Fond memories

[Bombadil]

I would definitely agree that the movies lacked the proper magic needed to satisfy fans of " The Lord of the Rings," but regardless every December for the past 3 years has been a magical time for me.

This thread is basically for looking back on the good times at the theaters during, and leading up to, each movie.

My favorite by far was at the midnight showing for The Return of the King. The best part was that everyone willing to go see the movie at that time were as nerdy as my friends and I. Myself and 3 other companions went to see it dressed as hobbits, and our one odd-friend-out as a Ringwraith. We even were used in a local news segment due to our attire!

While there we met some fellow hobbits, a Gandalf, a Legolas, and other various hardcore fans. I remember the growing feeling of anticipation as the hour grew nearer to midnight. At one point a random person stood up front and sang for us! It was truly a happy memory for me.

My favorite part though was singing the Annie Lennox song with my fellow hobbits afterwards. What a great end to the trilogy it was for me!

So Hey dol! Merry dol! Come and share your stories, and relate to the nostalgic tales!

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

I remember being the only person left in the cinema at the very end (when the music was still playing) and feeling pleased with myself.

Another point of amusement was when a fellow Downer and myself went to see the first showing of The Return Of The King in our town. There were many cinema-goers already there waiting in a large queue. Once inside we waited for a third person to join us, and when he did we blatantly lied to him and said that we were the first people in the queue!

"Oh aye! Been 'ere since the crack o' dawn, we have!"

[Elianna]

I remember the first time I saw FotR with my brothers and mommy. We're all credit watchers, and I gave a start at seeing John Rhys-Davies' name. I'm a fan of Indy, that's all I had seen him to be in before. I was like "John Rhys-Davies?! He was in this? Who was he?" My bro Jesse answered, like it was obvious to all "Gimli." It took me until Parth Galen the next time seeing it to recognize him and his voice. Then we were talking about the movie outside the theatre by a cardboard cut-out thingy of the movie poster college, and Jesse brought up, I forget how, that Hugo Weaving, better known to me as Agent Smith was Elrond. And so I finally understood my sub-conscious repulsion to him being Elrond. (I'm okay with this now.)

I saw TTT the second time with my friends Adam and Josh. I realized then that my relationship with Adam wouldn't work out, because he was confused/surprised that I cried when Haldir died. (Actually it was later that we broke up, but it makes a cool/funny story...)

While watching RotK, I could only barely contain my shouts of glee when Gandalf whacks Denethor up side the head. I'm so surprised that no one else cheered. My mom and I did get everyone to cheer when Éowyn choppped off the Fell Beast's head. And it wasn't until my third time seeing it that I remembered to bring tissues. I cried so much in RotK. My friends and I were talking about it later and Kendal mentioned that she was ashamed that she almost cried once, when Faramir left Minas Tirith I think. I smiled at that, and Kendal thought I was laughing at her. "No," I explained, "I'm smiling because for me, from 'You wish now that our places had been exchanged, that I had died and Boromir had lived' to the end, my face was wet from tears."

Such happy memories...

[Sapphire_Flame]

The first time I saw Fellowship in theaters was about three days after the movie came out. I had only read as far as the West-gate of Moria, and so everything after that in the film had me absolutely on the edge of my seat. And when Merry and Pippin were taken by the Uruk-hai at the end... Panic. Complete and total panic. I catapulted out to our car and flipped ahead into Towers just to find out what happened to my hobbits!

My resounding memories from seeing Towers on opening day are my dad and I sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start and reading aloud from The Silmarillion, and afterwards, me standing up and yelling at the screen because Shelob wasn't in the movie.

For RotK, my dad took my brother, myself, and two of my friends to see it on opening day. My brother and I were hobbits, one of my friends was an elf, my other friend was a Nazgul, and my dad wore his kilt. It was really really cold that day, so of course Dad wasn't too happy, but there was also about six or seven inches of snow everywhere. My poor bare feet almost froze! During the film, when Shelob is sneaking up on Frodo, my Nazgul friend started humming the theme from Jaws. Most lofty.

Abedithon le,

~*~Aranel~*~

[Feared Half-Elf]

The whole experience was sooo cool. We couldn't get tickets for the midnight showing, and we could only get tickets for January. It almost killed me!

But it was so fun collecting strange looks when me and my friend were dressed as elves. We even had these plastic bows, and when I dropped an arrow this twelve year old came up and gave it back. He was trying so hard not to laugh! And the woman we were sat by gave us such a disgusting look! Great fun!

[The Only Real Estel]

Believe it or not, one of my fondest memories was looking forward to FotR for 2 years, actually, one of the fondest memories would be always having a LotR movie to look forward to for 5 years.

Another good memory was sitting in the theater until the end of the credits & seeing all the drawings of the cast done by John Howe & Allan Lee (I'm guessing it was them at least ) for the first time.

Maybe my fondest moment was watching RotK for the first time, when I realized it was quite possibly the last time in quite awhile I'd see an LotR movie without knowing what was going to happen. I enjoyed RotK some much that time, it was just awesome .