I really enjoyed the sequel, “Matt Helm’s Deep”. ;’) I haven’t read that in years, but I reread it ahead of the release of the first movie, and enjoyed revisiting it — Legolas and Gimli’s competition, and visualizing the layout of the fort, the attackers’ ladders, etc. Gandalf’s just showing up after having been “dead” for months, then verbally b-slapping one of the Hobbits, while multi-tasking the comprehensive defeat of Saruman and uprooting and repair of all the damage he’d caused, and Treebeard acting all lah-dee-dah as he was waiting for the G man, having been in on the entire thing and kept quiet about it. I really love that whole post-Breaking part of the trilogy.
I grew up in the country but never wanted a horse, wouldn’t have been able to get one if I had. But I wanted my own Shadowfax, and who wouldn’t, eh? Gandalf and Pippin are riding to Gondor, and a nazgul is overhead, he asks for more speed, and Shadowfax suddenly accelerates like he was wondering what took him so long to ask.
I’ve said it before, many times, if they’d effed up the Siege of Gondor, I’d have been done with those movies. I can’t even think of the stand at the gate — Gandalf and Shadowfax refuse to budge in the face of the Lord of the Nazgul, “you shall not pass”, the cock crows, and the Rohirrim arrive blowing horns — without getting in touch with my feminine side, as it were. I’m doing it now, aamof.
Seriously, Gandalf was a little put out when he had to hold the bridge in Moria against a balrog, but he kicked the ever-lovin’ crap of it, then froze his ass on a mountain, got carried for hundreds of miles by eagles, and those claws can’t be all that comfortable, has a shower and a protein shake, and hits the road again. There must have been chunks of Morgoth in that guy’s stool.
I saw The Hobbit in December and I bought the LOTR and started to read the first chapter and then realize I should read The Hobbit first. I saw the 1977 NBC cartoon when I was a kid, but I did see any of the LOTR, not even the movies when they came out in 2001. I liked the movies, but I liked the music from the movie even more.
I really love the book. I cannot get enough of the works of Tolkien.