10. Why Can't Gandalf Just Ask The Eagles To Fly Frodo TO Mordor As Well As Back?
Okay, I'm well aware that there are those who will see fit to tell me the exact reason why Gandalf couldn't ask such an entirely justifiable favor from his big-winged buddies but nonetheless, it's a problem I have with the trilogy. We spend approximately a total of nine hours accompanying Frodo on his quest to the heart of Mt Doom, yet in the time it takes for the last scenes of Mordor to fade to black, hey presto, everyone's tucked up comfortably in Rivendell. How convenient. I know that 'one cannot simply' (see what I did there) stray from the source material, but lets be honest... if the eagles had been a little bit less selfish, it would have saved everybody - the audience, Elijah Wood, Tolkien himself - a hell of a lot of time. Clearly Jackson had a problem with this lack of a return journey and felt the need to extend the ending in to what has become one of the most mocked half hours of modern cinema history. Unfortunately it does very little to numb the sense of having the urine extracted right before our eyes. A crying shame, as it is otherwise a flawless trilogy.