Milestone Marathon – LOTR Trilogy

For those of you paying attention to my movie stats (which based on my views, not too many of you) :), I have now seen 597 movies since starting this blog last April.

As I was approaching this new milestone of 600, I contemplated what series of movies would be most appropriate.  The answer was actually quite simple when I looked at the rate of my movie watching.

I have had a plan to finish watching and re-watching all 85 (86 if you include the winner of this years 9 nominees) before this years Oscars  and since one of my favorite winners was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), I chose to finish my Oscar task with the viewing of all 3 movies in a row.

The win for RoTK is actually a win for the entire trilogy because all 3 movies lean on each other and are essential viewing for anyone interested in these kind of movies.

I must confess that I have tried numerous times to read this trilogy by Tolkien, but was just too bored by his bland writing.  He is a VERY descriptive author and I can’t even count the countless times that his writing put me to sleep.  The irony of this is that I believe that his stories are well thought out, but he just didn’t put it to paper in an interesting way.

One mustn’t forget that he was an academic; a linguistics professor and not a writer of fantasy by profession.

As a kid, I loved the story of The Hobbit and played D&D with my friends all the time so I was very immersed in the Fantasy world and without Tolkien’s input, that genre might not have been created.

Regardless, when the movies were announced, I was ecstatic and saw the first two twice in the theater and bought each Extended Edition DVD set when they were released.  It wasn’t easy waiting a year between each, but it ultimately was worth it.

I believe that I have seen each of the movies approximately 10 times usually in close proximity to one another.

All together, the trilogy is more than 12 hours long when watching the extended editions.  They were nominated for 30 Oscars in total and won 18.

This trilogy single-handedly changed the way movies were made since so many movie-making techniques were either enhanced or created during the time these were made.

It also changed the way The Academy viewed the genre because although the first film had the most nominations in that year (13), and the second had 6 neither were able to take home that top prize, but by the time RoTK came around, no one could deny how great this trilogy really was no matter the genre.  RoTK also manged a feat only reached thrice before where a Best Picture Winner swept every category it was nominated for.

and now on to my reviews….