9/7/21 Seeing LOTR Through Mijo's Eyes?

     We have been having fun watching older movies with Baby A for awhile now and recently we mentioned casually whether he had seen Lord Of The Rings and to our surprise he had never sat and watched the trilogy while paying attention to it.  It is hard to fathom but Fellowship of The Ring, the first part came out in 2001, which makes it now 20 years old.  Our son said he had been in the room while we watched it, but never paid attention to it.  We've probably seen it 4-5 times and just assumed he had seen it but he said no, he was too young to care the last time we watched it.

    I know he was bothered by the pacing, it does start out very slow, not much goes on in the first hour while they are still in the shire, but once it gets going, it is a beautiful movie, the scenery is one of the best compared to pretty much any movie out there.  If Mijo had a complaint it was about Gandalf and why he seemed like a powerful wizard yet didn't seem to do much when the orcs and troll showed up while they were basically forced into the mountains.  He basically walked around as a flashlight making light for them in the dark. He felt he should have been able to summon a fireball and blasted a bunch of those orcs or some other magic move to protect them.  He was really pissed that Gandalf went down like a "bitch" like he did.  He expected to see him put more of an effort, he'll be surprised when he sees the second movie, we didn't tell him the big reveal.

    At one point, when Frodo is trying to leave alone and Sam almost drowns, he thought they were going to kiss once they were both in the boat, it was confusing for him for them to be so close and loving without them being gay, or something.  These fucking modern times got these kids all confused.  We told him this was basically the best of the buddy movies, Frodo is destined to save the world and Sam will do everything in his power to make sure Frodo stays alive and completes his mission.  The other two hobbits are just as reliant on their friendship and eventually so are Gimli the Drawf and Legolas the Elf.

    I was so glad that our son enjoyed the movie, he usually complains that the latest movie is the worst as he did last week when we showed him Fast Times at Ridgemont High which is one of my favorites, he thought it was worse than Top Gun which he declares the worst of the bunch for the poor character development of the Tom Cruise character.  We will wait until the weekend to catch the second installment and maybe even the third, but these movies are very long and they do wear on you, so it might take another two weeks to get through them.