I like fantasy and I like the trimmings that come with it. The only real time I would say that I was immersed in the genre was when I first read The Lord of the Rings. Up until then I was a massive Science Fiction/fantasy geek. Star Wars was my lifeblood, followed by Doctor Who. Those two, especially the former consumed my every waking moment. It was only after the release of The Phantom Menace that things began to change.
I desperately wanted to like Phantom Menace, but I couldn't get past the kiddiness of Jar Jar Binks. Yes the original had the appeal for children, and cuddly teddy bears fighting an evil empire but somehow the terrible dialogue and wooden acting lifted the veil that children have over their eyes and then begin to see the world through critical thinking.
I consider seeing the Phantom
Menace to be the beginning of the end of my childhood. In the following years,
my father died, September 11th all force me to grow up and puberty made me
painfully aware of how inadequate I was with girls but other people in general.
I had no social skills to speak of and I sometimes seemed to shun my geeky
interests, replacing them with music and the things that teenagers are want to
do in the hopes of social acceptance.The around the time father my father's death, something extraordinary happened. Fantasy and High fantasy at that was all the rage. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy had begun to be released and everyone was Middle-Earth crazy, I included.
At the time, there was quite simply nothing like it. Previous Hollywood fantasy movies (not all) had suffered from shoddy production values, camp acting and lacking in storytelling. Peter Jackson and co. mined Tolkien’s rich mythology and did something remarkable. It took fantasy seriously. Of course there is plenty of humour in Rings, but the main thing was that it was not poking fun at the story or the genre. Middle-Earth was treated as a real world and at times even excelled the descriptions of what Tolkien created which tended to slip into; Merry Olde England archetypes, especially where Hobbits where concerned.
Everything about the trilogy was enthralling. The Fellowship of the Ring is the strongest of the trilogy because it followed the basic quest storyline, so loved in literature. It has been so used much because it works. You can do what you want with it, place it into any setting Joseph Campbell’s definition of The Hero's journey will always prevail.
I became obsessed with the books, the mythology and any of the objects connected to the film, due in part to the excellent skill of the Weta Workshop. Rings was a trilogy for a new generation and I will not get into fights about which is better. They are their own things and work in different ways and equally as effective.
After Return of the King came out my life was once again going in a different direction. I had finished University and was going around one temp job to another. I was stuck in a perpetual limbo. It took me time to find where I was going.
Then I went on a date with a lovely woman who was destined to become my wife. But that is another tale...
