.
- It gets even worse than that—in the book, Frodo explicitly tells Gollum/Smeagol, "If you should touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fires of Doom." Frodo says this while holding onto the Ring (though not on his finger). Sure enough, when Gollum attacks Frodo in the Cracks of Doom, this self-fulfilling prophecy comes true and Gollum falls into the Fires of Doom. Unfortunately, Peter Jackson refused to show the final confrontation outside the Sammath Naur properly between Frodo and Gollum. Of all the things that bugged me about Jackson's interpretation, this omission ranks very near the top.
  - Loyal New Zealander or no, I just have to say that Peter Jackson's films are largely pants. That's all there is to it. he's just too Hollywood in his thinking. Too American.

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Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

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