Muster the Rohirrim!

It’s time for our first movie review! Or shall I say movies review? As Kelsey mentioned in our Welcome post, our starting point is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And yes, we watched all three of them in one day. J

To refresh, I’ll run down our respective characters again. Hannah (me) is Samwise Gamgee and Peregrin Took, better known as Sam and Pippin. These are played by Sean Astin and Billy Boyd. Kelsey is Frodo Baggins and Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry) played by Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan. And finally, dear Febbie (Hillary) is Bilbo Baggins and Gollum/Smeagol, played by Ian Holm and Andy Serkis.

Now, an intriguing synopsis of these lovely movies.

The Lord of the Rings is set in the mythical world called Middle Earth. A powerful ring comes into the hands of one Frodo Baggins, a non-adventurous hobbit. He and his friends (Sam, Pippin, and Merry) must embark on a quest to destroy the ring and save Middle Earth. Along the way they join up with a fellowship made up of two men, a wizard, a dwarf, and an elf. Facing perils and war throughout their trek, Frodo must endure the weight of bearing the One Ring and journey further and further into the ranks of evil in order to save the world.

Sounds epic, huh?

Since Febbie’s characters don’t exactly play the largest part in the whole scheme of things, and therefore were left out of my synopsis, I’ll describe them quickly. Bilbo is Frodo’s uncle, and he was the one to pass down the ring to Frodo. Gollum is a creature that owned the ring for most of his life and was corrupted by it. He appears to be helping Frodo and Sam through their quest while he really just wants to regain possession of his precious (that’s the ring).

So, in case you haven’t noticed, The Phalanx is a very obsessive group. We know how to take something and run with it. The Lord of the Rings is no exception. For the weeks following watching these movies, Kelsey and I tried to stick to a hobbit diet. It consists of seven meals a day (breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper), and most of the food is fresh produce and grains. So we didn’t gain weight through our “diet,” we made each of our meals smaller.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to determine yet how well this diet works, as it is difficult to stick to such frequent eating when one of us is at work all day (Kelsey) and the other, at the time, was sleeping in until noon.

But, eating wasn’t the only activity that was affected by our obsession. Kelsey and I both altered our vocabulary for a bit following the movies. We’ve actually compiled a list of the most interesting words and phrases we picked up from Lord of the Rings. And here they are:

“But you’ve only just arrived!” –for when your friends are leaving your house too soon and you want them to stay.

“Steady on!” –for when your cousin is pushing you and you are on a bar stool and about to fall over.

“Make haste!” or “Show me the meaning of haste!” –for when you want someone to hurry up.

“…from whence it came.” –for when you must return something and you want to sound sophisticated.

“Hearken!” –for when you want people to listen to you.

“I warrant…” –for instances when you would say ‘I think,’ ‘I reckon,’ ‘I suppose,’ etc,…

“Muster the Rohirrim!” –for anything. Anything.

So that is what we got out of Lord of the Rings. We hope you will watch or re-watch the movies now and enjoy them as much as we have. And we shall continue our quest with another movie! J