Beginnings

I have many vivid memories of *almost* becoming obsessed with Lord of the Rings.

When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, we visited my aunt & uncle out in the country. They had just bought a DVD player and three movies: The Fellowship of the Ring, X-Men and Hollow Man. I remember my cousin raving about how we absolutely needed to watch this amazing new movie based on some ancient book, only to be vetoed by my uncle who really thought Hollow Man was Verhoeven's best work.

In my twenties, Lindsay Ellis released her LOTR video essay quadrilogy, explaining to me in excruciating detail that these movies are — once again — amazing and incredible and absolutely worth my time. I watched all four videos, read all the comments, then promptly went back to playing Borderlands 2.

In my thirties, I somehow managed to catch a random showing of Clerks 2 on television and noticed a major scene in the movie involved people arguing that Lord of the Rings was a far superior fandom to Star Wars, which honestly surprised me. I watched some more YouTube videos, spent a couple hours scrolling r/lotrmemes, then promptly went back to playing Jedi: Fallen Order.

I'm now forty years old, and after decades of almost-but-not-quite getting into these movies, I'm finally ready to commit. Welcome to minutemonk, a Lord of the Rings newsletter by a guy who only started liking Lord of the Rings about five minutes ago. I'll be blogging through the entire extended trilogy in one-minute slices every weekday, celebrating and analysing these movies that are — apparently — pretty darn good.