Were the rhinoceros-esque creatures hauling Grond* just a PJ invention or are they actually mentioned in the book? My books are in deep storage in another country so I can’t check on it myself.
I’m actually just curious since I have a rhino addiction and just thought they were pretty neato. 
[sub]* Grond being the battering ram that destroyed the Great Gate at Minas Tirith.[/sub]
In the books, Grond is hauled by “great beasts”, which are presumably Mumakil.
Regarding Grond:
So Grond was hauled by “great beasts” which were earlier specifically identified as mumaks. So those triceratops (or whatever they were) in the film were PJ inventions, QED.
Since PJ turned the mumakil from being just real big elephants into being really really big elephants, he felt he had to use a different critter as a draft animal. He seems to have visualized them as the rhino equivalents to the oliphaunts.
It worked for me.
I can’t vividly recall what they looked like, but while watching the movie they reminded me of a variant on the cave trolls, in the same way as there being different strands of orcs.
In the film it would have been weird to see the Orc army using Mumakil, just as it would have been weird to see them using horses. Is there any other reason in the book to think they had access to them?
Grondhogs?
…oh, WINCE…
Thanks for the responses.
And thanks to Dr. Rieux, I will now be obligated to refer to them as “Grondhogs”.
great! grondhogs, thank you dr. rieux!
My work here is done…
Don’t applaud–just throw money!
Question–what’s the difference between the Mumakil and the Oliphaunt? I was going to start a thread, but since this is here…
The difference between a Mumakil and a Oliphaunt is the same difference between Gandalf and Mithrandir (et al), and between Strider, Aragorn, and Elesar(sp?) (et al). They are the same thing (I think) jsut different names.
Remeber, in LOTR everything has a name, and anything important has more than one.
Brian
That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I thought maybe the Mumakil were just bigger.
squeegee: << So Grond was hauled by “great beasts” which were earlier specifically identified as mumaks. >>
Seems to me that the term “great beast” isn’t necessarily a unique reference, so much as a descriptive term. “There came great beasts like houses, the mumakil” and “It was drawn by great beasts with horns on their snouts” are not incompatible. While the rhino-like critters are Jacksonian, I wouldn’t dismiss them as non-Tolkien so quickly. I think it’s perfectly consistent, and in fact, I never thought of Grond as pulled by oliphaunts but by some unnamed and unknown “great beasts.”
Hi, CK. Point taken, and it’s surely debatable. However, the two sentences I noted were in adjoining paragraphs, not pages apart, so the Great Beasts reference seemed – to me – to reference the mumakil description just above. YMMV. And honestly, I don’t have a big problem with the Giant Rhinos hauling Grond in the film; I thought it was kinda fun to see yet another Big Ugly CG Thing hauling the war machinery. They did such a cool job on that whole sequence!
And, Dr. Rieux, you are soo going to heck for that pun!