[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

But obviously the eagles (the real heroes) were a vital plot hole, because it's been brought up several times by a majority of posters on this site

Several times by a majority of posters? Really? Aren't there like 10,000 members on CP? I think it's been brought up a couple of times, at which point someone has pointed out why that "easy solution" would have been extremely risky and probably failed, which is not ideal when the fate of the world is on the line. As far as the Hobbit goes, it's a kids' story, and you might as well ask why Gandalf doesn't just single-handedly slaughter all of the Orcs given that he's basically a demigod.

Which brings up the elephant in the room in terms of making this story a movie - the perhaps less than satisfying explanation as to why the deus ex machina is as it is in the Hobbit is that you never really get the sense that Gandalf is taking the quest all that seriously. When #### gets real, he steps it up and bails everyone out so they don't die (i.e. calling in the eagles), but in general it's all "this one's up to you guys, I'll lend a hand but you have to do the heavy lifting for yourselves". This is something that has to be gotten used to because the middle earth world is one in which the gods and demi-gods are literally present. They don't necessarily intervene and when they do they only do so to a point. The difference between the Gandalfs and Galadriels of the world and your Boromirs and Frodos and Bilbos is not necessarily well translated on film.

if the eye can't see Frodo, why would it see the birds and furthermore, if the eye doesn't assume the birds are working against it, why would it know they have the ring but whatever

The eye can see Frodo. It just doesn't pay attention because Frodo's just a little duder wandering across the world, and there are major war-theatre events going on with real players, some of whom have been enemies of Sauron for several thousand years and in his view are probably the ones he's going to have to contend with. He sneaks by. If you send fifty giant flying eagles, led by their king, straight into Mordor, yeah, no ####, someone's going to notice. Those are the kinds of moves Sauron is expecting - big time players matching their strength against his. It doesn't necessarily come through all that clearly in ROTK, but the whole point of Aragorn et. al. going to the black gate in the end is that they know they'll probably all die, but it will make Sauron think that Aragorn has the ring (following in Isildur's footsteps), and will shift his focus there, because that's how Sauron is. It works, because earlier Aragorn had touched the Palantir from Isengard (the big marble looking dealy - again this did not happen in the movies) which led Sauron to be aware of him and assume that he'd have the ring. It's a weakness that the good guys exploit.

And yes, saying that the fact that it does not come across clearly in the movie is a valid criticism. But it's a complicated story, and you only have so much running time, so he was bound to trip over a few things. I think there are worse issues but then I wanted the movies made for me, i.e. a fan who knows this #### inside and out.

and Jackson does himself no favours by fortifying the viewers confusion by subsequently having a little bird fly to the mountain at the end.

Yeah, that's fair.

Finally, the argument that there is only so much time to tell a story, that's BS too because a) somehow other movies explain stories and b) why waste so much useless screen time on random unexplained scenes when you have a story to tell.

b) is fine, but a), come on, different stories are different stories... middle earth is an incredibly complex world with histories between the on-screen characters that stretch back millenia. So when you complain that stuff gets confusing because X had a feud with Y over a jewel 2000 years ago, well okay, but it's pretty tough to explain all of that stuff in a fulsome way and you end up spending half the movie explaining the movie, which no one wants and which is already a problem.

AR, I tend to generally agree with you on the riddles in the dark scene, I agree the acting was great. My only complaint was like I said, it dragged on and on and on and on.

Meh, didn't feel long to me, probably because more of a good thing doesn't hurt in my books. I liked the extended LOTR editions much better than the theatre releases (though it still didn't fix Two Towers).