It's the biggest joke about the whole series; why don't the giant eagles fly Frodo and the One Ring to Mordor, cutting out much of the strife that filled the original trilogy? And while some fans will defend this oversight (that even Tolkien himself recognised was an issue) by stating the eagles aren't slaves and make their own decisions, that argument doesn't really hold water. Ignoring the holes in that argument (having free will doesn't mean the eagles would simply let all of their world succumb to evil instead of doing as Gandalf asks), the simple reason it's so hard to swallow is that the films never even try to address it. The eagles are so useful as a plot device, but presenting them without rules turns much of the trekking (which makes up a good chunk of the movies) into a bit of a middle finger. All it takes is for Gandalf to give a couple of lines of dialogue explaining their society and a decades worth of jokes would disappear. Some expect a verbal explanation in An Unexpected Journey (in the books the eagles, like most animals, can talk), but instead the giant birds' appearance only served to further complicate things. Could Jackson use his last foray into Middle Earth (until he gets the rights to the Silmarilion and turns that into a ten-part epic) to finally explain away the most dogged narrative criticism of his films? We'd really like that, although deep down we know he probably won't. What burning questions do you have about The Battle Of The Five Armies? What do you expect to happen? Get the Middle Earth discussion started down below.
