How could you miss them? Things were fricking huge, and if could summon stuff balrog would be in my second right behind a dragon/hydra/leviathen.
I'm missing the point of this, more than usual. So what if they have wings? As far as my family goes, it's a fairly well-known fact.
In the Tolkien fan community its an elusive detail of Tolkien's work on whether they actually had wings or if the wings were Metaphorical. The biggest problem with this nowadays is that with the movie release the Balrog, not only was it increased in size from what Tolkien wrote them as. But was also imagined with Wings. Now after having reviewed the arguments I figured that the simplest solution to this was that Tolkien wrote this as a element of the Balrog that was ambiguous as possible. Not only did they have wings, but they were so dreadful that their shadow spread like wings across the chasm. Little side fact: From what I have read, the most important being the slaying of Feanor from the Simarillion, the Balrog were taller than men, but not the monstrous size that Peter Jackson evoked. This is because the Balrog were corrupted Maiar (this is what Sauron is) that served Morgoth. These Maiar being the same thing that Gandalf is. This however doesn't prove anything as we can see in Peter Jackson's interpretation Gandalf uses the power of the Ring of Narya(Fire) and Glamdring. These items were of immense power, but brings to mind the argument what else from the second age would have this power. So all in all we really can't decipher if the Balrog had wings and what their size was (This in relation to their ability to fly due to size) Overall what I believe is that the Balrog, could follow either pretense. Large, Small, Wings, no wings. In truth I think Peter Jackson really took the idea of the Balrog up a notch. One that ,I, as a Tolkien follower feel sufficiently evokes the idea of the Balrog. A beast of shadow and flame. Yes I am a Tolkien Fan and I'm proud of it.
I own the LoTR Encyclopedia, the OLD one...The Balrog is show having vestigial wings in it. This was published while Tolkien was alive, I assume it's canon. Course, I could be wrong.
See Fenix that is the tricky part. Their have been several pieces of work published that have the Balrog with wings during the time that Tolkien was alive. But Tolkien never gave a definitive answer to if they did or if they didn't. So most works assume that they do have a wings and are monstrous in form. The only real answer is that both answers are cannon and not cannon at the same time. Thus is why this is the greatest question in the Tolkien community. Which version ijff. I decided the Nerdiness factor isn't necessarily all that nerdy since Vin Diesel did it. (He has played DnD forever pretty much.)
Took you long enough. I've been into this stuff for ages already, haha. Also: Balrogs are messed up by Tolkien anyway. First they were about twice as large as a human, and could be slain by regular elves. Then, also in the Silmarillion, a few of them were powerfull enough to repel Ungoliant, who had almost destroyed Morgoth himself. Seriousy, it makes no sense at all. However, the older generations of the Noldor are far more powerful then Elves like Legolas. By the way, Ungoliant is Shelob's mother, kinda. Not even sure what she really is, as none of the Valar, nor Eru created her. Or at least that wasn't really clear.
Ungoliant is one of Tolkien's Pre-Eru denizens of middle earth. She is in the category of Pre-Myth-Myth. She is up there with Tom Bombadil, the Ents, and of course Ungoliant. Back to the Balrogs. The biggest difference however I see with the Balrogs applies to all of the Maiar. In that the longer they existed the less powerful they became. However in relationship to the repelling of Ungoliant we see the combination of Maiar from many of the different Valar. So their combined might repelling Ungoliant isn't surprising. But alone they would be susceptible to the wrath of either.