TITLE: LOTR: The movie and the book AUTHOR: Joe Johnson DATE: 8:40:00 PM ----- BODY:
Among my deeper, perhaps more pathetic, confessions, I must admit to never reading the Lord of the Rings. My very love for that story comes utterly from those Jackson films. Yes, I've read The Hobbit a couple times, dabbled with the Silmarilion and am a few pages away from finishing Joseph Pearce's Tolkien biography. I can't defend my, well, sin. But, perhaps I can explain it.

Several years ago I saw the animated Lord of the Rings film. For some reason, it never captured me the way The Hobbit did and I never really had interest in the story. By the time that Jackson's film emerged, I began to understand a bit of the allure - that same fascination that made Tolkien's masterpiece sit at the top of lists on the twentieth century's best books. But by then, I had no choice. I couldn't begin reading. I had to wait for the trilogy to come, to hear and see the story.

Many people probably ran out to read the books. They knew what we all know: that the book is always better than the movie. I knew that too. But I couldn't help thinking of a summer twenty years ago. Unlike so many boys of my generation, I didn't see Return of the Jedi early in the run. I had to wait. My family had planned a vacation and part of that vacation was seeing Jedi in a big theater. My Dad, sympathetic to my pain, gave me the novelization, which I devoured. On the screen, by the time Luke was fighting out of Jabba's palace, I was strangely empty. I was underwhelmed, like some great hope became a bit of an unspoken disappointment.

After The Fellowship of the Ring I remained dedicated to avoiding that adolescent error. I remained chaste, avoiding all but the most filtered and distant Tolkien lore. I stayed away from any text or interview that would answer the question: "How does it end?" I believed that there was no way Middle Earth would be lost to the forces of evil. But I never knew with certainty whether Frodo would make it out alive. The more I read of Tolkien's devout Catholicism, the more I thought, "Perhaps he would kill off Frodo - as a sacrifice, as a Christ figure." Honestly, until that first ending (there were many endings) of Return of the King, I did not know whether Frodo would make it out alive... and that was the evidence of a great story and a great movie.

The Lord of the Rings has surpassed the original Star Wars trilogy for me in many ways. It can't take the place of Star Wars. Nothing ever could, anymore than my parenthood could replace my childhood. But for all the complexity of Lucas's masterwork, I have a special adult fondness for Tolkien and Jackson. Instead of my former ability to watch Star Wars to be brought home - to a place of serenity and wonder - the evergreen trilogy has become LOTR. (Yes, this was hotly contested in Clerks 2.)

And that brings me back to the problem of those darned books - those magical volumes of language and legend that sparked Jackson's imagination, that compelled such wonderful visions. Do I dare read them? Do I dare mess with that perfect series of hope and redemption, of beauty and grandeur? Perhaps. But then again, maybe I should just stick with The Hobbit.

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