Anyway ... while watching the game I'd switch back and forth to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (which was playing on TNT or something) during commercial breaks, sideline interviews, and the half-time news thing. As I've noted, I'm pretty spotty on catching movies when they come out, and I'd not seen more than a half hour at a time of this previously (although I did get a boxed set of the three movies for Xmas, I just haven't gotten around to watching them ... a typical situation which makes it impractical to rent films).
The problem? Elrond.
Elrond was Agent Smith.
I was not psychologically prepared for this. Of course, it didn't help that Hugo Weaving played Elrond like Agent Smith (the same vocal inflections, the same facial accents, perhaps minus the sneer) dressed up for the Gay Pride Parade! My brain was short-circuiting into Matrix-land, and was half expecting the Orcs to flicker out or Neo show up to fly the damn ring to Mordor.
Look, I'm not saying the guy should never act in another movie, but I wasn't expecting Gimli to slide in this one either ... at least John Rhys-Davies looked different as a Dwarf, and played the character uniquely. On the other hand, I kept waiting for Sam to say "Mister Frodo" one more time and have Elrond break into full sneer mode and say "or do you mean Mr. Anderson?" while morphing into the black suit and tie!
My brain hurts!!!