Lord of the Rings - Rewind

A colleague and I would sometimes leave the office to catch the opening day of sci-fi and action movies like Spiderman. We were usually the only people in the theater who wore ties and appeared older than 18. Given that there were no other adults or anyone old enough to be a teacher, I highly doubt that these screenings were an organized field trip for a film course. No, these shows appealed to teenagers who preferred watching the latest blockbuster in the middle of the day rather than stay in school. But, obviously, I was in no position to judge them.

My colleague and I had both moved on to different jobs when the second installment of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, came to theaters. We decided to attend an opening day showing and calculated that a 1:30 or 2 pm show would serve our needs and get us done with the three-hour movie in time to get back to our family responsibilities. Because of traffic difficulties we both arrived to the theater about five minutes after the listed start time.

We hurried to the ticket window and bought two tickets for the show that was already in progress. The ticket taker directed us down the hall and told us to enter the first door on our left. We ran down the hall and entered the already darkened theater. Surprisingly the coming attractions had ended and we were greeted by Gollum delivering a monologue in a secluded lagoon.

Waiting a few moments, our eyes adjusted and we found a couple of seats together. The film seemed discombobulated as it introduced characters at random without any appropriate backstory. I sat somewhat confused but gradually put the pieces together. The battle scenes brought me into the action and the story line merged into a great fight between good and evil. The small gaps in the story seemed insignificant in comparison to the task they had chosen; a mission to destroy the Ring of power.

Suddenly the credits appeared. I checked my watch as I knew the movie was approximately three hours long. We had not even been there for 120 minutes. Was there an abbreviated version for people who can't sit through three hours of fighting and dread? No. It was completely viewer error. We had walked into the wrong theater. All was not lost. A kind manager directed us to a screening that was just about to start. We considered staying through the whole movie but we didn't have the time.

We stayed until Gollum showed up in the lagoon and then we left. I suspect that many of the moviegoers were confused as to why we left in the middle of a pivotal scene of a now very clear and easily understandable movie. Confusing or not, it was time for us to go. The end result of that experience is an alternative movie title: The Lord of the Rings: Lord of the Two Hours.