So why didn't Frodo and Sam find a massive army guarding the entrance to Mount Doom from potential eagle incursions? It was unguarded, Sauron didn't even seem worried about them getting there.
And there were only nine ringwraiths (eight by that time as the leader had been killed) so you'd think that unless Eagles were extremely rare, they'd be able to outnumber or outflank them.
At the council of Elrond they don't even discuss eagles, surely they'd at least have been useful to transport the fellowship to the borders of mordor, or over the mountains?
The entire point of the army at the gates was to distract his gaze from Mt Doom, so there's that.
But yeah the rest of the Why Not Eagles explanation doesn't really fly. Lazy merkins. For all his greatness Tolkien has some rather large flaws as a writer.
I think you guys are confusing just dumb decisions with plot holes.
A plot hole is something that physically could not occur under the laws of the universe the movie has created. Take the original Jurassic park. The T Rex breaksthrough the fence to attack the jeeps, then pushes one of those keeps back over the fence where suddenly there is a sheer drop. Given the T Rex was standing on that spot eating a goat just minutes earlier, that is a plot hole.
Bad guys doing dumb things so the good guys can win is more of a trope than a plot hole. Another good trope is a good guy forgetting about some super weapon until the final battle, or choosing not to use some item/magic/power from a previous scene or movie to solve a problem down the line (this is a huge issue in Harry Potter with the amount of times a spell or item from a previous book would have been very handy in a later book but is never mentioned).
I disagree with this. I would say your Jurassic Park example is poor, lazy or inconsistent choreography/filming.
A plot hole is a hole in the actual plot - like characters making inexplicably dumb decisions or conveniently forgetting the existence of an entire race or magic power that would be super useful, just to set up the complicated series of events supporting the plot.
My example is Harry Potter 4. The whole story centres around a complicated plot to nudge Harry into winning a tournament he's way too young for, with countless points of potential failure, for him to find a teleporting device right at the end and disappear into Voldemort's hands.
Why didn't Moody just give him the portkey at one of the countless other times they were alone together?
