I’ll take Tom Bombadil and his annoying songs (I don’t mind the other poetry) for $100, Alex.
This is right on the money. Tolkien scholars (I am also not one) have all read the History of Middle Earth, which includes some of the early drafts of Lord of the Rings. Tolkien did start out to write a sequel to The Hobbit, and many paragraphs in the first part of the finished work are directly from that earlier, much more twee vision. The tale, as they say, grew in the telling.
My own choice is not so much a plot point–I think the irredeemably evil Orcs, that can be slaughtered without qualm, are a weak point. Maybe not so much in *LOTR *itself, but the countless knock-offs generally bring along the evil minions. One of the real horrors of war, I believe, is that the people you are killing don’t deserve it. This is brought out regarding Men, such as the Southron that Sam sees shot down in Ithilien, but the Orcs are always fair game.
No, ditto, they’re awful. I skip over them while reading.
Also agreed on the endless detail given regarding the terrain and foliage. Had I not already seen the movies and known that there was good stuff coming, I wonder whether I would have gotten through the first book at all.
Weren’t the “great” eagles angelic spirits of some sort, not just birds? Maybe it was dangerous for them to be in proximity with the ring over a long journey (Gwahir: “One nest to rule them all! Squawk!”), vs the hop-skip & jump they took Bilbo on (with Ring) in The Hobbit. ?
So the Palandiri were lost for ages. Thousands of years passed, with people searching for some of the most powerful items ever created by one of the most powerful elves who ever lived. In the stories, second in power only to the Rings. Saruman finally unearths one and uses it to communicate directly with Sauron and to peruse the happenings across the land… until Grima Wormtongue needs a sufficiently large and weighty object to use as a crude missile weapon. In a castle filled with orcs and weapons, he couldn’t find a single spear, statue or chair? He had to throw a palantir?
The weakest point for me is that Saruman didn’t turn Grima into a greasy pile of ash.
Why didn’t they just enlist the aid of the eagles and fly Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom directly? You know: save time and all that?
sqeegee appears to have seen my question before I posted it.
Why wonder? The Eagles themselves said it best:
*“Sometimes to keep it together, we got to leave it alone”
So you can get on with your search, baby,
And I can get on with mine
And maybe someday we will find
That it wasn’t really wasted time *
Hi, Svin, nice to see you around.
It’s a new board feature, forward temporal tunneling (see new VB codes help faq). do try to keep up. 
Seriously, the “why didn’t the Fellowship take Air Eagle to Mordor” is an old debate, on the order of “do Balrogs have wings?” in the LOTR-nerd community. I’d just never heard if the nature of the eagles themselves were part of the problem.
Yeah, Tolkien’s letters make that clear. JRR doesn’t give a hint of that in the trilogy though which (to me) is a huge flaw in an otherwise excellent work.
Don’t buy it–Bill The Pony carried Frodo with no problem, whatshisname carried Frodo with no problem from Weathertop to Rivendale with no prob. Carrying the ringbearer doesn’t affect you.
Besides, they could have hopped, skipped and jumped to to Mordor. A bunch of 4 hour flights would cover a ton more ground than a bunch of 8 hour hikes.
Just to echo and give my own two cents on the whole Deus Ex Tolkien, the whole universe depends on it. In a world where men, elves and dwarves are successful in battle in direct proportion to their lineage or importance to the story, of course some things are going to feel contrived.
But, I think that where in a weaker story it might feel like shoddy story-telling, here it is clear that prophecy and fate are all coming true, according to the rules of the universe set forth by Ilúvatar. Gandalf is brought back because he has specific parts to play, not just because he deserves a second chance. The Witch King is killed by a hobbit and a woman because that is what was foretold, and so Eowyn and Merry survived and were brought together just for that purpose. Aragorn and Arwen must end up together because the story of Beren and Luthien, which Aragorn tells, is the story of Aragorn and Arwen, and the end has already happened.
Oh, but I must add that I always found Sam and Frodo’s final slog through Mordor a bit ridiculous. Put on a helmet and no one will know you’re a hobbit!
I believe we’ve seen that animals without intelligence aren’t affected by the Ring, and Glorfindel was doing the equivalent of rushing Frodo to the hospital, not going on a journey. Couple that urgency with his own mental strength, and it’s not surprising that he didn’t do anything. Flying to Mordor might be a different story, even for beings as powerful as the Eagles.
Not to mention slow. And boring. Dull… did I mention dull? But then there’s the slow, dull* and *boring parts.
The songs are unnecessary, lame and with no knowledge of the tune you aren’t even able to sing them. The 50 pages of Tom Bombadill were a waste of paper and my time.
I have to disagree. I like the fact that Gandalf has difficulty recognizing the Three Hunters. It supports the view that his resurrection was neither effortless nor causal (from his point of view; I rather suspect Eru opened one giant eye, said “Yeah, Olorin’s alive again,” and then went back to sleep). His death was genuine and genuinely traumatic; his resurrection was not a walk in the park.
Uh, they did do that. Then they figured out orcs aren’t exactly free to roam around as they pleased either.
I took Eonwe’s remark as ironic, expressing his doubt that a helmet would be an adequate disguise.
Much as I love LOTR, I must admit it’s not perfect.
The Eagles’ possible airlift of the Ringbearer into Mordor is a perennial matter of debate, of course. I’m not a fan of Tom Bombadil; Tolkien had created the character separately for his kids and conceded in later letters, IIRC, that he was a little surprised that Bombadil “insisted” on being in LOTR. I’m skeptical that Saruman would go looking for Isildur’s remains out in the open, many hundreds of years after the king died. I also doubt Aragorn’s royal line would last so long in exile, or that the Stewards wouldn’t have become kings themselves after awhile. As was noted upthread, the irredeemably evil nature of orcs is troubling (and JRRT was aware of it). I don’t hate all the poetry and songs, but sometimes I skim it rather than reading it word for word. Minas Tirith and Mordor are much too close to be locked in a centuries-long struggle without one or the other falling forever, and Gondor and Rohan would sooner or later have become rivals, if human history is any guide. And there’s not enough detail on the War of the Ring up near Mirkwood, Dale and Mt. Erebor. Plus, what were the Blue Wizards up to? And the corsairs of Umbar?
Well, yes, I’m greedy.
But the characters do spend a lot of time on long, dull lsog-types journeys, and I think that one of the great strengths of LOTR is how well it manages to convey, and let us readers vicariously experience, the length and arduousness of the journeys without actually boring us.
Tolkien definitely could have streamlined LOTR (as many of his imitators have done), but not without leaving out or wrecking something that some of its fans really love.