Was Gollum's slip the only way?

[Parmawen]

Originally Posted by Tarthang

Personally, I believe Sam would have been able to shove Frodo into the Cracks of Doom were it necessary. But then again, while Frodo had lost the battle to resist the Ring's influence to put it on, we never fully got to see wether or not Frodo mastered the Ring or it he.

I'm assuming Frodo was mastered by the ring, as opposed to mastering the ring. I thought that he had succumbed to the ring at last and could not resist it's pull, hence putting it on. Besides, Frodo was so weak at that point there's no way he could have won over the force of Sauron.

As for Sam, I don't really believe he could have pushed his master into Mount Doom. His love and devotion for Frodo were stronger than his feelings for Middle-Earth, as far as I could tell. He always seemed to have a smaller perspective of the world, and he'd hold the smaller, familiar things like Frodo closer to him than the wide, broader idea of the world.

In the big picture, I don't think Frodo himself would have been able to destroy the ring, and Sam wasn't about to push him over, so I suppose, sad as it is, it really was the only way for it to be destroyed. I hated in the movie how it's Frodo and Gollum fighting that ends with Gollum slipping over, while in the book, he was dancing with glee, was he not? The movie shows a darker, more evil side of Frodo that I don't like to believe really was there. The ring began with violence, and ended in violence in the movie. It just didn't seem like something Frodo would do. Although he had changed a lot through the movies, so it could have been part of his change. Still, I thought Tolkien handled it much better in the books, leaving us with faith in Frodo and his soul, and content that the Ring was destroyed.

Perhaps the finality of Gollum being destroyed along with the rest of evil (orcs, Sauron, the ring itself) puts an official end to everything, guaranteeing no cheesy sequals and leaving all ends tied up. That way we never have to wonder about if Gollum was recovering from his ownership of the ring afterwards.