No, I’m not going to go on an don about why the eagles weren’t employed for the quest earlier, that’s been done to death.
Also, of course “it’s fantasy, there’s magic and all that and you’re concerned about ____??” is a stupid reply to questions such as these. We’re trying to figure out how things would work within the context of the fantasy world, and in this case the general laws of physics and so forth seem consistent with the ones we are familiar with. Dropped things tend to fall, etc. That being said…
The two main head scratchers I have at the moment:
Are the Balrog’s wings merely vestigal? I mean, they ARE pretty small compared to the mass of the creature, so I would say sustained flight would probably not be a possibility, but he also does seem to try flapping the wings as he and Gandalf are falling, so maybe he sought to slow his descent? Makes me wonder if he could do “assisted hops” over short distances. Do the books address this at all?
In the preamble to Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel is telling the story of how Sauron was defeated via finger-chop, and then she says that over 2,500 years had passed in peace since that time until the time that she’s telling the story… so 2,500 years pass and swords, bows, and armor pretty much look and function the same? The greatest technological advance seems to be that Saruman found a way to make a crude bomb? Maybe I’m spoiled by the relatively rapid advancement of technology in recorded history, but wouldn’t you think that there would have been some progress over the past 2,500 years?
Never assume this in almost ANY sf/fantasy. There is no eagle capable of carrying an adult human hundreds of miles through the air and I’m pretty sure there is no way to design an eagle that could do so. Animals can’t just scale up willy-nilly to giant-size and continue to work the same :).
Balrog wings are the perpetual slap-fight of Tolkien nerds everywhere. There is nothing indicating they actually exist at all - the community is divided on whether Tolkien was making a literary allusion or speaking literally when he described the one balrog he did. Heck we don’t even know if all balrogs looked the same - we’re talking fallen angels here, not a species of nasty beast. For all we know each one looked unique.
If they flew they levitated by magic, end of story. It’s impossible to make a flying dragon work without magic as well.
No. [Eru Ilúvatar](Eru Ilúvatar) hates indoor plumbing. The work of Morgoth it is.
The treatment of Denethor bothers me the most. In the books, from my memory, he was a tragic but still very well-meaning and brave leader, who was actually strong enough, morally speaking, to resist Sauron’s temptations and entreaties. And he ordered the signal fires to be lit, unlike resisting them in the movie. Yeah, by the climax of the battle his spirit was broken, but it was after many brave and strong stands… he wasn’t an insane, doddering fool. Just a strong and brave but very sad man, who had tried his very best, but fell apart when tragedy after tragedy struck, and overreached by trying to use the Palantir to help win the war.
On balrog wings: At one point, Tolkien says something like “shadows spread around it like two great wings”, and later, he refers to the shadows as “wings”, without the “like”. This can be interpreted as the “wings” just being metaphorical for the shadows, or as meaning that the creature has literal wings, but either way, it’s clear that it can’t fly (at least, not in that form), because it falls to its death (as does at least one other balrog, in The Silmarillion).
Personally, my take is that balrogs really do literally have wings, composed of literal shadow. Keep in mind that they are not ensouled bodies, but embodied souls: That is to say, what a balrog really fundamentally is, is a spirit, which can sometimes put on a corporeal form in much the same way we’d put on a suit of clothes. I see no reason why an incorporeal spirit couldn’t have parts literally composed of shadow. But while wings of shadow might enable a spirit to fly, they’re not so good for supporting flesh and blood.
Technological progress is not inevitable. After the Roman Empire fell, we lost the knowledge of how to make concrete, for over a thousand years. The Tasmanian aborigines lost the knowledge of shipbuilding. The Japanese voluntarily gave up firearms for several centuries. The Chinese became the world’s greatest naval power with Zheng He’s “treasure fleets”, then mostly abandoned blue-water sailing.
The Third Age was not a time of progress; it was a time of decline. Making palantiri was beyond Elrond’s and Galadriel’s abilities. The Numenorean technology that built Orthanc was beyond the abilities of Denethor’s generation.
Men of the West were most in tune with the Elves and the Valar, who are more of nature and magic than technology, so they are probably less likely to go the technological development route from a philosophical perspective. Not to mention the bother of their cities constantly being sacked by Witch Kings and the like.
Men of the East and South are under the sway of Sauron. Sauron himself may well be happy to see technological progress, but only at his behest and direction.
And he might be smart enough to understand the lesson that the one “invulnerable” demon from the Buffy episode learned the hard way.
Keep in mind that one of Tolkien’s major themes was nature vs. technology, so he had to make the good guys pretty much consistently feudal-level, and leave the technological advances to the bad guys. He wasn’t trying to be anthropologically correct; he was spinning an allegory.
I stand by what I said. Technology moves. Yes, sometimes one type of technology is abandoned but other technologies are developed.
Europe didn’t have a thousand years of stagnation. It fell and then it started rising back up again. There was new technology in the eleventh century that didn’t exist in the ninth century and new technology in the thirteenth century that didn’t exist in the eleventh century. There was no point when technology just stood still. And that was as true in Asia and Africa and Australia and America as it was in Europe.
Europe also didn’t have a civilization that had been propped up by actual magic and divine influence, then suddenly disappeared. The fall of Numenor, the Ainur secluding themselves from the rest of Arda, and the Elves gradually departing for the west left a technology vacuum that the artifice of Man simply couldn’t hope to match.
Fantasy stories about civilizations lasting tens of thousands of years are not particularly uncommon.
In Tolkien, the Orcs and Goblins live in the mountains and rough places and “breed” (ie, live normal lives) for several generations (basically until they’re overpopulated) and then descend on Human lands in great numbers (migration). Sometimes they win and civilization is set back. Not all that different than the real world history of barbarians (origination anywhere from Ukraine to Mongolia) migrating in waves into Europe and burning the place down.
By some estimates, Gondor had a population of* maybe* one million. Rohan anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000. These were not great nations. They had been in slow decline and persistent combat for those thousands of years and gunpowder just wasn’t a thing on Middle Earth. No gunpowder, no guns, no cannon, no rockets and you’re stuck with bows and swords.
Except fireworks was totally a thing - not just Gandalf, which you could argue was magic, but also Dwarf-made (IIRC), and the Hobbits seemed very familiar with them.
Scratch that, I was conflating Gandalf’s fireworks with the Dale-made toys given away so I did not RC. Although the point about general Hobbit familiarity with fireworks stands.
As the Wizards were sent to Middle-Earth to give aid against Sauron, I’d have though in the 2000 years they were there they’d have read everything written about Sauron and all the rings ever created. What were they doing during this time? Also, didn’t they receive some form of briefing from the Valar before they got on the boat to Middle-Earth? (I know Sauruman was the person looking into the ring, but in 2000 years all of them should have been able to write multiple Phd thesis’ on the subject)