The Eagles of Manwë and Eucatastrophe - Welcome to my TED Talk
Eucatastrophe is a word coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay 'On Fairy Stories' to describe the sudden unexpected turn of good fortune in fairy tales. When, despite all reasonable expectations, the hero succeeds in a seemingly impossible task that they never gave up on, even though there was very little hope of success.
In his own stories, such eucatastrophes are often turning points that hinge on...the arrival of the eagles. Bilbo's call in
the Hobbit (echoed by the troops of Gondor in
The Lord of the Rings) that 'The Eagles are coming!' is meant to be an unexpected moment of joy where the tide of the battle has turned and victory is now within reach. While these may seem to be just moments of fortuitous good fortune, in the
Silmarillion, the Eagles are explicitly the servants of Manwë, and thus their actions in the story are meant to be actions of Manwë's mercy in aid of the Elves (even the exiled Noldor).
And take action they do! The Eagles are very involved in the stories of the Silmarillion. Thorondor assists Fingon in his rescue of Maedhros, and rescues Fingolfin's body from being trampled by Morgoth (wounding Morgoth in the process). The Eagles guard the mountains of Gondolin (their home), keeping all of Morgoth's spies out for centuries. And of course when Beren is wounded in the escape from Angband, it is an eagle who rescues him and Lúthien, who had no way home at that point.
But until the War of Wrath, when the eagles assist Eärendil in fighting the dragons (including Ancalagon the Black), they don't actually
do much in the fight against Morgoth. So, we are left with a seeming contradiction - the eagles are ubiquitous in their assistance, arriving time and time again to help out....and yet their help is very minimal and turns no tides, wins no battles.
In the Silm Film Project, then, the depiction of these appearances must be given some context for the audience. The audience must be taught what to expect from the eagles and what
not to expect. Otherwise, they become a running joke - it's the eagles
again!, or even worse, they fall under criticism for not helping
enough. After all, if an eagle can attack Morgoth and wound him...why wasn't Fingolfin saved
before he was killed? And if Eagles are such good fighters, why aren't they taking part in these battles and only killing spies on their own turf? And why don't they just fly the Ring to Mount Doom, anyway?
So, what must we impress upon the audience? These are not
tame Eagles. You cannot just call them up and ask them for help. You can call for help all you want....it's up to the Eagle whether or not they choose to respond. And Manwë's response comes in particularly desperate moments in very particular mercies. You can't count on an eagle shuttle to take you away from danger, but you're more likely to get one if you were doing something recklessly good at the time. Also...while the Eagles hate Morgoth, and all his evil works, and all his empty promises....they're not joining the Noldor in their War. They are content to remain on the sidelines. The Noldor wanted to fight a war against Morgoth without the Valar's help or permission? So be it, the Eagles will let them. They take part in the War of Wrath...
which is Valar-sanctioned. They will help individuals (Fingon, Fingolfin, Beren, and Turgon), but they aren't going to arrive on any First Age battlefields.
It would be great if we could craft some Eagle-centric poetry in which an eagle answers the question: Who are you and what are you doing here? Because...that is how Thorondor would convey that information. Like a Psalm of King David.
Thorondor is meeting the Exiled Noldor in Episode 1 of Season 4 when Fingon rescues Maedhros with his aid. So, that would be the perfect time to convey who and what the Eagles are. But there is no reason to suspect that Thorondor was not aware of Fëanor's fatal fight with the balrogs or the fight in which Maedhros was captured and all his men were killed. Thorondor didn't intervene then. Safe to say that neither of them were uttering prayers to Manwë in their desperation!
So, as long as we introduce Eagles as eucatastrophic agents of Manwë's mercy in Season 4, I am confident we will not let them seem silly or superfluous in the story.
Thus ends my sidebar. Onto the actual topic of this thread! But in the meantime, there are a couple of practical questions to answer.
Thorondor's size. The published
Silmarillion says his wingspan is 30 fathoms. A fathom is 6 feet. So, that's 180 feet! (=55 meters) That...is one very, very large bird! I know we want him to be very large and very majestic, but....maybe not quite that big?
Here is artwork depicting the largest scale Thorondor I could find in the 'Fingon rescues Maedhros' images fanartists have produced.
Artist: hannah s. j. williams
It's not entirely clear to me how large Thorondor is here, but the 6' tall elves are the size of fish to a normal eagle. Or think of it this way: a real eagle's talons could close that way around a man's forearm. So, probably at most 10x the size of a real eagle? That puts the wingspan at 60 feet, or...half what Tolkien specified.
A real golden eagle has a wingspan of about 6 ft (a little more for the females) The F-16 fighter plane has a wingspan of 32 feet. Thorondor can be bigger than that, but probably shouldn't be the wingspan of a Boeing 747 (195-211 feet).
Most artwork that depicts the full eagle shows him significantly larger than the elves, but very much smaller than Tolkien described him!
Thorondor here is more than twice the height of the elves:
Or in Ted Nasmith's painting, he has a wingspan of roughly 30 ft, based on the size of Beren:
John Howe's Gwaihir looks massive, but even this bird probably doesn't have a wingspan much more than 30-40 feet (perspective makes it difficult to tell how much further away Gwaihir is than Gandalf)
So while I am fine with Thorondor being much bigger than even the other Great Eagles, I'd like to cap his size significantly smaller than in the text.
After scale, the next question is about the type of eagle we use as a template for Thorondor and the Great Eagles of the First Age.
We discussed that a bit in this thread:
https://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php?threads/beasts.253/
The suggestions there were harpy eagle:
Tawny Eagle:
Suggestion by The Witch King
And, of course, the eagle Tolkien based his own artwork on (cf 'Bilbo Woke Up With the Sun in his Eyes'), the golden eagle:
Any other suggestions for size and species of eagles for Thorondor?