Quote:
Originally Posted by skip spence
In that movie with dragons in it "Reign of Fire", the fire was caused by a mix of chemicals. I don't think Tolkien imagined his dragons to be anything like those creatures.
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There was a documentary on the Discovery Channel where they made a (fake obviously) documentary about dragons, trying to make it look as realistic and plausible as possible. One of the things they said is that the dragons would scratch and eat certain rocks which then would be processed by bacteria in their stomach to produce Hydrogen gas. This would allow them to be lighter for flying and also to breathe fire.
Some combination of that idea and (other) chemical reactions
could have explained the dragons fire breathing.
However, I think there is a misconception here. When Galadriel or the Elves say that there is no such thing as magic, they do so from within Middle Earth itself. However, the land of Middle Earth is magical on itself, there are gods walking around and actively interfering with the life of lesser beings, there are dragons and elves and dwarves and mithril and hobbits.... there are also swords that light up when a special kind of enemy is near, there are stones that allow you to spy on your neighbour and there are pieces of jewlery that will let you, if used properly, dominate all beings in existance. Oh, and little crystals that make elves go insane... and as a side-effect, shine with the essence of light itself
Surely there is something magical about that?
Even though Tolkien made a great effort to make sure that nothing on his tales could be answered by simply "it was magic" or "a wizard did it" it does not mean that everything can be explained by Real Life logic. To me, Middle-Earth has self-consistency but it does not mean that it has consistency with the Real World.
I think this is good enough for a new thread, but my point here is the folowing:
Dragon-fire it wasn't magic for Middle Earth. They were probably monsters inhabited by fell spirits of fire and made/corrupted through the craft and cunnign (not magic) of a god-like figure. However, for all
real life intents and purposes, it
was magic. Like we call magic the tricks of an entertainer at a party when we cannot explain it, but we call it a trick when it is told to us. However, we cannot explain "magic" in Middle Earth because the rules we take for granted here do not quite apply to Middle Earth.