You must be around my age, I saw it twice when in the week it came out. I can’t say I remember it fondly at this point though. About 6 years ago, I tried to watch it again and it was unwatchable.
You may feel free to include me as a a general fan of fantasy who appreciates where most of the staples of the genre come from.
I’m 47
I saw it last year, it was still fun (-ish).
Now Wizards, that DVD I had to donate to the library, ugh.
You are my brother’s age, wouldn’t you have been in High School when it released? He was a senior in 1978.
Funny you should mention Wizards, I just mentioned to a friend last week how incredibly bad it looked 20 years later and straight.
Jim
I was a senior in 1979.
Memory is a bit foggy of late of that entire era.
Well that was typical of the time. My Brother’s memory of the time is also a little “foggy”. I was just a punk 6th grader. So I remember it pretty well.
Well, in my case the fogginess is purely natural.
I was such a rebel in high school I never touched any weed or drug or booze. Ha! that’ll show 'em, I thought.
Had my first alcoholic baverage at age 29. I’ve made up for lost time I assure you. 
Never did try marijuana. I enjoy cigars too much to bother.
Hoom, I didnt want to be too hasty in posting to this thread.
I read almost all LOTR related threads, though I don’t post that much.
Brian
You can include me as well.
My qualifications? I started the following threads:
Recommend me some movies featuring LOTRs cast members!
Anyone else see TTT preview on TV the other night?
Link to online essay featuring Gandalf’s fate after fight with the Balrog?
One of my obsessions is those aspects of Tolkien’s creation that are barely mentioned. Like the Blue Wizards, Queen Beruthiel, the vineyards of Dorwinion.
I run a small campaign in Middle Earth for AD&D 1st edition. Two of the characters come from the area around Rhun and the vineyards of Dorwinion. In prior campaigns the Blue Wizards feature prominently and in one were actually actively engaged in a battle of power against each other where one turned to evil and the other was an autocratic but benevolent dictator.
Now I need to read you threads and resist posting in them.
Jim
Mind if I join you? I read and don’t post, for the same old reasons; somebody always beats me to it. But I read the books for the first time when I was about 18, and fell in love. Found the Chronicles of Narnia about the same time, same reaction, differently. I love them both, for very different reasons. In several ways, they spoiled a lot of other fantasy for me for a while.
Sometimes I feel like an Entwife, mostly forgotten, but still loved. Hmmm, I wonder if anybody would recognize that costume.
I haven’t finished reading LOTR. I stopped somewhere in the appendices. I keep meaning to get back to it. I have a copy of The Simarillion I keep meaning to read. But let’s start at the beginning.
I am six. One day one of the hippy teachers at my preschool begins reading a book called The Hobbit. It becomes my favorite book. Mom and Dad read it to me countless times. I watch Rankin Bass animated version countless times. I get a poster based on the cartoon. I often wear a cloak and dress as a hobbit. I watch Bakshi’s LOTR countless times. I watch RB ROTK countless times. I get the records of both RB movies. I get the Hobbit boardgame at a garage sale.
ADHD keeps me from reading the LOTR. But Dad has copies, the ones with the cool triptych covers, and I will read them someday.
Visiting friends in Baltimore, I find a man at the Johns Hopkins festival selling drawings of wizards and dragons and Tolkien’s characters. I buy one each year we go and take exquisite care of them.
At a county fair, I find a man selling jewelry he makes. His name is Badaji. Mom shows me a ring he made. First I think it’s a monkey. Then I realize it’s Gollum. http://www.badalijewelry.com/gollum.htm * The ring becomes one of my most treasured possessions.
In seventh grade, the teacher announces we will be reading FOTR. Sadly my medications are failing and I can’t keep up. The bad experience keeps me from returning to the books until the film comes out.
I buy the Hobbit comic book adaption. I buy a Hobbit pop up book. I buy another Hobbit poster (the classic greyscale one with Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo in the center with characters inset all around). My sister gives me a hardback Tolkien Bestiary. My mother gives me a book about Tolkien, Master Of Middle Earth.
We hear that Peter Jackson (I’d already seen his Meet The Feebles, Bad Taste, and Dead Alive) is making the movies. I go back to the trilogy and begin to read. I make it through to the appendices at the back of ROTK.
I buy a set of tapes of Tolkien reading his work. I buy video tapes of Bakshi’s LOTR, and RB ROTK. I buy what is almost certainly a bootleg video of RB Hobbit.
- I have no connection to Badaji whatsoever. I just love the man and his work. Note that he has been making Tolkien jewelry for twenty odd years rather than just cashing in on the film’s popularity like some others. Note also that his FOTR, TT, and ROTK pins were worn by the nominees at the Oscars.
A finally footnote, I lost my Gollum ring in a Chinese restaurant. I have since had it replaced. Other than that and the copies of the Hobbit that literally fell apart from repeated readings, I still have all the Tolkien items I’ve mentioned.
So I ask you, the Fen, am I one of you or no?
You’re a fannier fan than I am. I just read the books.
By Cirdan’s atypical beard, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
My first copy of The Hobbit was the one with the illustrations taken from the Rankin Bass movie, as it happens.
Just finished reading the whole thread.
My favorite characters are Gandalf and Bilbo. Gandalf has vast power, but comes off as very human. He doesn’t want to rule the world. He wants to make cool fireworks. Bilbo just seems like somebody I’d want to know. I think it’s that I can see myself in him.
After looking in The Big Book Of Things Man Was Not Mean To Know, I found my account of a meeting with Hobbits. There And Back Again
I first read the Hobbit and LOTR sometime in high school. I then reread them every couple of years and added The Silmarillion at some point along the way. I have 2 sets of the books.
To demonstrate the depth of my geekiness I give you this anecdote. Several years ago during my second college attempt I decided to try acting. In a scene I was cast in I had to be really upset, in order to get myself in the right mood I would reread the Grey Havens when Frodo leaves Middle Earth because I always cry at that scene.
I usually don’t post much in the Tolkien threads because everything’s already been said by the time I get here and I don’t remember as much Tolkien trivia as I used to.
One of us!, One of us!
Awesome! 
What did he say?
That is so weird, I had the exact same thing happen to me. I made the mistake of taking the ring off briefly, as the chopsticks were always getting caught on Smeagol’s pert little silver buttocks. Suddenly a passing waiter wrestled it away from me, screamed, “Fortunate device!” did a little dance and fell backward into a steaming cauldron of egg drop soup. I never went back, I can tell you. The place closed down soon afterward. I think it’s a cell phone outlet now.
I won’t claim a spit take, but that really broke me up and actually had me “Laughing Out Loud”