Before he was my husband, my boyfriend made a pseudo tradition to watch the entire extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy during Christmas time. I sort of liked this idea and would join him. Now that I have accepted his two rings, for some reason, I have fully embraced this now tradition and have transformed it to become more amusing than anything else.
When I first saw the movies in theaters, it was very easy to take the "gay hobbit" and "damn, Legolas is pretty" perspectives. It was compounded by two friends that were louder than me and we never looked back. However, as the count of times I've consumed these movies gets higher, I grew wiser and realized gay jokes lose their giggle factor after a while, Legolas is pretty like a woman, and holy crap, Karl Urban is dead sexy.
My point is, if this is going to be a yearly event where I annoy my children when I brake out the DVDs (or implant entertainment chips depending on when I finally bring life into this world) I need to step up my game and channel my inner Mike Nelson (or Joel Hodgson if you have issues with Mike.)
And so began my attempts to make my husband genuinely laugh instead of roll his eyes. I even started to pick up on the actual plot instead of waiting for the ring to burn in the fires of Middle Earth hell (spoiler alert!). I asked nerd questions and started to see the amazing layers delicately depicted.
But here's something I'm wondering. With The Hobbit being released next December and that being two parts, are we to add that to the yearly viewing? If so, when will I have time to wrap presents and resent Christmas? And in what order do we watch? What if it's like Phantom Menace and we have to pretend it never happened? I highly doubt it since we have the same person directing and George Lucas does not have his sweaty hands on it. But a girl can fear, can't she? And how am I supposed to cheer for Martin Freeman when I know he becomes sort of a douche later? Lord knows I never cheered on Darth Yippee, I'll Strangle My Wife So No One Else Can Hurt Her Skywalker.
Yeah, I guess I'll just have to wait it out. Before I know it, it'll be time for idiots to stand in line for a two dollar toaster again and I'll be proclaiming Frodo and Sam had the gayest bromance ever. That's gay in a pejorative sense, not homosexual. That makes it better, right?