Epic Saturday
by Andrew Collins
I’m not a huge fan of the “favorite movie” designation. It’s kind of like calling someone your “best friend.” But if you pointed a gun at my head and told me to make a list of my top films, I’d have to start with The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Growing up, I didn’t go to many movies. I was in junior high when Peter Jackson’s films first hit the big screen, and I never saw them in theaters. But I remember finishing the books right about the time The Return of the King came out on DVD. I immediately fell in love. Since then, I’ve seen the entire trilogy at least a half-dozen times.
That’s why I decided to spend a day watching the entire special extended edition cut of The Lord of the Rings in an actual theater. By any account the films are masterfully done, but more than that, they hold a central place in the imagination of my youth. My younger brother and I used to stay up late at night talking about all sorts of nerdy things from the Middle Earth universe that I read about at The Thain’s Book.
(For those of you who just clicked that link, yes, I was one of those homeschoolers. I named my first email account after Gamling, a leader of the Rohirrim, but a relatively minor character in the films. One of my favorite computer games in high school was Battle for Middle Earth. I even helped one of my best friends develop a character-based Lord of the Rings board game for a high school project.)
Anyway, with The Hobbit set to premier a week later, it simply had to happen. On Saturday morning, I drove with my brother down to the Century 8 Theater in North Hollywood. The theater was not quite old enough to have that vintage feel and not located in the best part of town, but it was clean and welcoming inside. We picked up our “Trilogy Marathon” lanyards and went to theater 7 about 15 minutes before the show started. It was completely empty. Three couples and one middle-aged man showed up by the time it started, but we had the place mostly to ourselves. The couples were probably in their mid-to-late twenties, making my brother and me the youngest in the theater. We stumbled upon the one row that had reclining seats — close to the front, but not too close — and left an appropriate one-seat gap between us. The familiar strains of the score washed over us, and we fell headlong into Middle Earth and The Fellowship of the Ring.
After the first film, I realized I would never get better value out of a popcorn and soda from the concessions. Food and beverages are so overpriced in theaters that they generally are not part of my filmgoing experience, but this time I broke down and bought a large popcorn and soda to share with my brother. Our lanyards guaranteed us one-dollar refills the rest of the day.
“You’re brave,” said the girl at the counter, smiling as she saw our lanyards.
“Yeah?” I laughed. “I guess so, but we love The Lord of the Rings.”
She told me she was more of a Harry Potter fan.
We ate and drank our way through the popcorn and soda twice by the time The Two Towers finished. When we came back for The Return of the King, someone had thrown the popcorn tub and soda cup away. So much for the dollar refills.
I had done two movie marathons before this — all six Star Wars films at a friend’s house on New Year’s Eve, and last summer for The Dark Knight Rises when my local theater showed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight right before the midnight premier. The Lord of the Rings topped them both by a mile. Because all three films were shot at the same time and written as one coherent story, they all flow with impeccable continuity and coherence (unlike, say, the actress change in the Dark Knight trilogy and, well, Star Wars should be obvious enough). Thoroughly steeped in Middle Earth lore, I savored every detail, every grimace from Frodo, every tender bit of counsel from Gandalf, the glowing signal beacons of Gondor spanning the mountains, the shining purity of Rivendell and Lothlórien, even the grime and spittle of the orcs. There was something magical about escaping into a fantasy world in the darkness of the theater and watching the culmination of thousands of years of history. If humans had longer attention spans, this would be the only way to watch The Lord of the Rings.
The visuals and effects proved surprisingly resilient, for being eleven years old. Fantastic creatures of Middle Earth like the Balrog, fell beasts, and trolls still feel quite believable, even on the big screen. I only noticed that the vast shots of large armies looked distractingly computer generated at times – probably because I’ve never seen the films on such a large screen before.
(Oh, and thanks to the meme generation, it was impossible to watch the council of Elrond without chuckling at Boromir’s most famous moment, “One does not simply walk into Mordor.” That line is forever ruined.)
Before each film, a short clip played of director Peter Jackson talking to the audience about some of his most memorable moments making the films. Jackson thanked us for coming over and over again, giving me a sense of privilege and exclusivity that made the entire experience feel even more worthwhile. We learned that the iconic scene of Gollum’s schizophrenia in The Two Towers was a last minute addition — an almost desperate attempt to add a little oomph to Gollum’s character — that was prepared and shot on the side in just a few days due to time constraints. And in the charge of the Rohirrim at Pelennor Fields, Jackson made sure that there were exactly 6,000 riders, the same as Tolkien’s description in the books. He did this because he loved reading about the Battle of Waterloo as a boy. The cavalry charge of 6,000 riders in that historical battle had fired Jackson’s imagination, and he wanted to see what it might have looked like. Now, we know. It must have been stunning.
A decade removed from their original release, I have no doubt the Lord of the Rings movies will stand the test of time. We will always enjoy a great story — something that taps into the deepest longings of the human spirit and, for a few hours, fulfills our desires for adventure, heroism, and significance. The Lord of the Rings does this as well as anything.
By the time Sam told Frodo at the foot of mount Doom, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” I was emotionally exhausted, and my focus had begun to wane. I knew how the story ended, and my mind started wandering toward my own affairs back in the real world. In other words, I became self-conscious of my attempt to emotionally engage in the world of the film. I had to tell myself to focus and savor how epic Aragorn’s speech was. I began to wonder if consuming a tub of popcorn, a jumbo coke, two cheeseburgers, and a ten-piece chicken McNuggets while sitting in a dark room all day would have an adverse affect on my health. That didn’t stop me, however, from feeling a deep sense of satisfaction and completion when Sam closed the door to his hobbit-hole to write the last chapter of Frodo and Bilbo’s book.
Over the years, my appreciation for The Lord of the Rings has changed. At first I mainly loved the battle scenes and awesome orc kills, but the older I get and the more I come to see life as a meaningful adventure itself, the more I appreciate moments like Faramir’s charge to retake Osgiliath while Pippin sings to Denethor (arguably the best scene in the entire trilogy), or Aragorn’s doubt about taking his place as king of Gondor, or Frodo’s conversation with Gandalf in the Mines of Moria about justice, destiny, and death. For me, it has become one of those stories that really mattered — the ones Sam Gamgee talks about that are full of darkness and danger, where hope seemed lost, but the heroes kept going because they were holding onto something. It reminds me that even the smallest of us matter, and it gives me hope that even in our disenchanted, late modern world, perhaps there is still some good worth fighting for after all.
