Me: "So, if the eagles could fly in and get Frodo and Sam out, why couldn't they have flown them in in the first place?"
RX: "See, they needed the chaos of the destruction of the Ring to cause a Disturbance in the Force and throw Mordor's 'Chain Home' radar stations into disarray..."
Me: "Ah. Or else they could've been shot down by a SAM on the way in?"
RX: "Or eaten by a Grue, more likely."
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Overheard in the Office:
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30 comments:
If they had Wild Weasels with HARMs first the SAM battery would have been less effective. Chain Home was not all that effective at low altitudes.
OTOH, who has NOT been eaten by a Grue?
There you go, harshing people's mellows! Next you'll be wondering aloud why the X-wings had to fly all the way down the trench instead of just dive-bombing the damned thermal exhaust port.
Plus, Mordor had the 9th FellBeast Interceptor Squadron ("The WingWraiths") on constant alert. Kind of hard to fly in when the baddies have air supremacy.
This reminds me of the really short version of the movie.
If Gandalf hadn't been involved in that whole dragon killing thing a few decades back, then he could have called on a dragon to jam the radar and confuse the interceptors.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you may need one to fly CAP for you someday.
According to the "Unfinished Tales", Gandy was worried bout Smaug carrying out fire missions over Rivendale. Good thing, as a fast moving, low level dragon is a very difficult AAA target
A good observation.
To remain true to the story, Tolkien should have killed off Frodo and Sam. Maybe the real ending is in JRR's attic.
Sauron had to die first, otherwise the eye would have seen them. See, easy ;)
Oh. So you had eagles. Make the hobbits trudge through hell and back. Dragging that evil thing, with a couple of jerks and a dimwitted cook, being followed by a cold blooded ex-Chicago politician.
And you had eagles.
yeah, it's funny. Haha, yeah, real funny, a bigh laugh.
Eagles. Feh. Fuck all you guys. And comb your damned hair
So you've never seen this then?
How it Should Have Ended: Lord of the Rings
Darn it..Mike beat me to posting the link. Day late and dollar short, as always.
If you watch the movies/read the books backwards, it's a story about Bilbo getting the best birthday present ever.
One cannot simply fly into Mordor. There, I said it.
Well, one can fly in, but first you have to get screened by the OSA*, and show at the Black Gates no later than 3 hours before the scheduled departure time...
*Orc Security Administration.
Hmm... it's been a long time since I read the novel, but I seem to have this dim recollection that Tolkien actually had thought about that, and did have some sort of explanation why the eagles were not an option when it came to taking the ring to the mountain (but could be used afterwards). They didn't give that reason in the movies, but I'd swear there was one.
May have had something to do with the idea that the eagles were not mounts, but rather intelligent and not easily persuaded - perhaps they were just not willing to take the risk, who knows.
Heh. I have ambitions as a writer, and that is one of the things that scare me in the unlikely situation that I manage to become famous: you spend hours and days figuring out why the easy solution just isn't an option, came up with a good reason - and then somebody either makes a movie, or a comic, from the story and leaves your reasoning out (and probably mangles the story into something unrecognizable in other ways too, but that's pretty inevitable, isn't it?) or the big finale becomes famous in other ways, and then you'll see all these net discussion about 'but why didn't they do it the easy way'....
Marja,
I haven't even seen the third movie. Do they destroy the ring?
(Marja,
I'm taking the piss, of course. I know they destroy the ring in the movie.
While I enjoyed the first movie and thought that it hewed broadly to the kindly professor's vision, the second one started to give me that Return of the Jedi 'look for action figures soon, kids!' feeling, and so I never watched the third or re-watched the second.
I've read LotR... well, literally more times than I can recall.)
Oh, and Bobbi's answer, while phrased flippantly, is the correct one. That's why it's funny. :)
My understanding is that the Eagles worked for the Gods, and were ordered to stay out of it and let the kids settle it among themselves. they bailed out Gandalf a couple of times as a personal favor, but that was as far as they were willing to go.
Nerds. I read the output of nerds.
Tam, yes they destroy the ring even in the movie. Then we get about an hour of goodbyes and false endings. I liked the movies, mostly as eye candy, but that damn ending(s) was really irritating. (Okay, I suppose the endings took less than an hour, but they felt like more).
And I think those movies actually were about the most faithful movie version of any novel I have ever seen. I know you have to make changes to most novels when they are turned into a movie, usually because a faithful version would take way longer than a movie can last and some things just can't be filmed, but for some reason no director (well, director, script writers and producers) ever seems to be willing to actually just turn a novel into a film. Even in the best cases they always have to make a fan fiction version - one of those fan fictions where the fan really thinks that they know better than the creator what would work, and besides they really liked that character better and shouldn't those two make a better pairing than the official couple and wouldn't the hero be more interesting if he was more conflicted and...
azmountaintroll sums it up in a nutshell. It's not really a plot hole; it only plays one on TV.
That the movies emphasized the departure of the Elves over the Scouring of the Shire was a damn shame, likely brought on by budget constraints or tired script writers.
I knew the trilogy would end badly when Saruman took his swan dive off the tower.
And the eagles could at least have participated in the final battle as they did in the book.
All in all, a fine trilogy of movies that missed mostly through omission.
@mikee: The Scouring of the Shire is actually my favorite part of the story. Jackson rates above Verhoeven in my book, but I'm still pissed.
I figure the Ringwraiths, being drawn to the Ring and all, would have used their gaydar to detect Frodo and Sam in a low clutter environment like the sky. In a high clutter environment, Frodo and Sam could pass.
Reforging Narsil into Anduril in Rivendell BEFORE leaving to destroy the ring WAS A MAJOR PLOT POINT.
Having his girlfriend's dad show up with it later (and yeah, they really reduced Elrond to not much more than that) reduced the importance.
'Cause I'm a geek, ya ya!
While probably accurate (at least in the broad strokes) the blending of genres and the anachronisms make me laugh until my head hurts.
Why do you hate me so?
Ignoring the fact that the story just wouldn't have had nearly the drama if the Fellowship could fly...
Another reason J.R.R. might not have written it that way was that the benefits of airpower had not yet made themselves evident on the battlefields of WWI. The idea of directly attacking the enemy's centers of gravity without going through his land forces didn't get military play until WW2, and then after much sturm und drang within the U.S. Army (and I suspect the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe as well).
We look at the map and say, "Strategic strike right on the volcano with a MERB(Middle Earth Ring Bomb)." J.R.R. and his contemporary audience had no frame of reference to even conceive of such a thing.
OK. The retired AF guy will now retire from this field...
"I haven't even seen the third movie. Do they destroy the ring?"
Here you go, Tam:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1297
(Fractured Fairy-tale version)
Another retired AF type sounding off Re: no eagles inbound.
I'd have figured the Cobra Dane installation Saruman set up near Mordor would've lit up like a Christmas Tree from the radar return of two big eagles struggling to separate two gay hobbits while enroute to the "other" IP.
Just sayin'...
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