King has written that his generation's mythology, and the fiction that grew from it was largely influenced by LOTR. His original intent was not so much "an answer" to LOTR, but to develop a mythology of similar sweeping, epic proportions. He was also heavily influenced by the Eastwood "man with no name" spaghetti westerns. A few years back, leading up to the publication of #VII, the reprint of the earlier paperbacks had a pretty extensive foreward esplaining where his influences came from, where they had taken him, and where he was going.
The ending in the tower was disappointing. After building it up for so long, it was almost as if he decided, “That van almost killed me. Screw this: I’ll wrapt it in a neat little package and call it good.”
My daughter asked me why Frodo and Sam didn’t just hitch a ride on an eagle, drop the ring in the crack of doom and they’re home for supper.
I suppose for the same reason King’s characters rarely ride in vehicles, e.g. if they just went through a door and there’s the Tower, kill the Crimson King, shows’s over.
hey, you could do that in the first chapter of the Gungslinger.
And that reminds me: his understanding of fireams is pathetic. And so forth and so on.
TV. Opie will screw this pooch.
Actually I believe that King was imitating or paying homage to H. P. Lovecraft, not Tolkien. This isn’t his answer to Lord of the Rings, rather his stab at approaching the erie genius that was the father of all the horror and sci-fi horror genre.
They should make some of Lovecraft’s stories into movies or TV series. Now that would be something to see.
As I thought, thanks Joe.