Gandalf Vs. The Witch King

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Sarumian

We know that the power of Witch King is provided by Sauron. In order to switch off another maia, Sauron needed to invest most of his remaining power into the Black Captain; as someone wrote in other forum, he, in fact, had to inhabit Witch King's body. In this case Witch King's preliminary end would have been as disastrous for Sauron as the loss of the Ring. He would definitely have lost the ability to keep his numerous armies in obedience and probably his shadowy embodiment as well. Nothing like this happens neither in the book nor in the movie.

I'm no Tolkien scholar myself and I admit seeing the idea of Sauron needing to inhabit the Witch King's body as quite far fetched, but I can see you are making a tough question - and a justified one. So how come the loss of the Witch King didn't affect Sauron more than it did - or did it? I mean whatever the connection was, there surely was one - and thus losing it would have an effect (think about the talk of the elven Rings losing power).

Sure one can entertain the idea that after the death of the Witch King the battle at the Pelennor Fields was over (like it was in a sense) and that Sauron could muster the heavy forces to go against the "goodies" only as it was at the gates of Mordor, near enough for him to personally rally his troops...

But if the loss of the Witch King was a big deal enough, so how strong/weak he was?

Heh, was that possible weakness of Sauron after losing his first magic general actually the thing that got Gandalf to agree with the plan of going and challenging Mordor head on? If Sauron would have been in full power he could have both taken care of the rag-tag army of the goodies and watch out for any surprises? I had never thought of the death of the Witch King as a reason why Sauron was too weak to catch Frodo in time... Interesting.

I am referring to PJ's movies, not to books only. If Gandalf is not an embodiment of maia Olorin, we can't say who Sauron is etc, the whole Tolkien's universe will not work and it's going to be a different fiction.

I'm not sure if I get you right here but to me it's fairly simple. What PJ did concerns the films only. He has no authorship over the universe Tolkien created. He can make his own interpretations like everyone of us can (PJ's imaginations sure have more effect than the fabulations of you or me!), but it is, like you say, a different fiction then.

Gandalf was a maia (whatever name or embodiment you call him with) as Sauron was, and the Lord of the Rings tells about the fight between these two left to fight it together as the other higher powers receded from the ME - with all the side characters like Frodo, Aragorn, Gollum, the Witch King etc. (Okay, let's fill in Saruman as the third real player.)

And surely Eru was back there pulling the strings and thus in the last instance making all the efforts of both (all) parties insignificant; but on the personal level where they were being able to look oneself from the mirror, or not.

Confused indeed.