I finally finished the LOTR trilogy; turns out we don’t have the extended version for the 3rd movie, which, honestly, is fine…200 minutes for the non-extended version is good enough, as are the 6 different endings. I still am irritated by the fact they did 6 endings, and did NOT show the cleansing of the Shire. The only ending I really enjoy is the one where Aragorn is crowned. The rest…Frodo’s raised-eyebrow-nearly-crying-kind-of-smiling look just grates on me.

I mentioned in the first movie that one of my random thoughts was the fact that winning a battle with the Balrog makes your hair go straight. It seems that continued in the rest of the movies, as Viggo Mortensen’s hair gets all straight and pretty after the battle at Gondor.

I also love that Samwise Gamgee turns into Samwise Bodybuilder Gamgee at the final moments up the side of Mount Doom. Exhausted, hungry, and parched, he still manages to heft Frodo up the rest of the way to the entrance to the mountain. Impressive.

I usually think of Denethor as one horribly blind and stupid guy, but this time, I realized he was incredibly selfish, too. His army is out battling the orcs and other nasties while he indulges in one heck of a pity party. I wondered if the staff who were with him, complying with his desires to take Faramir to the crypt, were glad when Gandalf showed up? Or were they just glad for the excuse for a few more moments of life away from the battle?

At the end, I realized I needed to find the books to read them. Of course, that’s adding to the list of books to read and re-read after I finish the current series I’m on…Robert Jordan’s 13-book trilogy, The Wheel of Time.

Oh, and for the record, 95% of the laundry got finished by the time I was done with the three movies. (Yes, it was a lot of laundry to catch up on, though, to be fair, the movie did slow me down a bit!)