Wednesday, June 18, 2014

but it's not elijah wood!

two truly magical things happened today.

the first was that while my mom was making dinner, the microwave and the oven were counting down at the exact same time.

THE EXACT. SAME. TIME.

i was like, MOM YOU GOTTA LOOK AT THIS THEY'RE BOTH AT FORTY-FOUR SECONDS. FORTY-THREE... FORTY-TWO...

and she was like, mehhh

and i was like, NO MOM THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

and she says, mannnn i'm just so good. blog about it.

when both timers went off at the same second, they happened to be incredibly loud and incredibly dissonant and i had to cover my ears because it sounded like i was about to go deaf.

but i witnessed something momentous and i have now blogged about it, per my mother's wishes.

my mother is a truly amazing woman.

now, the second incredibly magical thing that happened today also happens to involve my amazing mother and it was this:

my mother watched the desolation of smaug for the first time.

and she didn't fall asleep!

this is kind of a big deal. there are some movies that she just cannot get through. she fell asleep through BOTH star trek reboots. i don't know how you can with the explosions and stuff, but there you have it.

and she cannot make it through monty python and the holy grail.

my dad and i have tried like... eight time. she can't get past the coconuts.

i, obviously, saw desolation of smaug at midnight with my boyfriend. it was magical. when it ended on the cliffhanger, like i knew it would, adam screamed obscenities at the screen.

my brother saw it with his girlfriend about a week later.

my dad went to see it with his mentoree, a middle schooler at my church.

i suggested that we have a family trip to see it while i was home on christmas break, but my mother said she wasn't interested unless we got it on DVD.

guess who had birthday money and loves lord of the rings?

MEEEEE.

(for my really intense lord of the rings post from two summers ago, click here.)

i have never read lord of the rings. i've tried. multiple times. but they're just... boring. there's no other word for it. like, i fell asleep in moria.

that's shameful. i know.

but i did read the hobbit over christmas break of my junior year of college. GO ME. READING OLD BOOKS AND STUFF.

my mom hadn't read the hobbit since she was in high school, and that was probably longer ago than she wants to admit, and i don't remember the last time she saw the trilogy.

she'd certainly only seen the hobbit once and it was over a year ago, that was for sure.

my mom just really isn't into lord of the rings the way that the rest of the family is. (but i'm still the only one who binges all the time.)

so we start smaug without my brother because he's at work and it's a long ass movie. let's be real, it's way longer than it needs to be. my mom and my dad are sitting next to each other and i'm curled up on the opposite couch like, YISSSS SMAUG TIME and my mom is staring confusedly at our super old TV.

she would keep this expression throughout the entire movie.

i point out the peter jackson cameo and then the dwarves are running to bjorn's and my mom isn't really questioning anything. they get into mirkwood and start wandering around.

bilbo has his loreal commercial with the butterflies.


SUCH A HAPPY HOBBIT.

and then there are the spiders.

which, let me tell you, ARE CREEPY AS AS HELL AND NOT AT ALL OKAY LIKE, NO SHELOB'S MOMMA WHY ARE YOU STILL MAKING BABIES YOU'RE SUPER OLD STAHP MAKING SCARY SPIDERS THAT ONLY SPEAK BLACK SPEECH NOW IS NOT THE TIME

so bilbo gets wrapped up and my mom sits up a little straighter and looks at bilbo's cocoon and says with certain conviction, "that's not bilbo."

my dad and i both stare at her dumbfounded.

and i'm like, yeah mom, that's bilbo, see him through the spider silk?

and i swear to god, she says

"that's not bilbo, it's not elijah wood!"

it's been a really long time since she's seen lord of the rings.

after that she had no idea what was happening.

when gandalf visits the tomb of the witch king, she didn't know who that was. when i described him from the return of the king, big tall guy with no face, rides a dragon (I KNOW IT'S NOT A REAL DRAGON IT'S A FELLBEAST BUT I HAD TO EXPLAIN IN SIMPLER TERMS), has a mace, that kinda thing, she had no idea who i was talking about.

then the questions began.

"who's the statue of? wait, who's thror?"

"why is gandalf not with the dwarves?"

"IS THAT STEPHEN FRY?" (i think everyone who saw this movie asked themselves that and the answer is YES.)

"wait so the dragon is smaug?"

oh man, it was absolutely adorable.

the best part was when the movie ended, because she completely forgot that they were making a third movie.

she sat up and yelled, "WAIT, THAT'S THE END? WHY ISN'T SMAUG DEAD?"

me: he dies in the next movie.
my mother: WHY ARE THEY MAKING THREE MOVIES
me: because peter jackson likes to make money and add to the story where he shouldn't.
my mother: ugh it can't end like that and how are they going to make the next one three hours long if all they have to do is kill the dragon?
me and my brother: BUT THE BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES, MOM

we get a little bit intense.

then my mother asked the best question of the entire evening while ed sheeran was singing "i see fire".

"what do you call the love child of an elf and a dwarf? because that girl elf and that dwarf were totally having a thing."

i probably should've just said something like dwelf, but my inner lord of the rings fan came out and instead i said this:

"well first off, tauriel isn't even in the book, they just added her to be all badass to look feminist, but the fact that she really only exists for a made up love triangle with legolas and kili kind of defeats the purpose. plus kili's going to die before they could ever have a kid."

oh, sorry, i forgot to mention, spoiler alert.

it's a seventy-five year old book. 

my mom was really unhappy by this turn of events and then my brother and i began to list off everyone who's going to die in the next movie and she became even more unhappy.

before she could start getting really angsty, i ran upstairs.

as a pretty hardcore fan of the lord of the rings movies and as an appreciator of the fine works of literature that i cannot get through, the hobbit movies are like... meh.

i still own both of them and enjoy watching them. like, they're decent movies. but there's just like, ACTION ACTION ACTION DIZZYING SEQUENCE ARROWS ACTION ORC NOISES and i'm in it for like... character development and stuff.

it's definitely lacking stuff that the original trilogy had.

but let me tell you, smaug is the coolest computer animated thing i have ever had the privilege to see.

OH SMAUG, CHIEFEST OF CALAMITIES.



2 comments:

  1. Yeahhhhh these Hobbit movies are just too meh for me... GIVE LOTR ANOTHER CHAAAAAANCE. Tolkien has this habit of being slow in some parts of his books and then really fast paced in other parts (the battle for Helm's Deep is seriously two or three pages) but once you get used to the style it isn't as bad. Plus Tolkien books (with the exception of the Hobbit) are really really dense. I have always found that lots of breaks help.

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