Somehow, it’s been a quarter century since The Fellowship of the Ring first hit multiplexes. That was half a lifetime ago for me. I recall waiting for the movies eagerly, feeling very concerned that they wouldn’t be any good, that they’d get Tolkien all wrong and mess up my favorite book.

I needn’t have worried. They were great films, much better than anyone had a right to expect, and I loved them from the start. Oh, there were plenty of complaints from lots of people about what Peter Jackson and his team got wrong about Tolkien, but such criticisms were in the minority, far outweighed by the millions who loved the movies. The artistic achievement here was really beyond what even the most ardent fan might have hoped. The music, the costumes, the cast, the locations, the attention to detail, the story all came together in a way that rarely happens. It made something grand that has stood the test of time.

            I am somewhat surprised that a bigger deal hasn’t been made of this anniversary, but never mind that. I saw that the extended version of Fellowship was in the theater and asked my thirteen-year-old son what he thought. He’s read the books and seen the movies and was enthusiastically in favor of seeing them on a big screen, an experience he’d never had. My ten-year-old daughter also wanted to see it; she fretted a little that she’d not yet read the books, but she soon got over this and happily came along.

            My daughter’s response to the films was quite sweet, and for me, it put to rest once and for all the idea that these films were somehow no good. I know Christopher Tolkien, among many other Rings fans, hated the movies, but whenever I heard such criticisms over the years, I couldn’t have cared less, and after seeing my daughter’s adoring reaction to the movies, I think whether someone disliked these films is not something I could ever be persuaded to care about. She loved the epic scope of it, the characters and the settings and the battles. She loved Gimli and Gandalf and the hobbits and everything in between. Again: she is ten years old and now can’t wait to read The Lord of the Rings. It was her introduction to this vast, glorious epic. She knows about Tolkien, since she’s heard me talking about his books and has seen all the games and memorabilia I have, but these movies further sparked her imagination, just as Harry Potter and other books and movies have. There is nothing at all wrong with her uncritical love of these movies, nor with the way the rest of the audience have found happiness or escape or emotion in it. Any critic, no matter how well versed (or not) in Tolkien, is free to dislike the movies as much as they wish, but it’s quite clear they are missing the point and need to perhaps understand that we all come to these things differently.

            For my part, after having lived with these interpretations of the books for so long, I was amazed at how well they held up. They still look better than anything else out there, which is a real testament to the craftsmanship, hard work, and love with which they were made. It’s of course condensed and simplified from the novel, but I don’t care about that at all. Filmmakers are required to do things to sell a movie; it’s a different medium that requires different things than a book does, especially when so much money is at stake. Given such constraints, it is a miracle these movies were as good as they were.

            My children loved seeing The Fellowship of the Ring so much that we went back Saturday to see The Two Towers, and Sunday for The Return of the King. We are now reading the books together. I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend. If you’ve never seen these movies on the big screen, I highly recommend it.