I am now done with the entire story of the hobbits.  Overall, I have enjoyed the books more than the movie.  Here’s what I have to say about The Return of the King:

I found the characters in the book seem a lot more hopeless than in the movie.  I mean, the movie does a good job of showing the despair of the city Minis Tirith, but the book really shows it much better.  I found myself at times forgetting that I already knew the ending and that most of the characters would be fine.  Speaking of already knowing the story, I kept waiting for the part where Gollum tricks Frodo into thinking that The Fat Hobbit has eaten the bread.  It’s not in the books - they added that for the movie.

I finished up The Two Towers a week or so ago and I have to say that “Trudging” no longer describes my experience (for the most part). While I preferred the first movie to the first book, I mostly feel exactly the opposite about the second book/movie. The only annoying thing was that we didn’t get to Frodo and Samwise until page 208 of a 352 page book. I can’t remember exactly, but I think the movie goes back and forth a lot more instead of doing like the book and telling each person’s day and then backing up to tell the next person’s day (if the party has been separated).

A few days ago I finished The Fellowship of the Rings.  Things picked up in the second half of the book and they accelerated in the last quarter.  I’m enjoying The Lord of the Rings a lot more now that Tolkien has gotten Tom Bombadil out of his system.  In the Wikipedia article, even Tolkien seems to understand how much Tom annoys the crap out of people.

“Tom Bombadil is not an important person — to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment.’ I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in The Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function.”

I’ve read time and again that the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (which is actually not a trilogy, but one massive book published in 3 parts) has all kinds of allegorical content and contains a lot of stuff Peter Jackson had to leave out of the movies.  Well, they’re certainly right about Mr Jackson leaving material out of the movie.  I’m on page 160 (reading during my lunch breaks) and I’d have to say that roughly 90% of what I’ve read does not appear in any form in the movie.  I’m about a little less than halfway through the first book (in the size they’ve printed) and the main characters JUST got to The Prancing Pony.  I think this happens in the first 10 or so minutes in the movie.  And what a great idea to cut all that chaff was!