Twenty-five years in Middle-earth: A love letter to The Lord of the Rings
- julienavickasautho
- 21 hours ago
- 8 min read
I was sixteen years old when I discovered Middle-earth.
My brother came home from the Johnsburg Public Library with a rented DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring, like it was nothing—just another plastic case with a due date. But the second we pressed play, the room changed. The Shire filled the screen. Howard Shore’s music swelled. And I felt my whole body lean in, like it recognized something before my brain could name it.
We watched it once, stunned and buzzing. The credits barely finished rolling before we looked at each other and did the only reasonable thing: we hit play again. Back to back. Same day. No hesitation.
Because something clicked so hard it felt physical—like a door in my chest had swung open and Middle-earth had been waiting on the other side. I didn’t just like it. I didn’t just get invested. I was claimed by it—by the wonder, the danger, the quiet humor, the sense that every choice mattered and every character carried more than what they said out loud.
When it ended the second time, I didn’t feel finished. I felt homesick for a place I’d never been.
When Fangorn took hold: The story put down roots
After that first viewing, I didn’t just want more. I needed it. I chased the story back to its source, the way you chase a spark back to the fire. I read everything J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, page by page, like I was collecting pieces of a world I couldn’t bear to lose. When I ran out of Middle-earth on the shelf, I didn’t stop. I read the books about Tolkien himself, hungry to understand the mind that could build something so vast and so intimate at the same time. I wanted the legend, but I also wanted the craft. The why behind the wonder.
My bedroom followed suit. It stopped being a room and became a realm. Maps on the walls. Posters. Elvish script tucked into corners like secret runes. Little symbols and references that made me feel like I wasn’t just a fan—I was in on it. Like if you opened the right book or traced the right line on the right map, you might hear the distant echo of something ancient and true.
The road to the king’s return
The Return of the King didn’t just arrive—it was anticipated, prepared for, earned.
In the weeks leading up to its release, The Two Towers lived in my DVD player. I watched it obsessively, as if repetition could somehow stretch the distance between Helm’s Deep and Gondor. Every rewatch felt like sharpening a blade: memorizing lines, replaying scenes, letting the music sink so deep into my bones that I could hear it even when the TV was off. It wasn’t background noise. It was anticipation made tangible.
By the time December 2003 rolled around, I was desperate. I begged my parents to let me go to the midnight showing—even though it was a school night, even though I was in high school, even though the responsible answer should have been no. I made my case like it was a cause: This is the finale. This is history. I have to be there when it happens.
Somehow, they said yes.
So, there I was at the Fox Lake Theater with my friends Christine and Jenna, bleary-eyed and hyped up on sugar, vibrating with anticipation like we were about to step through a portal instead of into a screening. It didn’t feel like a movie release. It felt like a milestone.
The theater was packed with people who understood exactly what this meant. Strangers—but not really. We all spoke the same language that night. It felt like being part of a fellowship, gathered for the quest, ready to carry something precious to the end.
When the lights went down, I remember thinking: This is rare. A story that has taken its time. A story that has made promises—and is about to keep them.
By the time the final notes faded and the credits rolled, I wasn’t just exhilarated. I was wrecked in the best way—grateful and hollow and full all at once. Because some endings don’t just conclude a plot. They close a chapter of your life.
And I knew, even then, I’d just witnessed one of those.
Studying the story that shaped me
College didn’t loosen that hold—it deepened it. Gave it roots. Gave it language. Gave it more meaning.
I took classes and completed independent studies (shoutout to Professor J!) devoted entirely to The Lord of the Rings, the kind where you don’t just love the story—you take it apart, examine how it works, and somehow end up loving it even more.
When I studied abroad in London in the summer of 2016, I made a pilgrimage to Oxford. I wasn’t casual about it. I wanted to stand where the history lived. I visited The Eagle and Child (formerly the “Bird and Baby”), Tolkien’s old haunt, where he and the Inklings gathered to test ideas, trade pages, and sharpen sentences until they could cut. Standing there felt strangely reverent, like the air still held echoes of laughter and debate—the quiet electricity of craft. Of stories being pushed, challenged, and argued into greatness one pint, one paragraph, one stubborn choice at a time.
A story that grew up with me
Now that I’m an “adult”, Middle-earth lives on in new ways—but my passion for it hasn’t lessened one bit. If anything, it’s deepened, gathering meaning the way a well-loved book gathers creases and margin notes.
I share it with my kids now, watching their faces light up with the same wonder that once claimed me. We read John Ronald’s Dragons together, returning to Tolkien’s voice at its most intimate and playful—still unmistakably his, still brilliant in the way it trusts imagination and emotion in equal measure.
I carry the story on my skin, too—tattoos slowly becoming a full LOTR-inspired sleeve. A permanent reminder that some stories don’t just entertain you for a season; they shape your life.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s continuity.
Why this story endures
Tolkien was a mastermind storyteller—philologist, myth-maker, architect of a world that feels older than the reader itself, complete with histories, languages, genealogies, and a moral gravity that never lets the adventure become weightless. His genius wasn’t just imagination; it was intention. Every name means something. Every song carries lineage. Every “small” moment is threaded to a larger truth: corruption, courage, mercy, home.
Peter Jackson made Middle-earth tangible for a generation—turning Tolkien’s scale into something you could see, hear, and physically feel. Wind on a mountainside. Mud in a trench. The tremor in a voice right before someone chooses bravery anyway. The films proved fantasy could be earnest without being precious, epic without being hollow, and emotional without apology—because the emotions were never decoration. They were the point.
The trilogy’s success is undeniable: box office records, critical acclaim, Oscar wins. But even with all that, the real triumph isn’t something you can tally up or display.
It’s the feeling it leaves behind.
The ache of stepping out of the Shire and realizing innocence doesn’t survive unchanged. The weight of choice at every turn. The terror of temptation. And, most of all, the steadying relief of hope carried by ordinary people who refuse to quit—even when quitting would be easier, even when no one is watching.
As Samwise Gamgee reminds us: “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
The magic of the cast
And the cast—good grief. Orlando Bloom brought a luminous, otherworldly stillness to Legolas, the kind that made sixteen-year-old me feel personally seen… to the extent that I may or may not have owned a life-sized cardboard cutout of him. And yes, I still haven’t had the heart to part with it even though I’m almost forty. Some people keep old concert tees; I keep a sentry of the Woodland Realm.
Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd grounded the epic with warmth, mischief, and that unmistakable, heart-first humanity—reminding us that courage often looks like friendship, jokes in the dark, and hands held tight when fear presses in. They didn’t just perform roles; they inhabited them. And in one of those full-circle moments that still doesn’t feel real, Billy and Dom even opened a copy of my first book, I Loved You Yesterday, on their podcast, The Friendship Onion (minute mark 38:00)—one of those surreal intersections where “fan for life” and “author in the wild” collide.
And then there’s Viggo Mortensen—Aragorn as steadying presence, as earned leadership, as the kind of king you believe in because he never wanted power for its own sake. I still have a poster of him as the King of Gondor hanging in my bedroom, which my husband continues to meet with the same long-suffering eye roll every time he notices it again.
The legendarium
Some things are simply non-negotiable in a lifelong love story like this. That’s why The Lord of the Rings remains the gold standard of storytelling. It honors its audience. It trusts patience. It believes language matters—that a single word can carry centuries, that a name can hold a prophecy, that a song can feel like a doorway. It understands that worldbuilding is never the point; it’s the vessel.
The point is always character: the quiet bravery of the overlooked, the cost of doing the right thing when no one is rewarding you for it, the way friendship can become a lifeline when the world narrows to ash and fear. And at its core, it insists—again and again—that hope is not naïve. Hope is discipline. Hope is defiance. Hope is something you choose, hard-won and imperfect, and worth fighting for. And it knows the secret every enduring story knows: endings don’t end. Not really. Stories travel. They follow us into adulthood, into grief and joy and ordinary Tuesdays. They shape what we believe about loyalty, sacrifice, and home—about the people we want to be when the road gets long.
Twenty-five years later
This weekend, I attended the 25th anniversary theatrical showings, and sitting in a darkened theater again felt like stepping back onto a path I never truly left. Around me were people who knew exactly when to laugh, when to hold their breath, and when to quietly cry—strangers, yes, but companions for a few sacred hours. A shared remembering.
Twenty-five years later, the magic hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s richer—layered now with memory and meaning, with the life I’ve lived since that first library DVD. I didn’t just watch the story this time. I felt the echoes of every version of myself who ever loved it: the kid who watched Fellowship twice in one day, the teenager who begged for a midnight showing, the college student who chased Tolkien’s ghost to Oxford, the adult who’s passing the wonder forward.
Middle-earth found me once and it never let go. And if there’s an epilogue to a love like this, it isn’t a goodbye—it’s a promise. Because as long as the music swells and the lights dim, as long as someone opens a book or presses play and feels their heart tilt toward the Shire, the road goes ever on.
And I’ll follow it, there and back again. Every time.