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

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

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, 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 had bought the Fellowship DVD for me a year before, and I got three-quarters of the way through before losing interest shortly 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 earlier, so feeling guilty, I decide to not only watch it but watch it with 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-cliché “I am living in this fantastic story” way that has only been replicated with a handful of films¹ since.

Part of it must’ve been the breathtaking cinematography, part the unique three-strand plot, and part the knowledge that this was the thing everyone was into. 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 meant to watch a movie with real stakes.²

Well, thanks to that, for the week that followed I was hooked. I watched all the bonus features on that DVD. Then, in one day, watched all of The Fellowship of the Ring from the start and immediately after watched The Two Towers again.

What made this Lord of the Rings marathon even better was that it was interspersed with two holiday dinner visits to family friends’ houses. One with the family of my brother’s best friend Tim, where I met Tim’s college-aged brother Matt and played Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon with him for three hours³. 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, 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 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.

It was a 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.

And books, notably in #124.
My movie-watching experience had been very limited, and mostly in the Disney sphere, up to that point.
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).