Peter Jackson’s mammoth Tolkien adaptation seemed to be too humourless and chockful of pointless names to be worth the bother – but I hit my stride en route
One thing I’ve learned is that it’s unusual for a guy like me –who grew up lonely and uncool – to have never had a fantasy or sci-fi phase. I never played Dungeons & Dragons. I never read a Harry Potter book. And no, I never got into Tolkien. When I was a kid, I always thought that stuff was for nerds, and I was determined not to be one. I still had a rich fantasy life, but it mostly involved girls and guitars. So I never read any of The Lord of the Rings books, and I never regretted it.
When the movies came around, I was in my early 20s, finishing college, and spending a lot of time in bars. I was still too cool for fantasy, even as these movies moved fantasy firmly into the mainstream by racking up a billion dollars in ticket sales and over a dozen
Academy Awards. A decade or so later, I stopped pretending to be cool. I became a film critic. I probably should have gotten around to watching the trilogy by now just as a matter of due diligence, but they were always low on my ever-expanding list of films to catch up on. For all their success and influence, they haven’t lingered in the public consciousness very much. These films aren’t talked about in my circles, and having disliked much of director Peter Jackson’s subsequent work, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much. They just weren’t for me, I told myself, and that was okay.