A-Z Challenge: Lord of the Rings

I'm going all-inclusive today:  My Lord of the Rings (LOTR) post covers The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. 

I was stuck in hard core geek-out mode for a long time anticipating these movies, and they did not disappoint (NOTE: except one major thing, which I will rant about in a minute).  The scenery was epic; New Zealand IS Middle Earth.  The costumes and set designs were true to the story and also true to life...They actually made chain-mail armor by hand. 

The visual effects were stunning.  From the evil gleam in Gollum's eye to Sauron's fiery gaze, all looked and felt real.  The actors hit the right notes for each character, and the entire series was damn near flawless, except one little thing...

The screwed up the whole climax of the entire three-movie series.  You know, the part where they actually destroy the ring, the specific task they had been working on for roughly 9 hours of movie? 

In the book, Gollum bites off Frodo's ring finger and, in a fit of joy, celebrating his reunion with his Precious, he falls off the edge of the cliff into the vat of molten lava below.

In the movie, after Gollum bites off Frodo's finger, Frodo attacks him and they both spill over the edge, Frodo clinging to a rock while Gollum plummets to the lava holding the ring.

Gone is the irony.  The irony of Gollum doing himself in, of his greed destroying the ring, of the ring that was created by evil being destroyed by evil.  The irony of his being happy and falling to his doom, destroying the ring in a fit of joy...blown away and replaced by three more minutes of slo-mo melodrama. 

I forgive Peter Jackson for this grievous misjudgement, but just barely.  If the rest of the series kicked one ounce less ass, this would have really spoiled it for me.  But as it is, the rest of the series did kick mountains of ass, so I'll grin and bear it.

Although I am nervous about the extra material they are adding to The Hobbit... 

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Till Death Do Us Part

I pulled into a parking space and turned to my wife and sister (NOTE: even though my wife is from West Virginia, I am not, and therefore she and my sister are in fact different people).

"I want to apologize in advance in the event a bolt of lightning strikes as soon as I walk into the church," I said. They nodded, affirming the likelihood of such a smoting.

The architecture of the building was beautiful, a Catholic cathedral situated right in downtown Akron. I know, downtown Akron is not much of a selling point, but you have to trust me on this one. The inside was very nice, and the stained-glass windows kept the reality of its location at bay.

Now I mentioned this was a Catholic cathedral, so that means it was a Catholic wedding. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tenant s of Catholicism, this requires a full mass before the actual wedding. Minimum run time of 45 minutes. I am a recovering Catholic (went to Catholic school grades 1-7), so I wanted to challenge myself by seeing how much of the rote memorization of the Catholic mass I remembered. Plus I want to see how many times I can use the word "Catholic" in this paragraph. It turns out, quite a lot. Catholic.

If you haven't noticed from my writing, I have a short attention span and an over-active imagination. My thoughts turned to the walls, upon which many things were written. One of these things read "Joseph, pray to Jesus for us" and all I could think was "Damn, that's lazy. Can't even take the time to pray yourself, have to ask someone else to do it for you?"

The priest actually had a good homily, but I couldn't stop thinking about how his squinty eyes looked like Mr. Magoo without his glasses.

The bride and groom wrote their own vows, and they were very good. They were also long. The groom went first, talking about the first time they met. When the groom flipped his paper over and kept reading from the back, an image crept into my mind of him standing there in paper up to his knees ("And then on our sixteenth date..."). Honestly, though, he made a lot of people cry (in a good way). Of course, I was not among those numbers. My mind was already wondering elsewhere.

The most precious part of the wedding was when the priest said, "Frodo, the ring."

At least that's what I heard him say. Everyone else may have heard something completely different.