Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy were not the very first films I ever watched, but they certainly comprise the majority of my earliest memories regarding film. I keenly remember watching The Fellowship of the Ring at home on a DVD rented from Blockbuster, the whole family gathered around, as was our wont on weekend evenings. I was enthralled, and then shocked when it ended with the Hobbit heroes Frodo and Sam crossing some rocky precipice, Mount Doom and fire-flecked storms looming in the distance. The credits rolled, and I remember thinking, that can’t be the ending, can it? The quest wasn’t over, the Ring still had to be destroyed, so you can’t have an ending if the story hasn’t…well, ended.

Was this some twisted trick meant to disappoint spellbound young viewers? Dumbstruck before the TV glow, it was a kind of torture, this feeling, but at the same time was also a strange, new yearning for more.

I made a bit of a fuss, and my dad had to calm me down by informing me about the concept of “sequels.” I eagerly awaited the next installment(s), with the whole saga culminating in what was perhaps my most glorious theater experience up to that point: seeing The Return of the King on opening weekend, its infamously long running-time (and slew of false endings) going by in absolutely no time at all. I’d been sufficiently hooked, you see, since that night when my five or six year old self first found a taste for the epic, the fantastical, and I would spend the bulk of my childhood, for better or worse, in search of that same never-ending rush. […]