Lord of the Rings queries (LOTR brahs get in here)

[wilKO]

I love the movies. Read the Hobbit and started reading Lord of the Rings books. Some questions for those who have read into them.

1: why didn't Frodo just fly on an eagle all the way to Mount Doom and destroy the ring in like 3 hours?

2: on Weather top Aragorn before he has developed properly is able to fight off 5 or 6 of the Ring Wraiths; one of whom is the Witch king of Angmar yet in Return of the King the Ring wraiths and particularly The Witchking are near invincible. How did they get dicked on so easily by Aragorn and a bunch of Hobbits?

3: if Saruman had sided with the forces of good from the start it would have been a squash match. Why did he think they were doomed when even without him and his 10,000 Urukai they were able to win?

4: why did the dwarves not come to fight in the LOTR trilogy? Were they all dead? Seems if the fate of Middle Earth was at stake they should have formed some sort of army even 5000 or so to help at Helms Deep or Minas Tirith.

5: this one really bugs me. in the extended version of return of the King Gandalf is confronted by the Witch King at Minas Tirith and shits himself. The Witch King breaks his staff and is about to kill him before being distracted. Problem I have is Gandalf is meant to be the strongest character in Tolkiens universe (nearly) and almost on God status. Why on earth did they put that in the movie? Gandalf would have smashed the Witch King with ease.

Help me.

 

[XThe GreatestX]

1) i dunno. I guess the nazguls dragons might have stopped them? And the eye could have seen them?

2) i guess the fire gave him an advantage? Plus he suprised them

3) sauramans end goal was to betray sauron and take the ring for himself. theres a reason he wanted the ring brought to him when he kidnapped merry and pippen thinking they had it

4) movies didnt focus on it. I believe at this point their at war with orcs in the mountain areas of middle earth. Most had died at that point i think though right? Like most of the major kingdoms were done

5) movie bullshit. In reality gandalf probably would have beat the witch king in a real fight. Although the witch king is basically saurons right hand so i imgaine he was very powerful

 

[Literally Bricked]

I love the movies. Read the Hobbit and started reading Lord of the Rings books. Some questions for those who have read into them.

1: why didn't Frodo just fly on an eagle all the way to Mount Doom and destroy the ring in like 3 hours?

2: on Weather top Aragorn before he has developed properly is able to fight off 5 or 6 of the Ring Wraiths; one of whom is the Witch king of Angmar yet in Return of the King the Ring wraiths and particularly The Witchking are near invincible. How did they get dicked on so easily by Aragorn and a bunch of Hobbits?

3: if Saruman had sided with the forces of good from the start it would have been a squash match. Why did he think they were doomed when even without him and his 10,000 Urukai they were able to win?

4: why did the dwarves not come to fight in the LOTR trilogy? Were they all dead? Seems if the fate of Middle Earth was at stake they should have formed some sort of army even 5000 or so to help at Helms Deep or Minas Tirith.

5: this one really bugs me. in the extended version of return of the King Gandalf is confronted by the Witch King at Minas Tirith and shits himself. The Witch King breaks his staff and is about to kill him before being distracted. Problem I have is Gandalf is meant to be the strongest character in Tolkiens universe (nearly) and almost on God status. Why on earth did they put that in the movie? Gandalf would have smashed the Witch King with ease.

Help me.

1. That was originally the intention and was the reason why Gandalf was directing them to the Misty Mountains.

2. The Nazgul are weak to fire, there was the campfire in addition the fact that Aragorn had the torch.

3. See above.

4. The dwarves were already fighting against Sauron's forces and most of them actually ended up dying IIRC. If you have an expanded LoTR book at the back there are appendices which should detail this. I remember reading it but don't have source material.

5. This doesn't happen in the book so I can only expect it to be related to something Jackson wanted to have in.

 

[TheNinja]

I also think

1. The eagles didn't give a $hit about the war at first. They were like Switzerland in that they just didn't want to get involved unless eventually provoked or if they gained something from it.

2. The Wraiths were also still gaining in power. It took Sauron many many years to regain his power while he was in hiding.

3. As said, Sarumon wanted to rule middle earth with the ring

4. Mostly dead

5. No idea.

 

[Hidden_Hand]

I love the movies. Read the Hobbit and started reading Lord of the Rings books. Some questions for those who have read into them.

1: why didn't Frodo just fly on an eagle all the way to Mount Doom and destroy the ring in like 3 hours?

2: on Weather top Aragorn before he has developed properly is able to fight off 5 or 6 of the Ring Wraiths; one of whom is the Witch king of Angmar yet in Return of the King the Ring wraiths and particularly The Witchking are near invincible. How did they get dicked on so easily by Aragorn and a bunch of Hobbits?

3: if Saruman had sided with the forces of good from the start it would have been a squash match. Why did he think they were doomed when even without him and his 10,000 Urukai they were able to win?

4: why did the dwarves not come to fight in the LOTR trilogy? Were they all dead? Seems if the fate of Middle Earth was at stake they should have formed some sort of army even 5000 or so to help at Helms Deep or Minas Tirith.

5: this one really bugs me. in the extended version of return of the King Gandalf is confronted by the Witch King at Minas Tirith and shits himself. The Witch King breaks his staff and is about to kill him before being distracted. Problem I have is Gandalf is meant to be the strongest character in Tolkiens universe (nearly) and almost on God status. Why on earth did they put that in the movie? Gandalf would have smashed the Witch King with ease.

Help me.

Some good answers here from everyone.

1: I have read that at that point in time the eagles were actually neutral and wanted no side in the war so they couldn't be used against one side or another as that would make them part of what was coming.

2: Plot hole i'd say, no one is that powerful to take on the Nazgul

3: Sauron was always gonna have the upper advantage and Sarumon was turned by the power of the dark and saw an easy way to the top especially with Sauron not having a human form. Plus as said he has an agenda of his own and most likely saw himself as the king kind of like the sith.

4: I'm assuming at this point they were all but dead and useless.

5: I took it as the showing of how powerful and dark the Witch King was that Gandalfs magic was useless against him/it.

 

[Losfer Words]

Tom is more powerful than Gandalf and Sauron. WTF was Tom not in the movies?

 

[Darwinambrosius]

1. Combination of things: eagles serve the valar and Gandalf couldn't command them to help him; gwaihir didn't want to risk flying into mordor himself or sending one of his buddies on a suicide mission; stealth was better on the ground; and least likely, but possibly, because gwaihir was so powerful that you probably wouldn't want to tempt him with the ring being around him.

2. Aragorn was a bad-ass at that point and didn't really develop any more skill-wise after that, so you're a little off there. However, he basically sucker-punched them and ran.

3. He was a greedy cunt who wanted the ring. He didn't join sauron to survive but to betray him.

4. Movies didn't show the conflicts they had amongst themselves and with sauron' creatures in the mountains, so they couldn't really drop everything to go help.

5. Movie plot.

 

[HARRISON_3]

Fun fact: LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring was originally rated NC-17.

Sam and Frodo had a snowball scene that didn't make the final cut.

 

[chickenluver]

WTF was Tom not in the movies?

Nope

 

[spin]

Tom is more powerful than Gandalf and Sauron. WTF was Tom not in the movies?

I was just reading this stuff the other day:

"In many film and radio adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Bombadil is notable by his absence, possibly because nobody knows quite what to do with him. Peter Jacksonjustified his omission of Bombadil from the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by pointing out that he did little to advance the story, having nothing to do with the Ring storyline, and serving little purpose when it came to getting the hobbits to Rivendell, and putting together the Fellowship. However, much of Bombadil's dialogue, and the scene in which the hobbits meet Old Man Willow, are transplanted into the scenes that Merry and Pippin share withTreebeard in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Bombadil

 

[Loiosh]

5: this one really bugs me. in the extended version of return of the King Gandalf is confronted by the Witch King at Minas Tirith and shits himself. The Witch King breaks his staff and is about to kill him before being distracted. Problem I have is Gandalf is meant to be the strongest character in Tolkiens universe (nearly) and almost on God status. Why on earth did they put that in the movie? Gandalf would have smashed the Witch King with ease.

Help me.

Gandalf is far, far more powerful than the Witch King. The scene in the film was added for tension but made no sense.

Think of Gandalf as an angel and the Witch King as an extremely powerful human warped by the power of the rings. The nine can't actually hurt Gandalf.

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

The Eagles are not just animals

They dont just do what people want of them

 

[aus101]

I love the movies. Read the Hobbit and started reading Lord of the Rings books. Some questions for those who have read into them.

1: why didn't Frodo just fly on an eagle all the way to Mount Doom and destroy the ring in like 3 hours?

2: on Weather top Aragorn before he has developed properly is able to fight off 5 or 6 of the Ring Wraiths; one of whom is the Witch king of Angmar yet in Return of the King the Ring wraiths and particularly The Witchking are near invincible. How did they get dicked on so easily by Aragorn and a bunch of Hobbits?

3: if Saruman had sided with the forces of good from the start it would have been a squash match. Why did he think they were doomed when even without him and his 10,000 Urukai they were able to win?

4: why did the dwarves not come to fight in the LOTR trilogy? Were they all dead? Seems if the fate of Middle Earth was at stake they should have formed some sort of army even 5000 or so to help at Helms Deep or Minas Tirith.

5: this one really bugs me. in the extended version of return of the King Gandalf is confronted by the Witch King at Minas Tirith and shits himself. The Witch King breaks his staff and is about to kill him before being distracted. Problem I have is Gandalf is meant to be the strongest character in Tolkiens universe (nearly) and almost on God status. Why on earth did they put that in the movie? Gandalf would have smashed the Witch King with ease.

Help me.

1. The eagles would have been overcome by saurons forces. In the book (and at the end of the film) they only fly in once the ring has been destroyed (quite how they are within extraction distance of Sam/frodo is another issue.

2. They gain in power the closer to mordor they get and the stronger sauron becomes. At the beginning of the fellowship all the way north in the shire as 5 mere "black riders" they cannot stand against Aragon (who is one of the strongest fighters in middle earth and certainly the most heroic). They are just expecting four defenceless hobbits, when a ranger of the north (their old foe) attacks them they have to pull back and regroup (rangers are numenorian and really super humans, if Aragon had just a few of his ranger kin with him then the ringwraiths would have been screwed).

3. He only started making his Uruk-hai (and industrialising orthanc) after he had lost his will to Sauron. Even if he didn't and sought to use his 10,000 on Mordor he would have been easily crushed. The only way for the forces of good to defeat Sauron was to destroy the ring, and Saruman (not knowing much of hobbit lore) did not believe this possible.

4. They were under siege by Saurons armies. Lake town, the lonely mountain, the iron hills, all surrounded and cut off from the men of the south by the forces of darkness. Lorien and rivendell were as well, and in the book even the shire was occupied and despoiled (by a petty Saruman and wormtounge).

5. Like Aragorn getting bested by a troll this was just Jackson movie nonsense to increase dramatic tension. It was meant to symbolise the ascendence of saurons power but yeah, Gandalf the white is an order of magnitude more powerful than even an ascendant witch king (who gets killed by two of the weakest named characters in the story). In the books after casting down a balrog as Gandalf the grey Gandalf the white has no equal (other than the more powerful Sauron).

 

[spin]

2.


Here's some stuff on nazgul weaknesses:

Though the Ringwraiths were among the greatest of Sauron's servants, they also had certain weaknesses that could be used against them. One of these was daylight itself. With the exception of the Witch-King of Angmar, none of them (especially Khamûl) could operate as well under the Sun and generally feared it.

All the Ringwraiths but the Witch-King feared water, although it seems this weakness was abandoned by Tolkien in the published version because it was an idea difficult to sustain.[4]

At Weathertop, Aragorn used fire to drive the Ringwraiths away from Frodo. Even the Witch-King feared fire; though it's possible it had less of an effect on him over the other eight Nazgûl. At the Ford of Bruinen, Aragorn and the hobbits that accompanied Frodo used it to assist Glorfindel and drive the Ringwraiths into the raging water.

If an enemy was strong enough so to resist their aura of dread, then the Ringwraiths (with the exception of the Witch-King) had little real power over them individually.

Heroes of Middle-earth such as Aragorn, Gandalf, and Glorfindel could single-handedly face a Ringwraith and defeat or at least elude them, provided that they were not confronted by multiple Ringwraiths or the Witch-King. However, only a few could resist them all at the same time. But it has also been seen that legendary heroes like Glorfindel can instill fear in the hearts of the Nazgûl too.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Nazgûl

That wiki is a great resource to waste hours of you life on

 

[Loiosh]

3: if Saruman had sided with the forces of good from the start it would have been a squash match. Why did he think they were doomed when even without him and his 10,000 Urukai they were able to win?

If they hadn't destroyed the One Ring, Sauron's armies would have smashed the combined armies of Middle Earth, even against Saruman and his Uruk-hai.

 

[chickenluver]

Gandalf is far, far more powerful than the Witch King. The scene in the film was added for tension but made no sense.

Think of Gandalf as an angel and the Witch King as an extremely powerful human warped by the power of the rings. The nine can't actually hurt Gandalf.

Doesn't he question to himself if he has the power to beat the Witch King 1v1? I know after he comes back as Gandalf the White he tells Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli straight up that he's likely the most powerful being they will meet unless they come fact to face with Sauron himself, but when it looks like the confrontation with the Witch King is imminent he thinks to himself something like now's the time to find out if I can kill this thing on my own.

I know Gandalf is an angelic being but isn't his power somewhat restricted by his physical form? He was more powerful as Gandalf the White, but I doubt he grew in power, rather he came back as a more powerful physical representation of his true self.

 

[chickenluver]

If they hadn't destroyed the One Ring, Sauron's armies would have smashed the combined armies of Middle Earth, even against Saruman and his Uruk-hai.

Yeah something they don't get across very well in the movies is that the world is basically already totally fucked well before Saruman turns, and that's why the best plan is to send some Hobbits to sneak into enemy territory.

 

[Loiosh]

Doesn't he question to himself if he has the power to beat the Witch King 1v1? I know after he comes back as Gandalf the White he tells Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli straight up that he's likely the most powerful being they will meet unless they come fact to face with Sauron himself, but when it looks like the confrontation with the Witch King is imminent he thinks to himself something like now's the time to find out if I can kill this thing on my own.

I know Gandalf is an angelic being but isn't his power somewhat restricted by his physical form? He was more powerful as Gandalf the White, but I doubt he grew in power, rather he came back as a more powerful physical representation of his true self.

He did question it, but it's extremely unlikely. He's Maiar and destroyed a Balrog, another Maiar. He fought multiple ring wraiths to a draw; it was never stated exactly how many or if the Witch King was there, but he was never in any danger.

In the books the confrontation is different, and it has been discussed by many that it when the Witch King withdrew it may not have been only because of the arrival of the Rohirrim, but because he knew he was outmatched.

It's all speculation, and the only reason the power levels are even considered is because the Witch King draws power from Sauron himself.

 

[Gabicho]

Another important point regarding as to why the dwarves didn't help against Sauron. They were already busy and besieged on all sides after being reduced through centuries of warfare, to a shadow of the proud kingdoms they once were.
And it was a very similar situation with the elves. They didn't send and army to Helm's Deep. Most of them had already left and it was no longer their fight. They fought Melkor and Sauron for eras. They decided it was the time of men, or orca. Let them sort it out.

 

[chickenluver]

2. They gain in power the closer to mordor they get and the stronger sauron becomes. At the beginning of the fellowship all the way north in the shire as 5 mere "black riders" they cannot stand against Aragon (who is one of the strongest fighters in middle earth and certainly the most heroic). They are just expecting four defenceless hobbits, when a ranger of the north (their old foe) attacks them they have to pull back and regroup (rangers are numenorian and really super humans, if Aragon had just a few of his ranger kin with him then the ringwraiths would have been screwed).

Plus they thought Frodo would turn after being stabbed by them.