thats what they were called? I do remember that despite what most people think wizards are not humans, but a completely different race

Yeah, there's a fair load of demigods beings running around. There are 15 Valar, the true gods of the world (not including Melkor, the original evil god) and then a ton of Mair spirits, which include the wizards, Sauron, Bombadil, the River Daughter, the Balrogs, Ungoliant the first spider (I think, can't remember now) and a load of others who we mostly never hear about.

Also Elrond and Arwen have some Maiar blood as well, to go with their human and Elven side.

All of these conversations are making me think that it's not a Hobbit movie we need. We need The Silmarillion or some of those stories to be adapted. Shit man, the saga of Feanor and his sons would be fucking awesome to see on the screen. Almost any of those stories would work well.

Edit: And Turin's story would be pretty awesome. The scale of these stories doesn't have to be too big and epic. I would gladly settle for a more personal and complex tale.

I think if I remember correctly they had to give up some of their power to take on human form like Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast did, though, so they're kind of stuck in a quasi-human state where they can be killed and have way less power. That's why Gandalf can't just go and fight Sauron hand-to-hand despite them both originally being Maiar, Gandalf has now got one hand tied behind his back and a limp, basically.

As for why they don't just fly on eagles to Mount Doom, eagles are apparently fairly elusive creatures, like you don't just know where they're at, plus they have to secretly do stuff to avoid the ring getting back to Sauron, so maybe a daredevil run for Amon Amarth from Rivendell on eagle-back is out of the question 'cause potentially the Witch-King and his duddies could catch you somewhere around Dunland on pterodactyl-back and blow you all out of the sky with fireballs or whatever.

As for why they can't just dump the ring in the ocean, as someone pointed out Sauron is effectively immortal as he is, he can't ever be destroyed unless you get rid of the ring. It's a bit like the Horcruxes in those Harry Potter books, Sauron's spirit is attached to the ring and that is what is keeping him attached to the mortal plane instead of being tossed out with Morgoth or whatever. If he gets the ring his victory will just be swifter than otherwise because he'll have his physical form back, the only way to win is to destroy it.

Anyway, these movies are kind of pointless in the end if you take the story as a whole since if you read the Silmarillion and all the background information you know that 1. all the crap before the events of The Hobbit and LOTR are way more epic and amazing than the events recounted therein, 2. they face an even greater foe named Morgoth who is like Sauron on steroids, so Sauron is actually kind of lame in comparison, and 3. eventually even after the super epic world-rocking War of the Ring there's supposed to be another Ragnarok-like event where Morgoth finally escapes from the outer dimension, revives Sauron, and there is one final epic battle with a bunch of revived elf-types and Turin or whatever is also revived (not sure who's doing all this reviving, maybe the other Valar in response to Morgoth reviving his servants, but anyway) and finally ends everything by stabbing Morgoth in the mouth with the black sword.

No he isn't. It's never expressely stated what Tom is but he defineatly not Maia who are all named at same point. He appears to be the spirit of the earth or some such, possibly the big high god or some such.
Mostly he just a motherfucker though.
Also doesn't covet the ring.
Possibly the only character who isn't Sauron.

Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything
 

I think its obvious why you don't try to ride the eagles into Mordor; they are very, very big predators and most of your party mates are...not so big. Suppose your ally mistakes the ringbearer for a vole, gulps him down, and gets the ultimate artifact of doom lodged square in his craw?

No, see, they're smart talking eagles.

The witchking will fly up and whisper in their ears secret hobbit recipes.