I went to see Return of the King last night at the midnight showing. I'd like to give it two piles of holy flaming crap (that's a good thing, BTW.)
I love going to the midnight showings of those movies, it's sad that there's not one more to finish out my collegiate experience. Jackson should surprise me and release an unknown filmed version of the Hobbit next year. But I wont hold my breath.
The reason that I love going to those late shows is that the nerds come out in force. It scares the hell out of me that I group myself in with these people. They never change. I saw people in that audience that I knew when I was but an elementry schooler, and they may have an extra piercing or two now, but they're still the "living in my mom's basement doing 'really sweet' experiments with Pop-Rocks" type.
You can also very easily pick out those who have never read the books or have no idea what's going on. For some reason, a movie primere brings out the clap in nerds. Not in a disgusting medical sense, though, when you think about it...better not. Anyway, they like to applaud. Often. Maybe 10-15 times during RotK there was applause. I'm a big fan of displays of affection and appreciation for hard work, and if Viggo Mortensen happened to be standing at the front of the room, he'd be getting the biggest round from me ever given, but he wasn't. In fact, he was likely sleeping soundly somewhere wishing really creepy people would stop sending him samples of Pop-Rocks.
I'm going to see the movie again tonight with a slightly different set of people. I'll post an actual review after that.
~J