More than anything, I want movies to surprise me. I want
to see something that I haven’t seen before, or see an old story presented in a
unique way. I want my expectations to be exceeded. I never read J.R.R.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
trilogy. I wasn’t interested as a child. To this day, the genre of fantasy
fiction doesn’t particularly appeal to me. In December 2001 I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring because it was expected to be one of the biggest movies of the year.
It was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles about the 15
month shooting schedule in New Zealand with Peter Jackson painstakingly
creating a world on film that was already known to millions of loyal fans of
the novels. I walked out of the theater both exceedingly surprised and deeply
moved by both the story and the unbelievable craftsmanship involved in the
making of the film.
