#108. Lord of the Rings (Wednesday, December 31, 2003)

What was your best day…of appreciating greatness, even if it wasn’t your thing?

I’ll admit that I was not one of those kids who was super-into Lord of the Rings when the films came out in 2001-2003, despite being in the perfect age range.

In fact, while I would see half my middle school class carrying around one of the original Tolkien books at any given time, I hadn’t even finished watching the first movie by the time The Return of the King came out in theaters two weeks before this. (My dad bought the DVD for me a year before, and I got two-thirds of the way through before losing interest right after the Balrog scene.)

But then, on this Boxing Day, my dad comes home unexpectedly with a rented Extended Edition of The Two Towers. Now, we’d just had a massive argument two days earlier¹, so feeling particularly guilty, I decide to not only watch it but watch it with a full commitment.

As it turns out, when you watch an epic film like Lord of the Rings with one hundred percent undivided attention, it becomes something completely different. Even though I had only a loose understanding of the plotlines and characters leading up, I felt physically immersed in what was going on – in a non-cliche “I have been literally been transported into this fantastic story” way that has only been replicated with a handful of films since.

Part of it must’ve been the breathtaking cinematography, part of it the unique three-strand structure of the plot, and part of it I’m sure the knowledge that this was the thing everyone was into right now. The Battle of Helm’s Deep in particular struck me with its scope and epicness; as if, in that moment I realized for the first time what it even meant to be watching a movie with real stakes.²

Well, thanks to that, for the week that followed I was hooked. I watched all (literally all) the bonus features on that DVD, then watched all of The Fellowship of the Ring from the start and immediately after watched The Two Towers again (the latter two taking place in the same day, a few days later).

What made this Lord of the Rings marathon even cooler was that it was interspersed with two separate holiday dinner visits to family friends’ houses. One with the family of my brother’s best friend Tim³, where I met Tim’s college-aged brother Matt and played Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon with him for three hours⁴. And one with my mom’s longtime friend Mrs. Guo and her crowd, who all had kids a few years older or younger than me. Where, as per annual tradition, we played games in the basement to an ungodly hour while the adults played cards and talked/drank and lost track of time. The infusion of all this in the middle of my Middle-Earth frenzy just brought the overall experience to another level.

But of course, the story wasn’t done yet. With me having worn out the first two movies, there was only one thing left to do. And on New Year’s Eve, I walked into the theater – with an absurd amount of built-up excitement – to watch The Return of the King. Looking back, I’m grateful to be part of that original group who saw that generational movie on the big screen when it first came out.

Needless to say, it met those expectations and then some.

That was some kind of one week fever dream. But it was only a fever dream, as it was gradually forgotten and my fandom for Lord of the Rings never truly developed from that point. I’ve only watched the movies a few times since then, and never ended up reading the books or getting into the detailed lore.

But for that one week, at least, I was able to experience greatness in the fullest way a person can.

Not a rare occurrence, especially around holiday times for some reason. The specific cause of this one escapes me now.
My movie-watching experience had been very limited, and mostly in the Disney sphere, up to that point.
Both seven years younger.
Fresh off my epic Lord of the Rings experience, I was hyped for another adult, war-based entertainment experience (i.e. something I’d been woefully underexposed to up to that point).