I think the point of the original critique, is that if the eagles could have picked them up from Mount Doom after they destroyed the ring, they could have just as easily dropped them off there, or done a flyby with them and dropped the ring in. This ignores the fact that the entire point that Tolkien was trying to drive home is that eagles are jerks. Or at least that’s what I got out of it.
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This. Modern movies and TV seem to have a real chip on their shoulders regarding simple continuity, logic, and anything else that in the past would have people calling foul. I’m not sure what disease has infected Disney, Bad Robot, Amazon, Netflix, and so many other houses these days … but they all seem to suffer from the same malady. They have all but stopped caring about basic storytelling, and (even worse) they are outright hostile when anyone calls them out on it to the point of calling them ‘haters’ and ‘evil’.
Case in point with shows like Amazon Prime’s “Rings of Power” series. Tolkien is the Gold Standard … so anyone who does anything and tries to associate it with Tolkien had better do the best job in the world with it or they’re going to deservedly get blowback. So what did Amazon do with arguably THE greatest story IP in existence?
Things happen in the show for absolutely no good reason to the point where it’s painful to watch. Stuff like Galadrial jumping off a ship into the middle of an ocean thousands of miles from anything, swimming for days, randomly running into a raft, which randomly contains Sauron, then randomly surviving a sea monster attack, and then randomly happening across a Numenorian ship. This is all patently absurd on a level that insults basic intelligence.
And then you have to combine that with the equally insulting practice where the show treats something that crops up out of nowhere as being CRITICALLY important … only to completely drop it the next episode and pretend it never happened. Or for characters to behave one way in one moment and then behave in a diametrically opposite manner just a little bit later (such as when Galadriel promises to murder every orc and laughs … only to tell some kid a bit later that they “mustn’t let hate lead them”).
The sad reality is that this sort of terrible writing is not unusual these days. Rather, it has become the predominant “standard” in writing. How in the world this happened is beyond me … but its EVERYWHERE now and every time I see it? It makes part of my soul clench. When I see it, I stop watching and never come back because if the writers can’t take the time to respect me then they aren’t going to get one phentosecond of my time. …
… until their crappy work shows up on MST or Rifftrax.
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The reason I’m familiar with is the fact that the giant eagles aren’t animals, they’re intelligent beings and quite powerful ones at that. In the book The Hobbit they’re one of the armies in the Battle of Five Armies after all. Putting the Fellowship on the Eagles and literally putting their lives on the backs of them would have been a disaster. The One Ring corrupted Sméagol to murder his best friend just by him seeing the thing. Do you think it couldn’t corrupt an Eagle to just dump Frodo off its back and then go pick up the Ring from his corpse on the ground?
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How is the eagle going to wear the ring? Will it fit on its talons? If it’s a giant eagle, I’d say unlikely.
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Perhaps two Eagles could carry it on a line between them… like on a strand of creeper.
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What, held under the dorsal guiding feathers?
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Did you not see the Ring changing size in the scene when it was cut off of Sauron’s hand?
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Wait, just so we’re clear, are these African or European eagles?
And, why not a coconut?
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They couldn’t be European, European eagles are non-migratory.
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Three Coconuts for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Coconut to rule them all, One Coconut to find them,
One Coconut to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
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I look forward to Monty Python’s The Return of the King now.
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Well, it depends on whether we use political or geographic boundaries to define Europe.
If we go by political boundaries, you are correct; but to be a bit pedantic, how do you explain the Dardanelle eagle, who regularly carries coconuts all along it’s migratory pattern; which includes, but is not limited to various locations along the Bosporus strait ?
Hmm? And the Irish Eagle, who imbibes so much that he is often found with coconut based Girl-drinks all along the Etruscan highlands?
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Chancing a guess that several writers and producers (and a few directors) regard audiences as stupid traveling ATM machines for the tail end of their ROI regimen (“they’ll show up and vomit money onto us if we give them some bright colors and fast moving shapes to engage their pathetic raisin brains”).
The only thing I’m not sure of is whether that was cause or effect. Did they lose the love for the craft in favor of profits and it just happened to work out enough times to become the pattern? Or did they adjust into the pattern because audiences really need that much watered down and spoon fed?
Chicken or the egg situation. Or, well, raisins I guess.
Raisin snails?
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Egg came first. Facts =)
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