A few weekends back I took the time and inserted the One Ring again. Saturday evening I watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and sunday I finished with The Return of the King.

Awesome, simply awesome.

I watched the first two movies as double feature in the cinema as “blind buy”. I’ve never read LOTR before. I was very impressed. I liked the story from the beginning and was eager to know how it ended. Thus, I bought the books (german translation). After 80-or-so pages I gave up. A few months later I started again and after the first 100 pages it was something like readable. But I never really enjoyed it.

Then I watched the third movie (I knew how it was going to end and also knew which parts would be missing but I didn’t mind). After that I thought I gave it a shot and read it in the original language – klingon. Just kidding. But to be honest, it wasn’t much better. I was really impressed by the fact that there were countless english words describing the landscape I’ve had never heard before. It was hard work for me. Before LOTR I read only the Potter books and some Babylon 5 novels. But overall, I don’t think that JRR was a good storyteller. The story itself is great but he couldn’t tell it very good. IMHO! Please don’t crucify me.

But Peter Jackson could and he did. I bought the theatrical version, knowing there would be a SEE. After I got the SEE I gave the theatricals to my mother because I knew I wouldn’t watch them again. Last year Amazon.com sold the CE for $22 each and I took the offer. Thus I owned every version at one time and still own the SEE and CE.

This weekend I watched it again and was again very impressed and very moved. I confess: I sobbed when Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf & Frodo departed from the Grey Heavens.

11 out of 10 points for all three movies.

A bit disappointing for me was that – although I am usually not a bonus feature watcher – that none of the SEE/CE (the discs are the same) contains a movie trailer. Sad is also that the short movie of Sean Astin (“Sam”) The Long and the Short of It and the Making-Of of TLATSOI are only contained on the TTT theatrical DVD. I really liked that one!