Can the Eagles save the day again?

[Sauron the White]

In the film ROTK, hundreds of millions of people have already seen the Eagles come to the rescue of the forces of good and help save the day. In THE HOBBIT, the play much the same role at the end of the Battle of Five Armies. Putting aside the questions of being faithful and purity to the book, does the ending of ROTK render use of the Eagles in HOBBIT as problematic if not unusable? Does a filmmaker not risk hundreds of millions of people leaving the theater muttering that they seen that ending before?

[Gwathagor]

I'm going to be a lot more angry if they don't than if they do.

[Morthoron]

Eagles in battle are a recurrent theme in Middle-earth, beginning with the great battle in the sky where Earendil slew Ancalagon the Black. For folks who have only seen the movies and not read the books (as repugnant as that sounds), I would think the eagles tie the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings, just as the Ring does. Remember as well that the eagles aid Gandalf and his companions during the warg attack in the Misty Mountains, a very crucial tie-in to Gandalf's rescue from Orthanc in LotR.

Seeing as the next two movies are only installments of a whole story, then conceptual continuity is necessary to bind the tale together coherently and with images people can connect with from one film to the next.