I know this board hates on em, for the multiple endings, for the homoerotic shit at the end, blah blah blah.

Fuck you. Lord of the Rings is the shit. Go back and re-examine if you have any doubts about their standing in the cinematic hall of fame, I beg of you. Any denial of this fact is sheer ignorance.

Do you realize how good they are? Peter Jackson took some of the most beloved books ever, loved by the geekiest and most picky audience ever made, made them into three big films... and SATISFIED THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY. Do you understand how powerful geek hate and doubt is, and what a task it is to overcome?

I've re-watched them lately, capping the viewings off with a screening of The Two Towers in DC, with a live orchestra playing the score (vastly underrated in the pantheon of great scores, since it's enormously effective) in place of the score itself, at a huge outdoor theater. It was truly special, one of the best movie experiences I've ever had.

So go on. Mock them, underrate them. Call the shit corny. Mention that "they're great, but not your favorites," etc.-- cop pleas, if you must. But Peter Jackson took a perfect epic cast, gave them perfect epic dialogue, framed them with perfect epic camerawork in a perfect epic setting, set it to a perfect epic score, and topped it off with a giant helping of some of the best and most epic effects work I've ever seen in any movie ever.

Any movie after LOTR trying to accomplish anywhere near the same level of epicness will stand in its shadow. It's already a cliche to have the giant never-ending army shot-- it's never as effective as in LOTR, where even now that the shot is a cliche, it's STILL awe-inspiring. As we continue to go into the future of motion-capture technology, I still have never seen a performance of a CGI character better than Andy Serkis as Gollum. It's so nuanced, so funny, so tragic, and his death is truly one of the best and most memorable deaths in all of cinema history.

Any hate on LOTR is a feeble attempt to throw stones at a giant. Any possible weakness is made up for by the vast amounts of everything that everyone involved did right. If you're sitting down, watching them distraction-free, I refuse to believe you will not be engaged. I'm not even the biggest sci-fi/fantasy nerd in the world, and these movies blow me away.

If you don't appreciate these movies properly, fuck you. Period. (c) Crooze.

My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide