Why didn’t Frodo use the Eagles to travel to Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings”? Appearing on Youtube in 2021, a strange “interview” with Tolkien answered this big question from fans in a… surprising way.
Why didn’t Frodo and his fellow travelers simply ask the Eagles to take them to Mount Doom to drop the One Ring there?
This big question, which many Lord of the Rings fans have been asking themselves for many years, has given rise to fiery debates on the Net, to dozens of theories, and even a few jokes.
Thus, in April 2021, appeared on the Youtube channel of a man named Asher Puls a most disconcerting video (viewed more than 2.5 million times). Lasting 50 seconds, you could hear what sounded like a recording of Tolkien’s voice, answering his admirers on the famous question of the Eagles:
“I have a letter here written by someone who is very fond of The Lord of the Rings, and in his letter he asks me why the characters didn’t just fly with the Eagles to Mordor. People have come to me see the pub to ask me the same question: why didn’t they just fly like an eagle to Mordor? (…) I answered him the same thing as what I tell you now: shut up!
This short excerpt, supposedly taken from an interview with Tolkien, immediately sowed doubt in many fans. While some were amused by the professor’s spontaneity, others, more suspicious, suggested a montage, or even an imitation created from scratch.
Difficult indeed to imagine Tolkien expressing himself in this way, or to conceive that the extract was not made public before. The mystery however remained whole for a lot of people, until last April, a year after the posting of the first video, Asher Puls put an end to his own joke, just to dispel the last misunderstandings.
Explaining that in the comments, many Internet users remained convinced that the recording was authentic, he thus affirmed that it was a simple imitation, modifying his voice to mimic that of Tolkien. This second video, however, has only been viewed 7,500 times.
Tolkien’s only known comment about the Eagles dates back to a letter written in 1958, in which he recalled that he had disciplined himself not to abuse this screenplay too much:
“The Eagles are a dangerous ‘machine’. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness.”
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