A Life With Film

With Peter Jackson's rendition of The Hobbit shaking itself free from Development Hell, The Lord of the Rings trilogy has once again come to the forefront of the film community. Essentially in the form of "Can Jackson do it again?" Personally, I believe that Jackson can very well repeat the success of LoTR, but the prequel should have had a new flavor to it. Especially sense The Hobbit is anything but LoTR with a new cast.

What I can say is that Peter Jackson is obviously passionate about The Hobbit and that always bodes well.

In any case, on Sunday I found myself with massive amounts of homework and a pile of laundry to do. This quickly translated itself to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on the Playstation 3 and myself planted firmly in front of it. Any watching of LoTR movies tends to happen on lazy fall days where there is a good amount of monotonous house work to be done. The film's length could be an easy trait to blame, but there are plenty of long films I don't watch on my lazy days. Titanic, Avatar, and Inception come to mind.

If there is one word to describe LoTR, it would be rich. The story, the characters and the locations are all so lavish. Jackson has created such a palpable world, its hard not to lose yourself within Middle Earth. Its the very top tier of escapism. So when I'm standing knee deep in monotonous laundry work or cramming for tests, I would like to be anywhere but in my tiny room.

Monotonous is the name of the game here and the next LoTR keyword is epic. The epic quality of the films easily trumps the task of sorting lights and darks. We crave so much more than what we really have to do in our lives and the LoTR has that in spades. It's easy to go through the motions of everyday while your imagination is racing through the Mines of Moria.

The Lord of the Rings engulfs you and your imagination. All of a sudden that pile of laundry has become Mordor and the time has come to destroy it. You may wish you didn't have to and so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you.