As a six-year-old kid in 1980, I had a bearded neighbor next door who had something called a video cassette recorder. I didn't know how it worked or what bootlegged copies of movies were all about. The only thing I cared about is that I could go over to his place to watch two movies: Star Wars and the animated version of The Hobbit. The former is pretty much the movie all boys my age grew up admiring, and the latter held a less hyped but equally passionate hold on impressionable male youth.

Soon after, my parents must have latched on to my Tolkien cravings and bought the record versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King. With tremolo storytelling songs from Glenn Yarbrough and gruff Goblin cadences, my brothers and I wore out the needle playing and replaying these LPs. Now, the one cover song my band sings is "Fifteen Birds" which is a rocked up version from that original animated Hobbit soundtrack.

All the words came from one man: J.R.R. Tolkien. His powerful yet simple style of prose culminated in the beginning of a new genre of writing called fantasy. With The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I started reading the first of many fantasy series. This was followed by writers like Lloyd Alexander and Terry Brooks, but it all started with Tolkien.

Along with those early animated versions, there was another attempt to create The Lord of the Rings on film. Ralph Bakshi created a bold but ultimately incomplete version of The Lord of the Rings. With the combination of live action silhouettes and animation, his version had potential, but due to a lack of funds, his tale ends after the fight at Helm's Deep. Although it ends with a mumbling narrator saying "Here ends the first part of the Lord of the Rings," his version was never to be continued, and all hope of seeing a complete telling of Tolkien's masterpiece was dashed.

Flash forward to modern day. In three successive years, the world has been blessed with the vision and dedication of a director named Peter Jackson. He did what I assumed impossible. Recreating the battle for Middle Earth in a visually powerful yet entertaining manner. With a public that is beginning to resign itself to buy the $20 DVD of movies rather than take a chance in the theater, The Fellowship of the Ring brought everyone back to the cinema with claims that "You have to see this on the big screen."

After seeing the first installment, I felt something I thought I had lost forever after the Star Wars: Episode I debacle. I actually had anticipation to see the next installment of a series. With The Two Towers looming, my big concern was with Gollum. Would Jackson's version hold up to what we all envisioned the tragic and goofy villain to be? Within five minutes of my first viewing of the second installment (fittingly watched with my dad and two brothers), I knew it was going to be fantastic. Afterwards, I found myself doing Gollum impressions during my holiday stay in the Midwest, much like I did two decades before.

With The Return of the King coming up, I was fortunately very busy with other projects not to get too enthusiastic. One of my side jobs is being a movie critic for a local weekly, and I have learned that anticipation over watching films usually leads to a let down. Once December rolled around, however, I couldn't help thinking in the back of my head "It's coming. It's almost here."

Although the third and final installment opened Tuesday night at midnight, I couldn't find a window to see it until Saturday. Most appropriately, I went with my band mates after a night of playing our loud rock n' roll which included "Fifteen Birds" for a minimal audience at Historic El Rey (which coincidentally means The King). Hungover, stiff and groggy, Willy, Matt and I trudged our way downtown to watch a noon time matinee. Four hours later, the multitude of visual moments had overwhelmed us, and we stumbled home in awe.

The worst that purist can do with the entire series is knit pick. "I didn't like it when blah blah blah, and what happened to blah blah?" Yeah, keep picking the knits, geeks. I have one thing to say, and this comes after seeing thousands of movies: The Lord of the Rings is bar none the greatest film epic to be created in our lifetime.

Chris Jungle did not get to review The Return of the King, but instead pulled The Last Samurai duty (a pretty good film in its own right).