8 Beloved Movie Heroes You Didn't Realise Were Terrible At Their Jobs

8. Gandalf Takes The Fellowship To A Place He Knows Is Incredibly Dangerous (And Makes Horrendous Mistakes Along The Way)

GandalfThe Movies:The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Gandalf the Grey is the wise old wizard who, imbued with thousands of years of knowledge and experience with adventures of the craziest kind, leads the Fellowship of the Ring on their quest to Mount Doom, so young Frodo Baggins can destroy the One Ring and peace can be restored to Middle-Earth. In theory, Gandalf is the perfect guide: he knows the world of the movies like the back of his hand and he's incredibly powerful, which makes him the natural choice for the job. Emphasis on "in theory," though, because it turns out he's not all that great. Our favourite wizard makes a ton of erroneous mistakes along the way, in fact, all of which seem incredibly ill-judged when you look back upon them in retrospect - so much so, in fact, that one might be forgiven for thinking that he's been smoking a bit too much of the Old Toby (fictional Tolkien-based marijuana substitute). Firstly, he leads them into a the Mines of Moria, even though he knows there's trouble there: otherwise why wouldn't he have agreed to use that route? For all anybody else knows, it just contains a large amount of hospitable dwarves. Okay, so firm in the knowledge that there is evil lurking inside the mines, he still lets Frodo make the decision to go into them. What was Gandalf thinking? If he knew there were orcs and a freakin' Balrog, even, he should have said: "Sorry Gimli, but all your relatives have been murdered. We must find another route." It gets worse: whilst in the mines, he stops to read a book containing information that he must've already known (because he feared the mines), which indirectly leads to Pippin knocking something into a well and the Balrog waking up. Sigh.
 
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