• Ask Old-Wizard: Lord of The Rings Edition

  

  Written by Zeromage 7 Comments
  Last Updated:: July 30, 2008

  

  This week we answer some of our readers’ Lord of the Rings related questions:

  James asks, Why didn’t the great eagles simply drop the ring into Mount Doom?

  You obviously never read the books. The ring was ultimately corrupting and only had one goal, to return to its master. Even Frodo succumbed to its whims in the end and he was a hobbit. By that very reason the eagles, though intelligent, would probably been corrupted quickly and would have simply returned the ring to its master and Middle Earth would have been destroyed. Remember the ring had only one master.

  Dave asks, Why is it called Lord of the Rings when there is only one ring in question?

  May I remind the readers when asking a question that its usually better to go to the source rather than a random website. In this case and the previous one, the question itself shows that you have not read the books (something Zeromage and I have done a number of times) nor have you seen the movies (another thing ZM and I have done a number of times). Which means you were probably just jumping on the nerd band wagon when the movies came out, saw them once, and declared yourself a huge fan. Well sir, I take issue with that, and issue with this absurd question. Having been a life long LOTR fan I can quote whole passages of the book and that is something I am very proud of. It should be noted I could do this long long before the movies came out. As described to Frodo by Gandalf:

  Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
  Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
  Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
  One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
  In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
  One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
  One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
  In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

  Sauron made the one ring to control the powers of all the other rings and bind the wearers to him. So there were in fact 20 rings by my count.

  Kevin asks, Would you like to touch my bilbo?

  Only if you are a pretty girl.

  Tim asks, What’s the difference between a hobbit and a dwarf?

  They are two different (fictional) species in the LOTR series. That’s the difference jackass.

  Alex asks, If the enemy had captured Bilbo instead of Gollum, and tortured him to try to find out where the Ring was, what would have happened?

  This is the kind of thinking I hate about most nerds. Its the same kind of thinking that ruined Star Wars, you can read about that in my other posts. Yes Star Wars is ruined. What’s worse is that these questions have no answer. The author is dead, this is not what happened, and speculation is impossible. I could say the ringwraiths would have found Frodo faster, killed him, and destroyed Middle Earth thus making the books short and pointless. Is that the answer you want? This is such a stupid question that it incenses me you would even ask it. The answer is that the books would have been completely different. How? Well that would have been up to Tolkien, no? Its like asking what if the color blue was red? I don’t know how could it be and what would that change. You sir are an idiot and I dislike you.

7 Comments

1. #1 Osama says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

   When were these questions asked? Is it too late to ask another?
2. #2 old-wizard.com says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:57 pm

   These questions are between 1 day to 10 months old. We get so many questions every week that we’re forced to only answer a handful every week, leaving us with a little bit of a backlog. Feel free to send more and we’ll include it in next week’s edition if possible.

   Send questions to:

   oldwizard.com@gmail.com
3. #3 gnome says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

   Hey, has Tim the Enchanter always been a part of the banner?
4. #4 old-wizard.com says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

   Yup. Ever since the site first went up.
5. #5 George says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 6:19 am

   Not even the most terrible moments in Star Wars history watched consecutively could ruin Star Wars. Just sweep what you don’t like under the rug, like with Ailen 3 & 4, both make the Attack of the Clones look like Empire Strikes Back.
6. #6 Billy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:51 am

   I have a question. Hobbits are supposed to be really short, around 2 feet give or take, right? And Orcs and Goblins are near average human height, right? Okay, so why in The Return of the King near the end when Frodo and Sam donned Orc armour, they appeared as tall as the Orcs? Woulden’t they have been really short and thus stood out, or wouldn’t they have been way too small to even wear it at all, let alone walk in it and even much less pass as Orcs?