Something to note too is that book Wargs (real Wargs, setting aside the Warg and Warg Rider Appreciation Thread) as described in
The Hobbit:
Quote:
The Wargs and the goblins often helped one another in their wicked deeds. Goblins do not usually venture very far from their mountains, unless they are driven out and are looking of rnew homes, or are marching to war (which I am happy to say has not happened for a long while). But in those days they sometimes used to go on raids, especially to get slaves to work for them. Then they often got the Wargs to help and shared the plunder with them. Sometimes they rode on wolves like men do on horses. Now it seemed that....
-Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire
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Take especial note of the sentence I have underlined.
Sometimes they (the goblins[/u] rode on wolves. The indication, it would seem, is that Warg-riding was the exception and not the norm. In addition, the only encounter with Wargs in
The Lord of the Rings is just after Caradhras, and just before Moria, and it is TOTALLY ork-less.
The whole movie-invented idea of Warg-riders in the service of Saruman is just that, a movie-invented idea. I seem to recollect that there MIGHT be a passage somewhere referring to wolf-riders in Saruman's host, although I can't find it, and might be imagining it, but it is certainly true that there were no
Wargs in the host of Isengard.
Every indication is that the Wargs did not, in fact, typically get ridden (although the above passage and the Battle of the Five Armies will show that it was certainly not unheard of). And in any case, I believe that there is ample evidence in
The Hobbit as to the ferociousness of the Wargs on their own.