I began counting down to The Two Towers on Monday, much to my wife's chagrin, because it now comes out in less than a month. I thought I'd take a moment here to let you all in on how excited I am.
The true power of Peter Jackson's movies is put into perspective when you go back to the summer of 1999, where you will find me camped out overnight to buy first-day tickets to The Phantom Menace. There were other theaters in my city that had plenty of tickets available, but I camped out because a) I wanted to see it on a huge screen and b) I was a devout fan and acolyte of all things Star Wars. We camped out because, doggone it, we were supposed to. Then we actually saw the movie and pretended to love, all while talking under our breath about the things we didn't like. By the time Attack of the Clones came into view our enthusiasm was dampened--we crossed our fingers and said "I hope it doesn't suck," and then wandered into the theater on the second or even third weekend for two hours of agreeably unphenomenal entertainment. The movies are well made, but we have too much baggage to enjoy them properly; half of our mind watches the movie as it is, while the other half is busy imagining it as we wanted it to be. Oh well, we sighed, no movie could live up to that kind of expectation.
But we were wrong. If any movie could be more anticipated than Star Wars, it would have to be The Lord of the Rings. They are like the polar pillars of modern geek culture--the greatest movies ever made and the greatest books ever written. Lord of the Rings, by merit of its age and academic pretenses, has an even wider fan base than Star Wars. When Fellowship came out we were giddy with anticipation, but The Phantom Menace had taught us not to get our hopes up and we didn't. We braced ourselves for something excitingly shallow and disturbingly distant from our own mental images, but the movie surprised us by being incredible. Disagree with me if you like, but it was an awesome movie and we all loved it. Whereas Star Wars failed to live up to our expectations and left us fairly tepid about the sequel, The Lord of the Rings surpassed my expectations and had me drooling for a sequel before I even left my seat in the theater.
The fact that The Two Towers was my favorite book only heightens the situation--it increases my anticipation while raising the odds that I will be betrayed and disappointed. The Riders of Rohan the Ents are the coolest groups of people in the series, and the moving interaction between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum is one of the most profound subjects Tolkien ever approached. I have learned, however, to trust Peter Jackson as much as if he opened my brain, photocopied my memories, improved on them, and then put them into his movie.
I hope you're all as excited as I am, and if you're not then I hope you didn't read my entire post--it would probably bore anyone who wasn't a raving fanboy. But still, I thought I'd let you know that the countdown has begun. I think I might camp out again, because doggone it, you're just supposed to.