Very early this morning, I had an opportunity to do something that not many people have done yet, but that millions of people are going to do this weekend: I got to watch Return of the King (the final chapter of the LotR trilogy).

At 10:30 last night, I arrived at my friend Josh�s apartment to pick him up. After a quick stop at the BP, we were on our way to Bowling Green. The drive which would normally take 1 � hours took us nearly an hour more because of an accident. During the extra hour, Josh used his phone to look up articles and trivia on LotR. When we hit the Kentucky boarder, I called my friend Danny who had arranged the entire evening. After a few minutes of conversation, I learned that the prints for RotK had not yet arrived, which meant that there would be no show. Since we were closer to Bowling Green than we were Franklin, TN, I decided to just continue on to Danny�s. Upon arriving, we were informed that the prints had just been delivered to the theatre, but still had to be built up. Danny went to the theatre, while Josh, Jeff, Josh (yes, two Joshs) and I played Mario Kart for an hour. Seven races later, we headed to the theatre, sat in the very top row and settled in to watch the movie. Danny started the movie and after a moment, yelled at us through the porthole: �Ah, crap! Someone open the masking!� Everyone kind of looked at one another and I realized that, even though I haven�t worked there in a year, I was going to be the one to get it. So I got out of my seat, ran all the way down to the screen, thinking the entire time �Please let me remember how to do this� and �Please let the cord be on the left side of the screen� which is where I was headed. Luckily, the cord was there and after about three seconds of fumbling with it, I was able to get the masking pulled back, so we were able to watch the movie in its widescreen format.

We had been planning on watching the movie at 3:00 am, but because of the delay of the prints, we did not start the movie until around 3:05....impressive, no? Because we were watching this movie so late (Josh took a 2 hour nap prior to driving to BG, but I think that was about all that we had gotten between the 6 of us), there was a lot of shifting as we watched the movie (our attempts to remain awake).

The movie was fantastic to say the least. I realized that there is a ton of difference between seeing a movie its first screening with a packed theatre full of other fans and seeing it with only five friends in the theatre. When I saw Two Towers, it was at 12:00am in the packed theatre. There was an immense amount of cheering and adrenaline pumping. This morning when we watched it, we were all so engrossed in it that we barely said anything (the few things that were said were �oooh....that was a nice splice� by Danny who had put the movie together and pointed out his handy work, which was replied to by Jeff with �I�ve seen better.� For some reason, my nose decided that I wasn�t allowed to watch this movie in peace, and I sneezed about three times in a row. This was met by �SSSHHHHH!� also from Jeff....other than that, we were very subdued).

Upon the credits rolling, we all filed back out into the lobby where we said our good byes and talked about New Years Eve. Josh and I got back in my car and drove the hour and a half back to Franklin, only hitting the tail end of rush hour traffic. I expected the ride home to be rather quiet, because neither of us had slept for the better part of 24 hours, but we actually talked pretty much nonstop, so the drive went by really fast.

As I said, the movie itself is fantastic. It begins with Gollum getting the ring, so you get to see his transformation because of it. You see him as a murderer, thief and liar more than a creature who is honestly trying to help. Frodo falling more and more under the Ring�s power and Gollum�s betrayal are addressed more in this movie than in the previous ones. While the war is more important in this movie as far as the story goes, I didn�t feel the sense of urgency that I did with the Battle of Helm�s Deep, but seeing the Dead fight along side the living is VERY cool. What freaked me out the most about this movie, is what Denethor, Steward of Gondor nearly does to his son, Faramir...I don't want to say anything to ruin it, but Denethor goes completely mad after learning of the death of Boromir and his actions that follow got to me more than any warg battle or catapult pushing troll. The thing that I was most happy about in this movie is that Pippin plays a more significant role at this stage of the Ring�s demise and because of that, Billy Boyd has more screen time than he did in FotR AND TTT combined.

Now that I�ve seen it, it seems so surreal. There is no more. Next December, there will not be another Lord of the Rings movie coming out. All of the anticipation and excitement because of these movies is over.

In a way, these movies are what I have been basing everything around for the past two years. I�ve been able to focus on this and not what America has been doing since 9/11. But now the Journey is complete. A chapter in my life is drawing to a close.

So what comes next?

And in celebration of the release of RotK:

Congratulations! You're Sam!

Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
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