The thing with the eagles is that they're a sloppily-written deus ex machina in the books that were given an after-the-fact explanation to justify why they didn't just help the heroes from the start, negating most of their quests' hardships. The movies don't even give that explanation, so people who are unfamiliar with the books are quite justified to nitpick those scenes in both ROTK and The Hobbit. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, there's nothing in Jackson's films to show that the eagles are anything more than Gandalf's faithful animal servants who show up to do his bidding whenever he whispers a command to a passing moth.
That didn't detract from my enjoyment of the films (knowing it was coming from the books prepared me for it), but I still recognize it for what it is: Tolkien wrote himself into a corner and took a lazy way out.
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