Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

So I'm old enough to remember when the Lord of the Rings was in the theaters. In fact, I was in college at the time, and I remember going back every holiday to visit my family, and sometimes I'd bring some friends from school

to stay over for a bit, and then getting together and taking a group of us, including my father,

who I've mentioned on this podcast, is the reason why I'm so into J.R.R. Tolkien's writings,

and we would go together and we would enjoy these movies.

It was a, it was a magical moment. It was a situation that I don't think I'd ever dreamed

was possible. Being able to see my favorite books in all of their glory and scale and such a well-directed, well-acted,

well-cast. Everything was so perfect. And in my mind, it is one of those perfect memories

from my past and something I'm glad I got to enjoy with my friends and especially my family.

But I also remember from that time some of the critiques for as perfect and wonderful and

magical as I thought that experience, I remember not only the critiques going into it and

people talking about the casting problems and those

kinds of things and being very skeptical of the whole ordeal, but also the critiques about

the story from movie reviewers who clearly hadn't read the books.

In one critique in particular, I thought thought might have had a little bit of

merit when I first heard it, but then the more I thought about it, I was like, no, this is

ridiculous.

And that specific critique was that the entire movie, and this was when the fellowship of the

ring came out, was just them running away from danger after danger after danger,

constantly running away.

That's the entire film,

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