LOTR Marathon (? points)

    The moment I said that I wanted to do a LOTR marathon for this class in my friend’s house it became an event. We thought about baking fun food and dressing up, marathoning them all in a day, and having a really good time. Then, my grandfather passed away the Sunday before we were going to start, plans changed to a two-day event because of the funeral, and I had no time to dress up let alone have time to actually do my school work. So to say mortality was on my mind was kind of an understatement. Knowing that JRR Tolkien served in WW1, definitely made me think that he had mortality on his mind a lot too. I ended up focusing a lot on the way Tolkien viewed death while watching the movie, silently though as to not alarm my friend and her family who I was watching with.

    The three movies have definitely blended together in my mind, so I am just going to talk about the story as a whole instead of dividing it by installment. Since I had just finished The Hobbit, that was my only book to go by in terms of continuity and fidelity of adaptation, so I definitely fixated on Bilbo’s journey. The way he physically degraded so fast after losing the ring combined with his matter-of-fact acceptance of his end definitely made me think. Everyone in the world eventually faces the grief of watching loved ones approach death, and the way Tolkien treated it like an honor and an inevitability surprised me. From being in WW1, I knew he had an intimate knowledge of friends and comrades dying young in battle, with honor of facing it head-on. What I did not expect was this philosophy to extend to Bilbo who, although had honor and bravery to spare, definitely did not die in the way of a warrior. Yet, he treated his death the same way in tone except more calm. I have really held onto the last thing that Gandalf says to the hobbits before he goes on to the boat: “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” I feel like it encapsulates what Tolkien was going for with the major character deaths throughout the books. Everything is natural, tears, death, goodness, even if it hurts to do, you should be glad that you can.

    I’ll keep the rest of my comments to a minimum. Firstly, I really want to see these movies updated. No actual changes to the movie, just an update in the CGI used because it is honestly laughable how 2000’s it looks and feels. Although I hate Freud with every fiber of my being, he definitely had something with the Id, Ego, and Superego as a character study because Gollum, Frodo, and Sam respectively mirror those archetypes almost completely. I really do get why the gays project onto Sam and Frodo so much because, especially in the movie, they are ABSOLUTELY in love. Like? Don’t go where I cannot follow? The tenderness? The faithfulness? No wonder every queer nerd yearns for that king of relationship. Also, I loved the excessive use of the Wilhelm Scream. Peak comedy.

    Loved the movies. Will watch again. The song Into the West made me cry like a baby.