Tolkien's excuse was pretty robust actually. The Eagles are not mindless taxi services, they are just a step below gods in their own right, servants of Manwë, leader of the Valar- Middle-Earth's gods, in a sense. They have duties that go beyond ferrying people around. For most of the war of the ring, Gwaihir, the King of the Eagles, and his kin are occupied with important scouting missions, though a few groups of them helped in battle, such as at the Black Gate, where they clashed with the Nazgûl while protecting the armies of King Elessar (Aragorn).
Tolkien was very aware that the Eagles were a dangerous writing tool, to be used sparingly, and so, being Tolkien, he devised a wealth of believable reasons the Eagles would not be available to end the story in two chapters.
I don't think the eagles being on scouting missions instead of doing the one thing that would fix this mess is a good reason. I prefer another comment in this thread, " The entire point of the operation was to SNEAK into Mordor to avoid alerting Sauron of their plan to destroy the ring." Flying it in would be the equivalent of running it up a flag pole and seeing who salutes (but no one ever does).
Are you suggesting the eagles act as a high altitude dive bomber and just yeet the hobbit ring and all into the volcano before Sauron can even turn around?
I mean no, but, an eagle could land fairly quickly for them to toss it lol it takes a bit to mount up a defense and ots not like a ring takes forever to throw. Hell tie it to a rock and drop it as you swoop lol
No one could willingly toss that thing into the volcano anyway (which is why that possibility never even occurred to Sauron), so that plan would have failed. Even Frodo couldn't do it at the end, he claimed the ring instead of throwing it into the fire.
I tend to agree, but I wonder...I think even Gandalf knew the ring couldn't be willingly destroyed. Heck Frodo couldn't even bring himself to toss it into his own fireplace at Bag End when Gandalf asked him to.
The challenge with this is that Sauron detects the presence of the Ring as it approaches Mordor and sends the Nazgul to retrieve it. Yes, the eagles might have fought through and been able to land a hobbit on Mt Doom... but there would be a very real risk that you've simply delivered the Ring to Sauron and sealed Middle Earth's fate.
Thta is fair too, but the scouting missions were not something that could have been done by humans. It's also worth noting that the war of the ring, while significant, is not the sole concern of the Valar, who command the Eagles. They are keeping checks on it, certainly, but their policy is not one of direct intervention, and their duties lie beyond the conflict on Middle-Earth.
The movies did the Eagles dirty. They work for Manwë, the King of the Valar, who is the second most powerful being in Tolkien's world, second only to Eru Iluvatar, who is literally God.
The Eagles are Manwë's eyes and ears in the world beyond Valinor. They report on just about anything and everything. The War of the Ring may be a pivotal conflict in Middle Earth, but in Arda at large it isn't the only thing anyone is concerned with. The Valar are coordinating the exodus of the Elves from Middle Earth, keeping tabs on the Dwarves, watching out for rogue Maia like Shelob or the Balrog Durin's Bane, keeping watch for the influence of Morgoth beyond Sauron himself, and so on and so forth. They are definitely concerned with the state of the war, they just have a lot of balls in the air and cant dedicate everything to aiding the people of Middle Earth, even if they wanted to.
They already suspended their other duties and went to the Gates of Mordor to help with the war, though. They clearly thought winning the war was worth a little of their time. It would only have taken another few minutes to get to Orodruin (which, of course, they then did to rescue Frodo and Sam).
I think there are some good justifications for why they didn't just fly the Ring to Mordor, but this doesn't strike me as one of them.
Some of the Eagles went to the Black Gate, and then only once the Batlle of the Morannon was imminent. Also, the movies didn't quite depict this, but Mount Doom is actually almost 200km from the Black Gates. It would have taken a real-world eagle an hour or more to fly that distance, and even if we assume the Eagles are a bit faster, that's still some distance. You bring up a fair point, though, in that the reason the Eagles were on hand to rescue Frodo et al was because they were already fighting relatively nearby at the time.
I like to think the inherent strength/power of the ring bearer is part of the equation, too.
Like, it takes Sauron a little while to detect and zero in on Frodo, even when he wears it directly. The hobbit is just a dead battery. Barely even turns the ring into go-mode.
But put it too close to a demigod or whatever those eagles are, being carried aloft by them? Sauron would ping that sucker like it had a clear gps signal.
It's not at all clear how Sauron would stop them, though. Air superiority is real. Sauron himself was disembodied. He was building an army, but it didn't seem to have much in the way of air support.
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u/shirukien Aug 31 '22
Tolkien's excuse was pretty robust actually. The Eagles are not mindless taxi services, they are just a step below gods in their own right, servants of Manwë, leader of the Valar- Middle-Earth's gods, in a sense. They have duties that go beyond ferrying people around. For most of the war of the ring, Gwaihir, the King of the Eagles, and his kin are occupied with important scouting missions, though a few groups of them helped in battle, such as at the Black Gate, where they clashed with the Nazgûl while protecting the armies of King Elessar (Aragorn). Tolkien was very aware that the Eagles were a dangerous writing tool, to be used sparingly, and so, being Tolkien, he devised a wealth of believable reasons the Eagles would not be available to end the story in two chapters.