Friends who are adaptable are wonderful to have.

Yesterday, a few of us had planned to catch Cobra: The Musical at the Fringe Festival. We met early for dinner, and by the time we got our food we were looking at our watches and calculating the time we had left to go get in line to secure tickets. It was do-able. “No problem,” I said, half-jokingly; “if we miss it we can always go see Fellowship of the Ring again.”

Oops.

Well, dinner meandered on, and when we’d done we looked at our watches again and hmmed and hawed, and waffled, and even though we probably could have caught the last few tickets for Cobra: The Musical, we ended up going to see LOTR:FOTR again, even though we’d missed the beginning by about fifteen minutes. We walked in just as Frodo and Sam were leaving. Everyone’s seen the film at least twice, so it’s not like anyone was left wondering what was happening. We watched it with pure glee. This was decadence. We went for the fight scenes, for the coolness waves, for Aragorn and Arwen and Boromir and Gandalf and Legolas, and yes, even the hobbits useless in a fight scene.

I noticed something this time around, too. The scene between Frodo and Boromir at the end goes wrong because Frodo is becoming paranoid, not because Boromir is losing it. Boromir is remarkably sympathetic and controlled right up to the point where Frodo turns his back, and Boromir realises that he’s trying to leave. That’s when he snaps, right there. From Boromir’s POV, it must look like Frodo’s just going to waltz right up to Mount Doom and hand over the ring to the bad guys. Now, Boromir’s pretty convinced this Fellowship thing isn’t going to succeed anyway, so he’s been thinking all along about the good guys using the Ring as best they can before the bad guys get their hands on it again, but abiding by the general consensus. It’s a rather logical POV, if you think about it. So he tries to grab it from Frodo before the hobbit takes off and walks right into a trap or something. The whole thing, though, revolves around Frodo’s paranoia, not Boromir’s obsession with the Ring. It’s a fine distinction, probably only made by acting, but it’s there. I was very impressed.

And then…the preview.

I have one word to say: EOWYN!

When Bill and Stephen and I did our LOTR guest spot on CBC Radio One last December, we were discussing the alarming possibility that the scriptwriters had combined Arwen and Eowyn into a single character. I was pleased last night to discover that our fears were put to rest.

Damn, it looks good.

“How long do we have to wait?” my husband groaned as the credits rolled by. “Six months,” I said, bouncing in my seat, “but we get the first DVD in August, then the Special Edition DVD in November, so there will be lots of LOTR to keep us happy until then.” After all, it’s been a whole six months since we first saw it, as unbelievable as that is. The next six will fly by.

So, you see, having friends who can be adaptable and flexible enough to toss one plan over the shoulder and readily agree on another is an asset. Thanks, all; we had a blast.