Is this a flaw in the Lord of the Rings story?

Ask that the writer, I personally think if that happened the story would be boring , Its about adventure and all. If they flew the story would be short and not epic anymore.

Well, they could have made it that the eagles could not fly that far, and then had an epic air battle over the mountain.

Because apart from the Nazgul, there are all sorts of things that would down the eagles. The eagles could not fly all that far without stopping every few hours. And being high up in the sky also means they’d be visible. The idea was to have a covert operation and reach Mt.Doom secretly. The same reason why nobody flew a hot-air balloon straight to Hitler’s HQ in Berlin during WWII.

They mentioned this on Family Guy:

Chris: You remember the giant eagle they rode in the first one and then rescues them at the end of the third one?
Store-owner: Yeah, yeah…
Chris: Yeah, why didn’t they just fly the eagle to Mordor instead of spending three movies walking there?
Store-owner: That’s not what it’s about, Chris. It’s about the quest.
Chris: Oh, I’m not arguing that with you, I’m just saying there’s hole in the story.

Well if it was on Family Guy than this is a big issue, I think we should have the whole story rewritten.

Gwaihir plainly states he does not like carrying heavy burdens very far. The closer you get to Mount Doom, the heavier the ring got.

The eagles are ancient, and though they were close with the elves of Gondolin, they couldn’t give two craps whether the two-legged beasts survive.

The eagles aren’t pets, they’re sentient creatures.

Oh well I know when I’m beat…

Here you go

Adding to @Seek_Kolinahr ‘s response, in the novel “The Hobbit” it introduces the eagles, when they help out Bilbo and his fellow dwarves, caught in a bad situation. I believe there was not much of a friendship between eagles and man, elves and dwarves, but Gandalf had helped their injured leader once so they returned the favor. Gandalf and the eagles explain how the eagles are wary of humans and similar beings, as they are often persecuted when the eagles try to snatch farm animals on occasion.

In LOTR, the eagles finally decide to join the battle near the end.

@filmfann: LOL Thanks for sending that link.

The giant eagles were really stupid.

though I would argue the worst thing about Lord of the Rings is its quaint 1950’s racism. (moreso the book than the movies. I thought the movies were much better than the book.)

@Seek_Kolinahr and @Siren have got it correct. The eagles weren’t caught up at all in the whole affair and didn’t care to be. They were wary of men, especially dwarves, less so elves. But in the Hobbit it’s explained that they owe Gandalf a favor. Presumably that also leads them to save Gandalf from Saruman. Then near the end of the battle, they finally join.

@noodlehead710, I think that’s a pretty weak explanation.

The eagles are so apathetic about the future of humanity that they don’t help destroy the ring at all… but then still bother saving a wizard and four hobbits?

They get “caught up in the whole affair” whenever it’s expedient for Tolkien’s plot.

@qingu It’s true my explanation didn’t go into depth. Siren did a better job of explaining why the eagles saved Gandalf, it was in return for Gandalf saving their leader in the pre-“Hobbit” years. In my opinion saving a wizard—in the eagles’ eyes that is—is not an act regarding the future of humanity, even though that is something Gandalf concerns himself with. Their act was simply gratitude for something else.
What I love about LOTR is the abundance of characters who aren’t Sauron or Gandalf, meaning neither pure evil nor unwavering good. The Ents, the eagles, Gollum, Boromir, Denathor, etc. The story becomes more interesting as we see these characters struggle with good/evil or waver between action/inaction. These is what makes a story more than pretty prose.

@noodlehead710, yeah, that’s my favorite thing about it too. The mythology, for the most part, is really complex, and “realistic” in the sense that you have these magical entities acting in their own interests.

But it’s still really Catholicy for my tastes. I mean, Sauron and Melkor are cartoonishly evil. Tolkien, despite the pagan setting, can’t get passed the whole Catholic idea of a monotheistic god (Iluvatar) and a Fall (both Melkor, the dark elves, and the Numenoreans).

And the Orcs (and, to some extent, the Southrons) are treated as cartoonishly evil, thus allowing for the “heroes” to slaughter them by the thousands with absurd counting games. In the books, Tolkien mimics the style of genocidal Biblical battles, awed descriptions of how the good guys slew “6,000.”

I mean, compare that to mythology like in the Iliad or the Hindu epics. War isn’t some victorious counting game in those works, it’s a very morally ambiguous and ultimately destructive behavior. The “bad guys” in those stories (the Trojans, the Kauravas, even the demons in the Ramayana) act honorably and have their own heroes. But you won’t find any of that moral ambiguity in much of LOTR.

Especially when it comes to racially pure “heroes” like Aragorn whose magic power comes from “pure” bloodlines versus swarms of bestial, dark-skinned monsters who can be massacred mindlessly.

Robert E. Howard > JRR Tolkien

/LOTR rant

The baddies on the other hand, seem to have no flying things other than that nazgul…

Dude, what more do you want?

The giant eagles also make an appearance in the Silmarillion (which is sort of ancient-history for Middle Earth) in whch the king of the eagles is involved in the rescue of Maedhros from Mount Thangorodrim. In the Silmarillion it’s made clear that the eagles are the servants of Manwe – one of the Valar, and basically a god of the sky. The Valar had no stake in the war of the ring, and so would not have gotten the eagles involved except in minor ways.

Ugh. Am I really answering this one again? So a couple smug teenagers make a YouTube video about it, then Family Guy raps on it for a bit, now suddenly everyone with a fly up their nose about LoTR’s popularity is coming out of the woodworks.

1. It is explicitly stated that Sauron does have control of flying beasts besides the Nazgul, and uses them as spies.

2. The eagles don’t really take sides, by their nature.

3. The whole gamble of trying to destroy the ring hinged on the fact that Sauron was so blind with power and malice that he simply couldn’t imagine that anyone would try to destroy the ring, and thus he never accounted for this possible strategy. The quest would fail utterly, to the ruin of all, if he even suspected what the true plan was. Taking the ring (which Sauron is extremely good at perceiving) into the sky, over hundreds of miles, trying to avoid magic eyes, all sorts of animal/human spies, and nine of the most bad-ass and fast flying creatures in existence (who just happen to be ridden by nine of the most deadly-bad-ass, ringsniffers, that ever walked Middle Earth) on something as conspicuous as a gigantic eagle, is probably not the best course of action if secrecy is your goal.

4. Even if they made it to Mt. Doom, Frodo probably still would have failed to drop it in, so the Eagles might have just had to drop him in, which seems a little sad for an epic tale.

Anyway. Come on guys! There’s got to be a better plot hole than this complete, non-issue. Be creative!