It would have taken three lines of dialog to exposit that Manwe’s Eagles were forbidden to trespass on Sauron’s realm, lest another War of Wrath break out.
Aerials were far rarer than the movies and games made them seem:
The Great Eagles were not there to be a taxi service (Bored of the Rings notwithstanding); it took a wizard, an Istari incarnate Maiar in service to the Valar, on good terms with them and asking very, very politely, if for the sake of the greater good they would do something VERY unnatural to them.
Smaug was the very last of the true “Great” dragons. After him there were lesser drakes, wyverns, etc. but nothing like a true dragon of old.
The Fell Beasts were one-offs and literally irreplaceable. We’re not given much information about them but they seem to have been used primarily as the fastest possible way for the Nine to travel.
Large flying creatures are very much Magic in Tolkien’s world and for the most part he avoided making overt utilitarian magic too common.
I admit, I a pretty sure I saved my copy of The Simarillion (hardback with a big foldout map). But, I have not read it yet. I read and re read The Hobbit countess times as a child. I haven’t read it in decades and have forgotten a lot. I have read the LOTR trilogy. I have a hardback Tolien Bestiary and a bunch of other stuff.
I am far from an expert on Middle Earth.
IIRC we are told that Sauron found them long ago and fed the meat and evil magic through the ages. I don’t think we ever find out how old they are or just what kind of animals they were originally. I have heard serious suggestions that they were originally some kind of pterosaur.
The Army officials who meet with Jones say that intercepted Nazi telegrams mentioned Abner Ravenwood. Jones goes to see Marion, and Toht arrives that same night. I don’t think he followed Jones so much as was following the same lead of finding Abner’s daughter. Even if Jones stayed home, they would have tracked her down.
The idea that “Jones didn’t do anything” never bothered me much. His mission was legitimate: Stop the bad guys from obtaining a superweapon and you don’t do that by hoping the bad guys find it and kill themselves. Jones ultimately fails in stopping them and is saved by a literal deus ex machina but the point of the movie is the adventure, not to show that Jones is smarter than the entire Nazi apparatus.
Plus he fucks up a good number of Nazis along the way which is its own reward.
If I was incorrect, and Toht followed his own lead to Marion, then the story would have likely went:
Belloq gets both sides of the medallion
He finds the right location of the Ark
It gets put on the flying wing*
Taken to Hitler, where either:
He and his staff all get melted (yay!)
or
The German military gets smited with tumors and plague until they give it back (as during the Philistines possession of the Ark) Does no one in Germany read their Bibles?
*or…the plane crashes mysteriously in a sudden desert dust storm, and neither the plane, the pilot, nor the Ark are ever seen again. The desert swallowed them all up. This is my choice. God can’t be fooled. You don’t get to kill His Chosen People and then expect the Ark is going to work for you like some machine!
Tolkien loved his eagles, and he himself noted the danger they posed of being overused as a deus ex machina device. They appear twice in The Hobbit, both times to help out in a dire situation. They appear three times in LOTR, again as devices to help in a difficult situation (rescuing Gandalf from Orthanc, retrieving him from Zirakzigil, and retrieving Frodo and Sam from Orodruin). In The Silmarillion they appear multiple times, again mostly to resolve difficult situations (recovering Fingolfin’s body, rescuing Beren and Luthien from Angband, taking Luthien to Mandos after Beren died, guarding Gondolin, helping the refugees escape Gondolin, helping rescue Fingon from Thangorodrim, etc).
I don’t believe there is any evidence from the published Letters that anyone ever asked Tolkien why the Ring couldn’t have been carried to Mordor by an eagle. I suspect he would have said that the Nazguls would have intervened, but I also suspect the “real” reason is he just never thought of the idea. Certainly there is nothing in the voluminous drafts, outlines and notes published in History of Middle-Earth that shows him ever even considering it.
I don’t buy the rationale that the eagle would have been corrupted by the Ring. Many people throughout the book were in close contact with Frodo while he carried the Ring, but only Boromir was corrupted by it. The evidence suggests that possessing the Ring for a relatively lengthy period of time is what produces the malign effects, not just being near it. Sam even carried it for several hours at least, and was able to give it back to Frodo with only a slight hesitation.
Belloq opened the Ark early to test it and get an idea of what it could do before he got it to Hitler. Presumably he would have done the same thing regardless with or without Jones’ interference before presenting it to Hitler & Co because he wouldn’t want to respond to questions with “I dunno…”
In a sense, the Ring destroyed the Ring on purpose. It was malicious enough to enforce Frodo’s doom that “If you touch me again, you will be cast into the fires yourself”, but not sentient enough to realize that that would also destroy itself.
Sauron had breeding stock for them. Only nine were ridden by the Nazgul, but there’s no information at all on how many there were total.
Isildur was corrupted almost instantly when he took it off Sauron. It took the ring like two minutes to convince Smeagol to kill his best friend, although admittedly, Smeagol was already kind of a scumbag. Gandalf, Galadriel, and Faramir all refuse to even touch the cursed thing, strongly implying that even the briefest contact with the Ring is a danger. Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam are all able to carry the Ring, and then willingly give it up (well, Frodo tries, but nobody will take him up on it), but that’s because something about Hobbits makes them resistant to the Ring’s effects.
Just leaving a note that I truly appreciate the discussion from all you LotR experts about the eagles and the possibilities (or not) of a stealth aerial delivery mission. I obviously don’t know much of the lore, but it’s still fascinating to learn both what the canon directly addresses and what it does not. Please carry on.
All that is true. But, I think there is another factor. The Ring appears to be at least somewhat sentient. When Isildur is wearing it to swim past orcs, it intentionally grows bigger to slip off his finger so that he will be seen. I’m sure that there are other instances, but I sadly cannot recall any at the moment. If the Ring knows it is a race to Mount Doom and time is short, it would try to corrupt much faster than usual.
I agree entirely on the Ring being at least semi-sentient. I think that’s why Frodo is able to offer the Ring up so freely to folks like Galadriel - the Ring wants to be wielded by someone who will use it to raise up armies and bring nations to ruin. So when Frodo tries to pass the Ring on to someone who would use it to do that sort of thing, the Ring doesn’t fight at all to make Frodo keep it, because Frodo’s most base desire is something like being a dick to Lobelia, and its hard to wreck continent-shaking mayhem from sins that petty.
I also like this idea because it kind of implies that the Ring spends most of LotR intensely frustrated. I like to imagine the Ring trying to put its whammy on Sam:
“Seize me, claim my power, and I will make you the Lord of Middle Earth, and you can bend it to your will and turn everything into… gardens? Are you fucking kidding me? All the power in the world, and the best you can give me is gardens? Fuck it, give me back to that bougie Hobbit twink, I’m not wasting my time on this garden bullshit.”
Unlike its sequels, the first Mad Max movie isn’t apocalyptic sci-fi: it’s '70s revenge exploitation, and has more in common with stuff like Death Wish and I Spit on Your Grave. The first two acts are basically about setting up the villains as such irredeemably awful people that everything that happens to them in the third act feels justified, and it does a pretty good job at that.
Am I the only one who thinks if Belloq had found something powerful/controllable in the Ark he would’ve kept it for himself and ruled the world after eliminating all the Nazis? I mean, he did have the headgear. And the secondhand apron.
