Why LOTR Sucks: You Will Be Forced To Admit I’m Right

It’s taken me a long time to write this post. I had wanted to find closure right away but maybe what I really needed was anesthesia. I needed to pretend I could wake up and it had all been a nightmare. There was no Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings. Or if there was, it wasn’t a godawful travesty.

You know how sometimes in a dream, you feel like everyone is laughing at you. You showed up to school naked, or you’re playing football but have forgotten how to move. That’s what the Lord of the Rings has become for me. This living nightmare, where I’m the only one who realizes what a bad movie it is. This blogging experiment was an attempt to quantify what exactly is wrong with these movies, which I think I’ve done, and to try and figure out what everyone else sees in them, which is still a mystery to me.

I’d like to forget these movies exist, or failing that, just remember the good parts. I’d like to think the Hobbit, part one of which comes out this year, will be a masterpiece, and Peter Jackson has learned from his mistakes. But he may not even know he made any mistakes. The trilogy made millions, probably billions, of dollars, and won countless academy awards. Peter Jackson is a hero. Peter Jackson can do no wrong. Peter Jackson hasn’t made even a half way decent movie since and shouldn’t that fucking tell you something? He’s not a good story teller. He butchered my favorite books of all time, he made an awful remake of a beloved classic, and he’s hoping that by directing the Hobbit he’ll be back on top again. And it will probably work.

I would like to say that I will avoid the Hobbit, but I know I won’t be able to resist. The fact I tortured myself with this rewatching of the Lord of the Rings tells you everything you need to know. I enjoy the pain.

But if I’ve done one bit of good, it’s this: I defy anyone to read through this blog and ever be able to enjoy the Lord of the Rings in the same way again. You won’t be able to do it. You’ll tell yourself that I’m all wrong, but when you see Frodo crying in slow motion for the 50th time, or you see Liv Tyler mooning for the camera, you’ll realize that I was right. These movies suck.

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