Balrogs. Wings or no wings? Discuss?

I say wings.

No wings. Or maybe vestigial wings, but not functional wings. Balrogs do not fly.

I thought Peter Jackson’s conception was wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong.

Well wings don’t, in and of themselves, mean flight.

2 fists

@Darth_Algar, you’re right. Nor does absence of wings mean no flight. Those were two related comments but not meant as a logical premise and conclusion.

I don’t believe they can fly. Reports of wings may simply be descriptions of the shadow which surrounds them.

The Balrogs are described physically only one time in The Silmarillion.

“Their hearts were of fire, but they were cloaked in darkness, and terror went before them; they had whips of flame.”

Combined with the knowledge that the best way to kill them is apparently to push them into a big hole (see: Gandalf, Glorfindel), and the fact that they are never described as flying even when it would be advantageous, my vote is for no wings.

Tolkien had no qualms about thoroughly describing physical aspects of even minor characters; I don’t think he would have intentionally left out the wings of a Balrog

If you are talking about the books, no. If you are talking about the movie, absolutely.

This will probably be controversial. More people have seen the movies than read the book. While the book is the source material, the movie is the visualization of it, and the more popular version. It carries weight.

The Peter Jackson films are a visualization. Not the visualization. I don’t believe the Ralph Bakshi animated feature has a winged Balrog. And that’s only films. There are many popular artists who have made visual representations of Balrogs.

None of them count more than the book, unless you think Balrogs were real and Tolkien ‘s writing is only an interpretation of some independent fact.

In which case we’d be having an entirely different discussion.

I love it. I’m going to see if I can bring Cirbryn back into this.

No wings, Balrogs are creatures from the depth of the earth. They have no reason to have evolved with wings.

No wings. Peter Jackson obviously wanted to make them more imposing, because they’re not big enough already, so he added wings to add size and motion. But balrogs inhabit caverns in the earth, so wings would be a hindrance.

They were handmade by Melkor/Morgoth… they didn’t evolve…

Well they weren’t exactly made by Melkor ether. They were Maiar, angelic-like (for want of a better term) beings of the same kind as Sauron, Saruman and Gandalf. Perhaps it escapes my memory, but I don’t recall anything in Tolkien’s core canon (that is, The Silmarillion,The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t really delved into the ‘History of Middle-Earth’ set) that suggests they were made by Melkor, and that he corrupted them into his service.

I suppose I should clarify my earlier post about wings. Simply going by the description offered in book II, chapter 5 (‘the bridge of Khazad-dum’) in The Lord of the Rings I’m inclined to feel that they had a winged appearance, but that these “wings” were not really of substance. Given the rather elemental nature of Balrogs I always pictured their form as being quite elemental as well, and such “wings” would be manifestations of shadow or smoke and, perhaps, to some degree of fire as well. At least that’s the image that always visualized in my mind. My image I suppose isn’t exactly what Jackson presented, but isn’t entirely dissimilar ether.

This is for Cirbryn. I never said Balrogs can fly—I said that they had wings. They may be wings of shadow but they are still wings.

They were handmade by Melkor/Morgoth… they didn’t evolve… ........another creation myth.