Don't stop reading just because I mention BOULDERS!

Phillip Menzies

Moderator
Staff member
I have one comment to add to the discussion which might just turn things on their head. Corey commented that physically acting upon the boulders is not in Gandalf's MO and that he could not think of another time when Gandalf uses magic this way.
Unfortunately I need to take us back to the Hobbit movies where Peter Jackson limited himself on how Gandalf operates. In the Hobbit movies Gandalf only did things that had been established in the LOTR movies and therefore limited himself to:
- making himself look big and threatening
- turning his staff into a floodlight
- communicating with butterflies and
- Breaking Rocks
The two occassions were breaking the rock that fell away to reveal the rising sun to petrify the trolls and breaking the Bridge of Khazad Dum.
Take away the movie references and we are left with the brigde. My reading is that Gandalf fractured the rock with (I had not noticed this before) a sheet of white flame that sprang up before him. The same white flame acting on the water at the ford. The bridge then broke due to the weight of the balrog. In both cases I would read that Gandalf has weakened the structure of the rock with white flame and then a greater force has resulted in its collapse.
 
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