I never expected it to happen, but The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite movies, or series of movies, to be specific. After loving The Hobbit in a high school English class, I tried reading The Lord of the Rings on my own. I got about 50 pages in before I quit.
Cut to 2001. A co-worker said they were going to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and asked if I wanted to come along with the group. I said yes and off we went. 3 hours later, I was gobsmacked. And at the end of those 3 hours, when I realized that it was the end of the (first) movie, I wanted to screm "Noooooooo!!!" I did not want it to end.
At Costco, I saw the one-volume version of The Lord of the Rings, snapped it up, and started reading. Meanwhile, I went back to the theater and saw it over and over and over. When it left the theaters, I found that there was a second-run theater out in Milpitas that was showing it (for $3!) and went there to see it some more. When the The Two Towersr came out the same thing happened. And I continued to slog through the book--slog definitely being the operative word--taking a full year and a half to finish it.
When the thrid movie, The Return of the King was announced, I went to a different movie just to see the premiere of the trailer. And I found out that there was going to be a trilogy showing on opening day, the three movies back-to-back-to-back. The night before the tickets were supposed to go on sale, I stayed up past midnight to try and snag one. At midnight, I refreshed the tickets page again and again and again, for 20 minutes I tried, and all I got was that they were not available yet. I gave up and went to bed.
The next morning, the first thing I did was to turn my computer on and go to the ticket site. San Francisco: sold out. Oakland: sold out. San jose: sold out. Every trilogy showing in the Bay Area was sold out. Disappointed did not begin to describe how I felt. I expanded my search, and found tickets out in the Central Valley. But I wasn't sure I wanted to so that far for just that, so I expanded my search and found that tickets were available in a theater in Reno. I grabbed a couple and planned a movie-watching weekend trip.
It was awesome. And over the years, I have watche dthe movies many more times. I've read through the book again as well. I remain thoroughly enthralled by the orld J.R.R. Tolkien created. And given the chance, if I see the movies re-released in the theaters, I'll go watch 'em again.