This Is the Real Thing, Folks
Matthew Bass

Well, this is it! In less than 24 hours, I will be sitting in a darkened theater, watching the words "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" appear on screen and hearing Galadriel's voice-over for the first time. As someone on our message board cleverly stated, I can't forget to bring my Depends diapers or there may be an unusually large mess in the theater after the film.

A friend bought tickets for himself, my brother, and me to attend the 11:30am showing of FotR. It's not that I don't enjoy seeing movies in the evening, it's just that I doubt I could hold out for the 8 hours or so it would take to wait all afternoon. I'm not going to hope that the theater is on the empty side so we'll get good seats because I know that's not going to be the case. Not by a long shot. We'll just have to arrive there 15 minutes early to find a good spot. I'll have my review of the film posted tomorrow by at least 3:30pm ET.

We've all waited many years to see this film, and now our time has come! I'd like to thank Peter Jackson for taking the time to make such a great film. I'd like to thank New Line for putting up the money and taking the risk to do something unprecedented: shooting 3 films at once in an unusual part of the world. I'd like to thank the cast and crew for their hard work and commitment to bringing fans of Tolkien's work, as well as the general public, a decent film that is true to Tolkien's original vision and isn't infiltrated with political correctness or the latest Hollywood fads. Finally, I'd like to thank the visitors to this site.

When TolkienMovies.com was founded in August of 1997, nobody had a clue it would grow to be one of the largest and best sources for LotR movie news on the Internet, but thanks to the loyal visitors who frequent it each day, and thanks to other webmasters who have supported it, it has. I've tried to keep the site as non-commercialized as possible, which has been difficult, especially with the downturn in the economy and the lack of prosperous Internet advertising that began in late 1999. I did the best that I could and I hope it was good enough for the visitors. I've devoted an average of 2 hours of my life each day for the past 4 years to this site because I wanted it to be something special. I hope it has been a good source of news and information to the people who visit it and I look forward to another 2 years (or more, who knows?) with you.

Have fun, God bless, and above all, ENJOY THE FILM!!!