Thaidakar the Ghostblood

It is time to talk about what is both my greatest hypocrisy and greatest love, when it comes to fiction

I typically hate movie covers on books. It is almost always just a random picture from the movie adaptation that looks cool, or just some random thing (I'm looking at you, Contact.) I hate the all.

Except for two of them.

Now, I have reasoning for why I like them. You might not like my reasoning, but that reasoning will stand till the end of time.

My tier list for movie covers is:

One of the ones I like at S tier.

The other one I like at B tier.

All the rest of them at F tier.

Now those two covers are as follows. The first one being the S tier, the second being the B tier.

Alright, now that y'all are done raising your eyebrows and laughing because they're bad, let me explain why I love them to death.

Imagine that you're a nine year old boy. Imagine you've begun your first forays into fantasy, you've just finished the first Harry Potter books, the Little Prince, and the Hobbit. Now, you want something more. You loved the hobbit and you know that there are sequels and that there are big movie adaptations for at least the sequels that sound pretty cool. Now, imagine you got those sequels from the library, read them, adored them.

Now, as you loved those books, you want your own copies to read and love. So you go to a lending library nearby and find, lo and behold, copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.

You're overjoyed that you found them! You take them home after leaving some books and read them all over again. In fact, over the years, you reread them again and again, even after reading other books too. Especially that first one. You read the first few chapters of Fellowship again more than all the other parts, even those cool maps, because you simply enjoy Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins doing their thing.

As time goes by and growing up starts to suck the happiness away, you think of those times, reading the books, with fondness. You begin to grow attached to the memories of the Shire and Minas Tirith and Rohan and Khazad Dum. The love of Middle Earth becomes intrinsically associated with those novels. They are your favorite place ever. 

Then, imagine, slowly those copies fall apart. One loses its cover (The Return of the King), one you realize looks like utter garbage (The Two Towers). You get new copies of those that you don't like as much, but they're still ones you love. And then, finally, that copy of Fellowship of the Ring with Frodo on the cover holding aloft Sting gets beaten up, both covers fall off, a few pages get ripped out by accident.

And, so, instead of just getting your ordinary copy of the Fellowship of the Ring from somewhere, you look for the same version of the book, the same cover, the same sort of feel to it. And, before long, you find it and adore it all over again. It even smells almost the same!

That book, with it's nostalgic cover, that nostalgic feel, that fantastic smell, the dogeared cover, the creases in the binding... it feels like your best friend has come back after years of not seeing you and gives you a hug.

That, my friends, is my argument that the movie cover version of Fellowship of the Ring is the best version of a book ever. I'm going to do a reread of LotR sometime and am going to forcibly strip away my critic's lenses, remove the way I look as a writer, and try to remember a nine year old boy who found a friend in the Fellowship of the Ring.

(P.S. if you were wondering, the two towers copy I had didn't match the other two, had a dopy picture of Orlando Bloom on it, and was laid out in a way I heavily disliked)