I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring when I was nine or ten years old, sitting with my family and a few family friends. I didn’t know what to expect. What I found was a world that felt larger than anything I had ever seen before.
The battles and sweeping landscapes pulled me in immediately, but it was more than spectacle that stayed with me. Even as a child, I sensed there was a depth to this story — a weight to the friendships, the temptation of the Ring, the clash between good and evil. Much of it was lost on me at the time, but the impression was powerful. The film left me with the sense that stories could be vast and intricate, filled with danger, beauty, and meaning all at once.
Since that first viewing, I’ve returned to Fellowship countless times, probably ten viewings in all. With each return, I find something new: a detail in Howard Shore’s score that heightens the emotion of a scene, a glance between characters that says more than dialogue, the way Jackson’s camera lingers on landscapes that feel both real and mythic. Even when I’m not watching, I find myself returning to the soundtrack, a score that still stirs the same awe and longing I felt as a child.
For me, this film helped spark a love of fantasy that has never faded. It opened the door to Tolkien’s writing, to other epics filled with swords and quests, and to the idea that stories can be both grand in scale and intimate in feeling.
The Fellowship of the Ring is more than a movie I enjoy. It is one of my favorites of all time, a touchstone that reminds me of what storytelling can be: a journey that carries us into worlds unknown and then back again, changed by what we’ve seen.
— Written by William Edward Villano
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