Headscratchers / Lord Of The Rings Films

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Specific films

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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Trilogy-wide questions

So the size adjusting ring let itself be removed?

• If the one ring adjusts itself to the wearer's finger, why doesn't it make itself smaller than their knuckle? It wants two things. Corrupt the person in possession of it, and return to Sauron. Wouldn't being impossible to take off make both goals immensely easier?
  • It doesn't want to corrupt anyone, per se. That just kinda of happens because the thing is filled with evil. It's more accurate to say that what it wants are to return to Sauron or tempt the bearer into using it to fulfill their own ambitions. It usually prioritizes the temptation side until it becomes clear that it's not going to work, at which point it tries to abandon the bearer by falling off. Neither of these two goals is furthered clamping down and not letting go. Sure, there are times when doing so would have let the Nazghul find Frodo, but the Ring doesn't have a mind. It can't think. It just has a will and goals.
  • The Ring doesn't want to stay on an unsuitable bearer's finger for very long; the longer it remains worn by them, the more the individual can bend its power to their will. It also presumably takes some time to change shape, so if the wearer yanks it off quickly then it won't have time.

What is up with the moth?

• Seriously. It's this random moth that is somehow connected to the Eagles? What?
  • It's a way for Gandalf to communicate with Gwaihir.
  • Moth. Thing with wings. Messenger to Radaghast who sent out all winged things (didn't have to be birds) to gather information and news and to report to one of the wizards with it...
  • There's a mildly popular fan theory the moth is actually Radagast himself, shapeshifted in the form of a moth. It'd explain how Gandalf is able to whisper Sindarin to it and it seemingly understands what he's saying, as well as its apropos arrival. In the books, Radagast is referred to as a "master of shapes", so it's not inconceivable.

Massive Idiot Balls for Sauron and the Witch-King

• In the opening scene of the first movie Sauron had Isildur at his mercy — downed and unarmed, but for a broken sword. All he had to do was swing his mace one more time and the human was finished. What did he do instead? He put the mace away and reached for Isildur with his bare hand. Why? To grab him? To strangle him? To help him get up? WHY?! During the Battle of Pelennor Fields in the third movie, the Witch-King had Éowyn at his mercy — downed, crippled, and unarmed. All he had to do was swing his Epic Flail one more time and the humie was finished. What did he do instead? He put the flail away and grabbed Éowyn with his bare hand. WHAT'S. THE. POINT?!!! Couldn't he deliver his punchline without bringing her close to him?
  • Well, per the books, Sauron's flesh is hot enough to be fatal — he's supposed to have killed Gil-galad simply by his own inner fire. He presumably intended to do the same to Isildur. As for the Witch-King, he simply believed he was invincible and that he could afford to pull stunts like that. Obviously, he was wrong.
  • Consider Sauron's position. He had a magical superweapon, but the effect seemed to be only knockback unless the mace was physically within range, and he had hardly any orcs left at Orodruin. He may have been trying to take Isildur hostage in order to get terms.
  • They both had perfectly functional weapons with which they had already casually killed tons of enemies by their responsive moments. Why suddenly try to be creative with "pathetic human # 3082"?
  • Think of it as a fighting game in which you're almost completely invincible (and your one weakness hasn't even occurred to you). You could win by spamming the same attack until you've won the whole game, but it would be boring, so you try for variety, only to find out that the game can actually kill you in real life. If they knew their peril, they would indeed stay safe, but I think that if a villain truly considers himself invincible, he would see even the War of the Ring like a game.
  • While it does sound plausible for Sauron, the Witch-King is an undead. Do you honestly think he was even capable of enjoying what he did whatsoever? I always saw the Nazgûl as fantazy counterparts of the Terminator — cold, determined, emotionless and efficient. When Éowyn faces him, what does he say? "Never stand between the Nazgûl and his prey". He doesn't even seem to regard her as an opponent as much as a nuisance. And, well, she kind of is — he defeats her in several swings. It just doesn't run well with me that he SUDDENLY feels sadistic and playful when all his previous behaviour spoke against that kind of act.
  • Both are meant to pad scenes from the book into something filmable. Sauron is effectively killed by Elendil and Gil-galad before Isildur reaches him, and the whole Éowyn/WK/Merry thing occurs in like a split second on the battlefield.
  • As for the Witch-King, I thought he was only devoid of positive emotions such as happiness, compassion, and so on. He could still feel anger, hate, malice and other bad emotions. As for Éowyn, I'm sure she was of interest to the WK because she was the only soldier to openly challenge him without fear or hesitation. Curiosity and amusement would make him draw out her death to see how much she can take.
  • Moreover, killing the opposing army's leader with your bare hands is a great way to break the morale of the rest of the Last Alliance troops. Sauron didn't just want to kill Isildur, he wanted to rip him apart where all of Gondor's soldiers could see him do it. Likewise, the Witch-King wanted to make an example of Éowyn, to show how futile it was for any of Rohan's troops to stand against the Nazgûl, who know all about terror as a battlefield weapon. And if she hadn't secretly been female, it would have been a very nasty example, indeed.
  • Did it really even have anything to do with her being female? The book never says "Women can kill them" — they follow the "You can't kill what's already dead" rule, after all. He was defeated because Merry managed to stab him with a special Plot Coupon sword right before Éowyn jabbed him.
  • There's a prophecy in the book (somewhere in the appendices, I think — the context is trying to stop the last king of Gondor from being a complete idiot), that "not by the hand of man shall he fall". This applies only to the Witch-King, not the rest of the Nazgûl. Of course, there needs to be other circumstances than him being stabbed by any old not-man: Merry uses an anti-Nazgûl knife to hamstring him, and once that's broken the spell protecting him, Éowyn can behead him.
  • I read somewhere that Sauron killed Gil-galad by picking him up and burning him alive. Adding on to what the previous post said about morale, it would be in keeping with Sauron's nature to inflict more gruesome deaths upon the leaders of his enemies. He probably intended to finish Isildur off in the same way as Gil-galad.
  • Sauron wanted to not just kill but to utterly destroy in the most humiliating way possible the leaders of those who opposed him to demoralise his (remaining) followers. It's like he was playing Mortal Kombat and went for the impressive looking Fatality rather than just the Fingerpoke of Doom.

Did Arwen lose her immortality or not?

• It seems that Arwen gave up her immortality to stay in Middle-Earth and marry Aragorn. But in The Two Towers, Elrond tells her that Aragorn will die from old age while she lives on. What?
  • Arwen did give up her immortality; however, the Appendix of Return of the King establishes that she did indeed outlive Aragorn, and since he lived to be over 200, she must have still had a longer-than-human lifespan. Also, keep in mind that Elrond's foresight isn't perfect.
  • It's inferred she died of grief — Tolkien is not very explicit in the book on how she died after Aragorn laid down his life forever, and as an Elf she is supposed to have an immensely long life, but the good Professor never forgets to mention how vulnerable psychologically are the Elves and how grief can make them grow weary and die. (It's a way of telling the difference between Elf and Man — Men cling to life and are ready to make superhuman efforts to preserve it when facing hardships.)
  • When her uncle, Elros, chose mortality (to become the founder of the line of Kings of Numenor), he lived 500 years and died only because he laid down his life, wearied of the world due to his mortal soul questing beyond it. It says in Unfinished Tales that both Elros and Elrond had "the same physical capacity of life" — ie, the Half-Elven that were given the Choice (and only a very few were ever allowed this Choice as to which Kindred they should belong; the default is "any mortal blood makes you mortal") and chose to be mortal, still retained their Elven agelessness until they chose to lay themselves down.
  • To note: Choosing the time of their death is an ability of all those descended from the half-Elven as well. They'll die eventually anyway, even if they don't choose to, but the further past a normal human span they get, the more bitter life becomes. It's said that all the great kings of Numenor and Gondor willingly set aside their lives at the proper time, and that Aragorn does as well despite Arwen begging him to linger on. Death is a gift given to Men that they may leave the circles of the world before they tire of it. That men fear death is one of the greatest evils the enemy has wrought on the world, and the Wise will accept the Gift rather than cling bitterly to life.

Scale in the Shire

• Everything in the Shire is to scale. So a Shire dog seems just as large to a hobbit as a Gondorian one would to a human. But hobbits are explicitly likened to children in terms of size when compared to Men. So, really, a full-grown hound or freshly harvested ear of corn in the Shire is going to be considered rather puny beyond its borders. Do the hobbits have a whole mess of miniaturized animals and produce? Is there something in the water there that stunts everything’s growth?
  • There is only the same thing in the water that stunts our human dog's growth: Why don't you go and buy a dog that's up to your shoulder, as those can be and are bred after all? Answer: Size of domestic plants and animals is mostly the result of how it's been bred to be, and you breed and keep animals/plants to whichever specifications you need. So why would they want a monster dog bigger than themselves if we humans (usually) don't want one either? And more besides that: keep in mind that those over-bred huge-ass livestock breeds in use nowadays are a pretty much recent modern invention, and the livestock/plants traditional for most of the history of agriculture were significantly smaller.
  • It's also mentioned in the DVD commentary that building everything in two scales is difficult, so any excuse to use a "normal" sized object in a scene that is only just going to have hobbits is easier. I doubt a hobbit would complain about food twice as big anyway. maybe they're just eating three normal Man-sized meals a day.
  • Real Life people breed miniature horses and cattle, so there's no reason why hobbits couldn't do so as well. As for selling their produce to outsiders, food is generally sold by weight, not number of individual items: a tavern-keeper in Bree who goes shopping for 20 pounds of potatoes would be just as satisfied with a few hundred egg-sized ones from a hobbit farmer as a few dozen fist-sized from a human farmer.
    • Well, until he had to peel them...

The One Ring and the Nature of Evil

• Upon reflection, it seems like the Ring is more powerful in the movie than it is in the book. In the book it's a seductive item, true, and most people who make contact with it succumb to its power, but some people can resist its influence, and do. Power speaks to Power in Tolkien's world, and the ones who can resist the Ring are the ones who don't really crave power for its own sake. Sam is a simple humble country boy who doesn't want anything but his garden. Faramir is a sensitive, intuitive scholar who is smart enough to see what the Ring really is. Déagol doesn't get to hang on to it long enough for it to really do anything to him. The argument can even be made that Frodo isn't so much seduced by the Ring as he is defeated by it; after a protracted Battle of Wills, his just finally gives out. The message is that evil is a powerful force in the world, but it can be resisted and overcome through the simple virtures of decency, earnestness, and perseverance. No such message exists in the movie; in the movie, no one can resist the power of the Ring. Not Faramir, not Sam, no one. Those simple virtues don't help any more. Perhaps the World has grown colder since Tolkien's day...
  • Hmmm...having read the books and seen the films (both multiple times), I'd have to say: 'Nope.' The exact same events and themes surround the Ring in both. It just plays out slightly differently, because it's an adaptation.
  • Realistically (ironic choice of words intended) it is not as dramatic to have characters not succumb to the will of The One Ring. It is after all The One Ring. Thematically, you can't go into near as much detail in the typical movie time frame as you can in the books, so keeping the concept cohesive for all versus for most is just a simple way to tell the story and not worry about it. As for actual explanation... perhaps the time since the books were written, the Ring got more powerful.
  • According to the "making of" video "From Book to Script," this change was deliberate. They weren't confident they could convince the movie audience that the Ring was truly powerful and deadly if there were people who could resist it. This was given as a reason specifically for the changes in Faramir's character.
  • There was one person in the movies who never yielded to temptation: Aragorn, when Frodo actually holds the Ring out to him at the end of Fellowship. I was actually under the impression that was part of the reason for Faramir's character change — if the Ring never tempted him for a moment either, the strength and nobility of Aragorn's refusal wouldn't stand out as much.
  • Also, where does Sam really succumb to it? There's the "share the load" bit, which I thought was a genuinely selfless offer warped by Frodo's mind; and he hesitates to give it back after wearing it, which I think is in the books too and is as much about sparing Frodo as anything. I don't remember movie Sam being much more susceptible to the Ring than book-Sam; and in any case strength doesn't lie in not being tempted, but in resisting temptation.
  • Faramir is the only one that acts differently. Sam only briefly retracts his hand while handing it over (which matches an internal monologue in the book where he very briefly feels like holding onto it). Oh and people are forgetting Bilbo, the only guy to ever give the Ring up of his own free will after owning it for more than few hours. Everyone, everyone is tempted by the Ring, some are just better able to resist it.
    • And then even with Faramir it's more a case of a "Well Done, Son" Guy than anything (especially in the extended version).

Legolas and Gimil's "contest"

• Did they ever make it clear who won?
  • Gimli won the first contest at Helm's Deep with 43 kills to Legolas's 42 (this is accurate to the book, although the numbers were ever so slightly inflated — in the book Legolas gracefully accepted defeat after being beaten 42-41). This is shown in a deleted scene that was restored for the Extended edition. They never mention who "won" in the Battle of Pelennor Fields (Minas Tirith).
  • I think the numbers were in the mid to upper 100's or low 200's in Pelennor Fields. Been a LONG time since I read the books. But if I am not mistaken, Gimli lost the second match up (and not because of the Mûmak).

Where are the Dwarves?

• More than once, Gimli says that an army of Dwarves would've handled this and that situation. But why aren't the Dwarves joining the War of the Ring? If Sauron is to take over Middle-Earth, it seems pretty obvious he wouldn't spare the Dwarves. Okay, since Dwarves don't live in areas near Mordor, maybe they don't know how bad things have gotten. But Gimli knows what the situation is, and he's supposed to be some sort of an envoy of Dwarves, right? So why doesn't he summon them to join everyone else in the fight against Sauron?
  • There aren't many Dwarves left, and the ones most likely to pitch in (the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain) are already facing a war at their own doorstep.
  • They are fighting, just in a different theater of war, up north by the Lonely Mountain; if they diverted forces to the Gondorian front, he'd be able to overcome them there and from there retake Mirkwood, threaten Lothlorian, and flank Gondor from the north.
  • Okay. It would've been nice if this stuff was mentioned somewhere, though, instead of Gimli just being all, "if only I had some Dwarves with me here".
  • They did allude to it. Immediately after Gimli says that line, Legolas replies "Your kinsmen may have no need to ride to battle; I fear war already marches on their domains."
    • This is true and The Hobbit trilogy alludes to it even more, with Gandalf mentioning that Erabor is actually an extremely valuable tactical position, along with it's wealth, so the dwarves were probably fighting their own battles, what with dwarven mines and strongholds being very useful for creatures that move best in the dark...
  • Within the book series, Dain (Thorin's cousin, played by Billy Connally in the films) was killed during the War of the Ring, alongside King Brand (Bard the Bowman's grandson) during the Battle of Dale against an army of Easterlings. The remaining forces of the Dwarves and the Men of Dale were then besieged in the Lonely Mountain until Sauron's death, which caused the Easterling army to begin withdrawing. Which would have made for an awesome film in and of itself, but the LOTR trilogy was already beginning to feel a bit bloated when all of that was happening!

Why Rohan?

• In the movies, why do Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli fight for the protection of Rohan? Yeah, it was a moral thing to do, but their quest when they join Rohan is to find the hobbits so that they can get them to Mordor. Joining Rohan not only puts their original quest on hold, which was established in The Fellowship of the Ring as a matter that would decide the fate of Middle-Earth, it puts the fate of the quest in danger. There was justification for them going to Rohan, Théoden was controlled by their enemy, but there was no justification for them staying. Give them a reason! Give them a personal connection to the people of Rohan. Instead of having them arrive and finish their initial task in the middle of the afternoon, make it later so they would have to stay the night or late enough for Théoden to through them a thank you feast so they would get a chance to form a connection with these people before they decide to stay.
  • That's not how it goes. At the end of Fellowship, Frodo and Sam sent off on their own to Mordor and Aragorn chooses not to follow them. Merry and Pippin are the ones who are grabbed and taken to Isengard, and the three set off through Rohan to try running down the Uruk Hai from behind. After Éomer and his band of merry men kill all the orcs, Aragorn starts to track Merry and Pippin into the forest before they run into Gandalf the White. He is the one that diverts them to Edoras. Basically, after The Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn had chosen to accept the fact that Frodo and Sam are going on the trip alone and turned his attention to the ongoing war.
  • Besides which, there is a practical reason to save Rohan as well: it has a powerful army. With Sauron preparing to make war on Gondor, it makes sense to ensure that Gondor would have some allies to help them when the hammer comes crashing down. And if they didn't stay and save Rohan, then Saruman's army takes over and Gondor is surrounded by enemies on all sides, a truly nasty tactical situation to be in. Rohan's survival was necessary for Men to have any chance of surviving the war.

Why can't Sauron figure out exactly where they are and intercept them with his eye?

• Sauron sees Frodo in various places, in one case actually in Mordor (before he's distracted by the loss of his Voice). Why can't he see the Ring, which he is supposedly linked to, if his eye "pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh"?
  • Depth perception. Not eyes of Sauron. Eye of Sauron. It's impossible for him to judge range. When Sauron saw the Ring when Frodo was in Mordor, he would have thought it was on the other side of the mountains, in Gondor. So he immediately attacks the invaders from Gondor, because he now knows they don't have the Ring.
  • Sauron can vaguely sense the Ring drawing nearer, but he doesn't have any precise idea where it is. Further, when people talk about Sauron's "eye" seeing everywhere, they're not talking about a literal Eye seeing things, but Sauron's information network delivering him information. He has spies pretty much everywhere, and he can instantly gather information from both Orthanc and Minas Tirith through his palantir (and possibly other places; we don't know where all the palantiri are). Saruman's statement of his gaze piercing everything is hyperbole, not meant to be taken literally. Personally, I blame Peter Jackson's decision to make Sauron a literal flaming eyeball for producing confusion like this; in the books, the Eye of Sauron is only referred to as a symbol or as a metaphor.
  • You are mistaken here. Sauron's Eye is a literal supernatural ability in the books, as well. There are several instances of characters feeling his gaze falling on them; Frodo himself almost gets seen when he puts on the Ring on Amon Hen and senses Sauron's will searching for him. But the Eye of Sauron still has limits; he can't see everything at once. He must focus on one thing at a time and if he doesn't know where something is his only option is to randomly look around in hopes of seeing something relevant. The problem about seeing everything is finding the important stuff that you actually need to see. The only thing that can block the Eye of Sauron completely from seeing something is a sufficiently strong opposing power, such as the power of the Three Rings.
  • The above is exactly why Jackson chose the 'literal flaming eye' concept - it's easy to understand both conceptually and visually. The debate about Sauron's Eye is only slightly less nerd-raged about than the Balrog Wings debate.
  • The Eye isn't all-knowing. First off, it can only see one thing at a time. If Sauron doesn't already know where to look, there's no way he'll find the Ring by pure chance. He only gets a signal from the ring when someone wears it, and even then it's only a vague sense of location. At one point he does glance over at Frodo when he's in Mordor, but Frodo falls behind some stone and Sauron moves on. I think the actual "piercing stone" feature requires some effort on Sauron's part, and since he didn't understand Frodo's significance at the time he didn't bother to turn on the X-ray vision.

Bilbo's rapid aging

• So, the One Ring prolonged Bilbo's life, but once he gets rid of it, he rapidly ages for no apparent reason. It would make sense if, once he was no longer being affected by the Ring, his biological processes resumed their natural course where they left off under the Misty Mountains and he began aging at a normal rate. Instead, it's almost like he chose poorly.
  • Nothing "natural" about how his lifespan had been stretched out and out though, like the proverbial rubber band. Once the Ring's insulating presence is taken away, the effect of all those extra decades of artificially-maintained youthfulness sort of 'snaps back' on him in short order.
  • The film leaves out the 20 year gap between Bilbo leaving the Shire and Frodo starting out on his journey to Rivendell; in those 20 years Bilbo has aged to the point you see in Rivendell. The film version has no 20 year period and so Bilbo has aged dramatically in this version.
  • Keyword: Prolong. Not extend. The Ring, and evil in general, cannot create new life. It can warp, distort and manipulate existing life, but cannot grant new life. Bilbo's life was being unnaturally stretched out and behind his youthful looks he says that he feels old, thin and weary, like "butter scraped over too much bread." His old age later is simply a reflection of what he really is. Growing old and dying as the natural way of things is a big theme of LOTR and efforts to extend life are usually the motives or seductions of evil.
  • Also the Ring is a magic item, not a life-extending drug. It's not going to behave scientifically but according to it's own rules. A bad excuse if those rules are inconsistent but fine if they aren't.
  • Bilbo hadn't held The One Ring for as long as Gollum, he was just feeling a bit stretched thin by it, and when he surrendered it all the ageing held at bay caught up with him. Gollum had held it for hundreds of years and was thoroughly corrupted by it beyond all mortal years entirely. Bilbo was blessed with his natural end despite The One Ring, for Gollum it was far too late for him to get such relief.
  • In addition, Bilbo freely and knowingly gave up the Ring, while Gollum "lost" it. It's quite likely that Gollum still retains some residual connection to the Ring, while when Bilbo freely gave it up he forfeited everything it had given him.

The One Ring: Accrue Strength or Remove a Weakness?

• Obviously Sauron has personal reasons to want to get the One Ring back, but what does it mean for his conquest of Middle Earth? Up until the moment the ring is destroyed his victory seems all but guaranteed, but hypothetically regaining the ring is treated as if it would be a game changer. Is Gandalf et al concerned about Sauron reacquiring the ring because of the power he could bring to bear, or because it removes Mordor's one exploitable weakness from the playing field?
  • A bit of both. Sauron put most of his latent power into the Ring. His only concern about not having the Ring is that someone could use it against him. He doesn't for one moment think that anyone would even try to destroy it, but a mighty person like Gandalf, Saruman or any of the Elf Lords could bend it to their will. So Sauron would think of regaining the One Ring as removing the Free People's strength, as opposed to his weakness.
  • And remember that, for all of his strength, Sauron is only a fraction of himself without it. I don't know if he ever actually was able to regain a physical form in the books, but he is greatly reduced as long as he is separated from his ring. I can imagine, just from the nightmarish perspective of being in a reduced state alone, he desperately wants to have his ring back in hand. It would be like being a tremendously ill adult while surrounded by toddlers: an adult still has all of his knowledge and faculties, and is much stronger, than those toddlers, but he is still very ill.
  • In life, Sauron+Ring was a strong enough combo to be near-invincible on the battlefield. Then Sauron "died", but spent the next two and a half thousand years building up his magical strength. In other words, this Sauron is operating from a much higher "base power" than the old flesh-and-blood Sauron. Getting the Ring now would boost him up so high that he'd be able to basically nuke everyone directly without having to bother with orcs and ring-wraiths and all that. So it's either (a) He gets the Ring and kills us instantly, (b) He doesn't get the Ring but his armies kill us all eventually, (c) We try to use the Ring against him somehow, in which case we'll get corrupted by it and turn into his mind-controlled slaves before he kills us anyway, or (d) We hold off his armies long enough for someone to actually destroy the Ring once and for all, in which case Sauron and his armies all die. They went with option (d).

Why are the elves leaving Middle-Earth?

• Elves are immortal. They've been around forever. Except now apparently something has changed and they're gonna lose their immortality unless they all go to the Undying Lands. Um...what changed? What could possibly wipe out an entire racial trait like that, and why does the effect only apply to Middle-Earth proper? I would think that maybe Sauron just cursed the land somehow (after apparently charging up his magic for several centuries) but in that case, wouldn't Sauron's death fix the problem? Or does the curse have ontological inertia? Or maybe the "lose your immortality" thing has nothing to do with Sauron at all, and it's just a coincidence that he's massing for invasion at the same time the elves are leaving Middle-Earth? What is going on?
  • Basically, high elves don't belong in Middle-Earth, they belong in the Undying Lands. They all should have left for Valinor a long time ago, but Elrond and Galadriel were able to use the power of their Rings to create pockets in which the elves could remain. But when Sauron was defeated the power of the Three was likewise broken, and so the elves couldn't remain in Middle-Earth much longer
    • Why don't they belong in Middle-Earth? Why have they spent several centuries in Middle-Earth even though they're not supposed to be there?
  • Elsewhere in the Legendarium, Tolkein clarifies that our Earth is still the Middle-Earth of the tales, an uncounted number of millenia further down the line. In what was then unpublished background speculation and rough notes, he advances the idea that some Elves grimly resisted the call to take ship and Return, persisting in a world they loved but which had outgrown them. Left behind, they diminished and debased over thousands of years, dwindling to the fairies and nature sprites of modern English folklore such as the fairy court of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Here, only Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the fairy peoples, have even the remotest distorted awareness and memory of what they once were, and the lesser sprites of their realm have forgotten completely. Tolkein suggests that Elves such as Elrond and Galadriel knew this dwindling and debasement was inevitable if they remained, and this was part of their sad acceptance that their time in the world was over and they had to move on. (There may be references to this in the books: Tolkein recounts Gandalf and the older elves sitting round the campfire, communicating without words from mind to mind, discussing what the shape of the world will be after their defeat of Sauron and what comes next. And Galadriel, when she refuses the Ring, sadly resigns herself to Diminishing, one way or the other.)