Favorite Tolkien Middle-Earth Character

[dee-bow]

who is your favorite tolkien middle earth character?
mine has to be gollum. his intellect turned him into near living dead, while he maintained a sense of humor.

[Scott H. Andrews]

I think for me, it's Radagast the Brown. :) He seemed cool and mysterious to me because he's only mentioned once or twice. I wonder if there could've been a cool sequel about his adventures!

[dee-bow]

how about favorite part? mine would have to be pippen's description of his and gandalf's mad dash to gondor, on the back of shadowfax. as if the three of them stood still and the world rolled beneath them.

[dee-bow]

on a side note, i think the 1979 animated version of return of the king is the best cinema depiction of tolkien. and this movie quotes my favorite gandalf line, which is something in the vane of 'go back to the nothingness prepared for you!'

[Kenneth Mark Hoover]

Samwise Gamgee. He's the everyman I can identify with.

I also agree the scene with them riding Shadowfax and the world turning underneath is all made of literary awesome.

[dee-bow]

i would, however, like to amend my favorite part. the shadowfax part is a scene i found totally cool when posing the question to myself. but, my truly favorite part is in the house of tom bombadil, when after dealing with old man willow there were steaming hot pots of water waiting for the hobbits in their dressing rooms. this is a part my father read to me as a child and i remember thinking, "wow, that hot water is going to feel good on those dirty hobbits." now i seem to remember there was a song sung as they bathed, but the edition i have here at the house has no such verse. can anyone remember a bathing song in the house of tom bombadil, or am i making things up?

[The Crimson Avenger]

My favorite character is Gimli. I love his journey and his growth as a character. That's one reason I hated Jackson's movie. They decided to use Gimli for comic relief. They ended up taking his dignity.

There's just too many good scenes but the one that stands out is Gandalf standing down the Witch-King, "You shall not pass!" I was 10 years old and that just floored me.

[Scott H. Andrews]

That's one reason I hated Jackson's movie. They decided to use Gimli for comic relief. They ended up taking his dignity.
Yeah, most of it, for sure. I hated "the Ring goes to Gondor!" because that whole sequence gutted Faramir's character.

Jackson made a number of concessions to the pop movie audience. I read an interview somewhere of him saying that he was worried that the movies wouldn't be successful and that that would make studios reluctant to ever green-light huge projects like that in the future, so he made those changes that would entertain regular movie-goers who knew nothing about the books.

I think there's a lesson in that for fiction as well. You can serve a larger audience or a smaller niche one, but it's very tough to capture both.

[cannonfodder]

While Radagast the Brown is indeed a very cool guy, I'm going to have to go with Beorn from The Hobbit (ok, I know, I know, not technically in the LotR). Still, Beorn had that perfect blend of menace and power and friendliness. Awesome.