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- If Gwaihir could fly to Mount Doom in a matter of minutes, why not just give him the Ring and ask him to fly down there and drop it in the volcano ?
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One thing that everyone seems to forget - at that moment, when Gwaihir rescues Frodo and Sam, Mordor is wide open and unguarded.
Anyone could have walked into Mordor unchallenged at that moment - because the Ring was destroyed, Sauron was reduced to a mere shadow, the Nazgul were consumed and all of Sauron's servants were fleeing in terror and confusion. Try walking into Mordor ten minutes earlier and you wouldn't have gone five feet before being turned into good-guy pate! Your only chance of escaping detection was to be extremely small and inconspicuous.
So it's easy for the Eagles to fly over Mordor and reach Mount Doom once all opposition has been destroyed, but we can't assume it was so easy even ten minutes earlier!
There is also the slight problem that the Eagles might not have been willing and another issue - could the Eagles have physically accessed the Sammath Naur? They might have been too big to get in there!
A third equally tricky issue ... they may have been no more able to toss the Ring into the fire than anyone else. Imagine Gwaihir the Windlord proclaiming himself
Gwaihir the Ringlord on the slopes of Mount Doom!
As for the other inconsistencies, I'll have to say that none of these cause a problem for me. Some of these points have already been addressed, especially by Inziladun, Mnemosyne and CSteefel, but I'll make some additional comments.
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- At the Hornburg Gimli says he had "hewed naught but wood since Moria" after killing 2 orcs. But surely he had killed orcs at Parth Galen ?
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We don't know that. His statement implies that he didn't.
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- Gandalf released Shadowfax in Eriador two months before the Company left Rivendell, but Eomer told Aragorn that the horse had returned to Rohan only 7 days before they met in the Wold.
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This is only a problem if you think that Shadowfax wanted to return to Rohan as quickly as possible. We don't know what Shadowfax was thinking - remember he was one of the Mearas, not an ordinary horse.
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- Denethor and Saruman both encountered Sauron using their respective Palantir. Yet Denethor was not dominated and Saruman was. Surely it should have been the other way round ?
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As has already been noted, Saruman was not dominated. Don't be confused by the movie-Saruman. Two more things - Saruman had a palantir far longer than Denethor and Saruman was being corrupted by his lust for the Ring. However, despite being entitled to use his palantir it seems clear that Denethor's spirit was broken by Sauron ...
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- What was the point of Eowyn dressing up as Dernhelm ? Surely the sight of a hobbit sitting on her horse with her would have given her away anyway ? Same goes for the scene in the film before the Riders charge at the Pelennor.
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I'm sure there were more important priorities than wondering why one of the Riders was carrying a hobbit! I do accept the point that Elfhelm probably knew about "Dernhelm".
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- Why didn't the Ents intercept Mauhur and his "lads" skulking in Fangorn ?
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Those guys wouldn't do
anything without a long-winded Entmoot!
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- If Gildor and his company could see off the Black Riders, wouldn't it have made more sense for Gildor to provide an escort for Frodo to get him safely to Rivendell ?
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They were leaving Middle-Earth and so their priority was to head West. You might as well ask why Tom Bombadil didn't offer to escort Frodo to Rivendell!
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- When Boromir's horse bolted at Tharbad and returned to Rohan, surely Edoras would have told Minas Tirith, who in turn would have organised some kind of search party ?
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They wouldn't have known where to look and it would have been far too late to have done any good.