I consider it my personal quest to not only empower you with the knowledge you're gonna need to have a fulfilling life,
but also a fulfilling...
Love life! With that in mind,
welcome to the first ever installment of MatPat's guide to finding the One - Lord of the Ring Edition
Hey girl, was your face forged by Sauron because you're precioussssss
What, don't respect Oscar-winning CGI technology, that's fine, fine, whatever.
You must be Frodo Baggins because I'm the one and you've got me wrapped around your finger
Even more accurate because you just disappeared
Whoa-oh
Hey there, you shall not pass - without giving me those digits, I mean.
And she jumped off the bridge. Maybe... maybe I should just stick to theories
[Film Theory Intro]
Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory!
Where today we're donning our mining hats and delving too greedily and too deep into the theory mines.
In order to unearth the answer to the biggest question of the Lord of the Rings
- no, not why the Hobbit movies were so bad, not even I have the answers to everything.
No, today I am delivering the definitive answer to the Internet's favorite Lord of the Rings theory -
"Why didn't Frodo not just ride the Eagles to Mount Doom and drop the Ring in?"
We all know they exist, we know they can pretty much go anywhere,
we know they're friendly to the ringbearer's side, so why the heck did team Ring just ride up to Mordor?
Elrond: "Morrrdorrr"
*Elrond saying Mordor like a boss*
Sorry, Morrrrdorrrrrr - in the first place.
Honestly, it's like the movie is begging us to ask this question.
85 minutes and 48 seconds into the very first movie - if you're watching the extended edition -
Which, is there any other way to watch these movies?
We see Gandalf GTF out of Isengard on the back of a giant Eagle after sending them off to go get it for him.
Like some sort of high fantasy Uber.
Why else introduce the perfect solution to every problem so early?
Just hit up your Moth app call an Eagle and we got this whole trilogy wrapped up in a cool 45
Well, according to one of the most famous and most popular fan theories of all time
This wasn't a plot hole at all. The plan was to use the Eagles to fly to Mordor all along.
It's a great theory, really, and if Film Theory existed back in 2001, I'd be all over this one like a horde of orcs on...
this other ork that they just decided to randomly cannibalize.
Coined the "fly you fools" theory was made popular by an infographic from the website tickld,
which miraculously isn't a porn site, go figure
The image spread quickly and the full theory was proposed by reddit user VulcanDeathGrip
which, you know, clap and a half right out of the gate for the amazing user name.
To sum it up, here's the theory.
Our hero wizard Gandalf is imprisoned by the evil wizard Saruman for failing to join his evil master plan.
Gandalf orders up a giant Eagle lift on his smart moth and boom, giant Eagle arrives and zooms Gandalf away
But instead of heading straight to Rivendell to meet Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship,
the theory says that Gandalf instead flies to the Eagles Eyrie,
which is a real canonical thing established in Middle-earth to talk with the king of the Eagles.
The Eyrie is actually pretty close to Rivendell, but it's on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains.
A detail that's important because when Gandalf is escaping on the Eagle, we actually see him veer east over the mountains
So, the directions with this theory actually match up.
Once there, Gandalf, according to the theory, hatches a plan to use the Eagles to fly the Ring to Mordor,
something we never see or hear any word of in the books or movies.
Gandalf and the Eagles decide to keep this plan a secret because they need to retain the element of surprise,
even retaining that surprise from all the readers and viewers apparently...
So now the question becomes where to meet up with the Eagles for maximum secrecy.
Gandalf decides they should meet up in the South because canonically,
all the other areas are overrun with either orcs or agents of Sauron.
And they have to meet on this side of the Misty Mountains because again, according to the theory,
the weather in the mountains is too dangerous for the Eagles to fly over.
That might seem like a bit of a stretch,
but the story does happen in winter and the mountains in the Lord of the Rings were modeled after
the European Alps, where it's literally like minus 46 degrees in winter,
so it's plausible to say the least.
The only other option for the trip would have been to avoid the Misty Mountains entirely
and go all the way south to the gap of Rohan.
But, as literally everyone tells Boromir every time he brings it up,
this is right next to Isengard aka Saruman's base of operations,
meaning all the Eagles would get spotted immediately and the plan is busted.
So, left with no other options, they decide to got to travel on foot to the other side of the mountains, meet the Eagles
and then finally fly to Mordor in the south
Unfortunately, the group can't make it over the mountains due to, you know, that aforementioned nasty weather,
and the Fellowship decides to go for
Boromir: "Make for the Gap of Rohan"
No, shut up, Boromir, stop suggesting it!
They go through "the mines of Moria"
Where Pippin literally gets Gandalf killed because he is the worst,
but right before Gandalf falls he utters these three fateful words
Gandalf: "Fly, you fools"
According to the theory, this was Gandalf telling the Fellowship what they were supposed to do - fly using the Eagles
But, go figure, team Ring is too thick to get it.
Honestly though, who can blame them?
Instead of using two of his last three remaining words to insult his team Gandalf could have made things a bit more explicit
Like, instead of "fly, you fools" he could have said "fly to Mordor", "fly using Eagles",
even something as simple as "fly like an ea..."
I'm sure everyone could have figured out the rest. *SPOILER: Fly Like an Eagle by Steve Miller*
So anyway, that's the theory and honestly I think it's a really cool theory.
The problem is: it's just wrong.
You take it from me, I know a thing or two about wrong theories.
That's right, for once in my life I'm giving myself an early Christmas present
and I get to poke holes into someone else's theory!
Wow, how cathartic to turn the tables for a change!
Today I'm gonna shoot down the Eagle Theory, pun definitely intended,
because it is literally the worst strategy for the Fellowship ever!
I mean honestly, it's almost worse than just straight-up giving the Ring to Sauron.
In doing this theory, I didn't just rely on old reddit posts from 2012, oh no.
I went digging.
I busted out the Lord of the Rings books, I got the Silmarillion, I pored over the letters Tolkien wrote to pretty much everybody.
I picked up the Unfinished Tales, the collection of books that are compiled by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R.'s editor, map creator and publisher.
Books filled with partial stories and scraps of lore.
I spent days poring over tens of thousands of pages and not e-book pages mind you,
literal physical actual paper pages because Christopher Tolkien is some sort of technophobe
that won't allow the more obscure nerdy titles to be published in an electronic format.
So out the window with my CTRL+F function and in the window with my analog CTRL+F function
which is just an index and let me just say it those things sucked
One more disclaimer here, because I know that some people don't consider the Unfinished Tales and letters
to be canon, because it's that kind of fanbase,
so I only went with those sources insofar as they didn't contradict anything in the actual books.
If there was ever a disagreement, I always defaulted to the information that was actually published.
And what did I learn from doing all that? Well...
That the lore of Middle-earth is really long and sometimes really dry
And kinda glosses over some big things.
Like the destruction of an entire continent that gets explained away in a whopping one paragraph
So, the first thing to know is that in Tolkien's lore most of the stuff in Middle-earth was created by three gods
Monwë, Yavanna, and Aulë. Yes, Middle-earth has gods, gods that, let's be honest,
were probably a bit pissed that in three Hobbit movies scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel
for any content to fill their excessive runtimes, they still didn't make the cut. Anyway,
*Dramatic deep intro voice* In the beginning
Yavanna created all the plants, trees, forests and animals.
Aulë comes in and makes the Dwarves.
Yavana, worried that the Dwarves would literally just mow down the forests to make stuff,
creates the ents to protect the trees.
Monwë, feeling a bit left out, sees the stuff the other two are creating and goes:
MatPat as Monwë: "Ah sweet, would you help me make some Eagles? Like, big ones! Big Eagles!"
And boom! Yavanna and Monwë made the Eagles and thus the Eagles came into existence
*More serene intro voice* The end
Now, why would you care about any of this stuff?
Well, it shows us that the Eagles go super far back in the history of this world
And, in general, the older stuff is in Middle-earth, the more powerful it is.
Except for the Dwarves. Sorry, Gimli.
But that means, in the hierarchy of Middle-earth, Eagles rank way up there.
The gods, or Valar as they're called, are at the top.
Directly below them are the demigods, or Maiar. This tier has some familiar faces
Sauron, Saruman, and Gandalf.
And the Eagles are just slightly below them. In fact, Tolkien himself was a bit wishy-washy on this point,
saying that, hey the Eagles are pretty much unofficially Maiar,
but anyway, suffice it to say they rank above all the other races
So, why does any of this matter?
Well canonically, and this is a point that the movies don't really do a good job of explaining,
the Ring of Power works proportionally to the power of the holder.
You ever wonder why a hobbit was really the safest choice to be ring bearer?
Or why this all-powerful ring that everyone is so scared of only manages to turn people invisible?
It's because Hobbits are a really low power race in this world and because of that
the Ring of Power is the least dangerous in their hands. The One Ring can only really use what's the in the wearer.
Which isn't that much when it's being carried by a Hobbit. Now, contrast that to the giant Eagles who are
practically demigods and who, according to Tolkien himself, have a wingspan of 30 fathoms. *wow!*
Putting them at half the size of a football field *wow, again*
And they're not just big. During the War of Wrath, which was a huge war before the Lord of the Rings series happened,
they were able to kill the dragon that was so enormous that when he crash-landed he collapsed three giant active volcanoes.
These Eagles are massive, powerful, and they're immortals who are more powerful than all the other races on Middle-earth
Oh, yeah, and they can also canonically see through walls. The Eagles are more than just mere birds.
They are no joke and they definitely don't need their power amped up by the One Ring.
If you give the Eagles an opportunity to carry the One Ring you're looking at potentially
the most powerful Dark Lords in the entire series.
If they can manage to fit the ring on their talons that is.
If you think about it, this is the same reason why the Ring has to stay out of everyone else's hands.
This is why Gandalf never directly touches the Ring and tries to keep it out of his sight as much as possible.
Even telling Frodo that through him it would
Gandalf: "wield a power too Great and terrible to imagine"
Because Gandalf is a Mayar demigod.
The classic Galadriel freakout scene is her basically predicting her own power amped up on the Ring,
which is again why so many people are required to protect the darn thing.
MatPat: "Hey, hey, Boromir, my eyes are up here. Hey!"
Also notice when the Eagles do come into play: to rescue Sam and Frodo from Mount Doom as it collapses
When the Ring of Power is no longer around.
As soon as it's destroyed and out of the running, then it's safe to bring the Eagles in, because they're no longer gonna be tempted
No one's at risk and that's exactly when Gandalf calls for their help again
But there's more to this plan being stupid than just raw power
Sauron literally doesn't comprehend the possibility that anyone with the Ring would want to destroy it.
And he doesn't discover this plan until mere moments before the Ring is tossed into the heat of Mount Doom.
He can't defend himself if he doesn't know what he's defending against.
That's why it's imperative that the Fellowship remain a secret from everyone.
And the Eagles? Remember, they're the size of Boeing 747s up there
Trying to conduct a stealth mission with a giant Eagle to drop the ring into the pits of Mount Doom would be
like trying to sneak into a Jamba Juice with a fighter jet.
Or, you know what, maybe we should just believe Tolkien himself.
In a letter from June 1958 where he criticizes an unofficial Lord of the Rings film treatmen sent to him
going so far as to say it's murdered his story.
Yeah, that's harsh feedback. Tolkien directly comments on the script's overuse of the Eagles.
Quote: "The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I've used them sparingly and that is the absolute limit of their credibility"
End quote. Using the Eagles to solve all your problems just doesn't make for a good story
And that's ultimately what we as an audience are here for.
And Tolkien, being the incredible writer that he is, knew just that.
But hey! That's just a theory! A Film Theory!
Aaaaaaaand
cut!
Man, finding loopholes in theories is fun and cathartic. Maybe I should just chang this channel to be The Theory Buster