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LoTR RoTK Extended Edition Specs Released
It's pre-pre-Christmas season, and ThePrinceofWands writes "OMG! It's official, 25% more unbelievable greatness in this version." The linked description (on the official LotR site) starts "DISCS 1-2: The Feature
FEATURE (approx. 250 minutes) - A new version of the final installment in the epic trilogy! The Academy-Award winning film now has 50 minutes of never-before-seen footage incorporated into the film for this highly-anticipated video release." The extended version can be ordered starting on Oct 1st.
Get the Return of the King Extended version, and soon after they will release a complete box set of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King, that have even more footage than all the previous extended versions combined. Have they even released a complete set yet? It's obviously going to happen.
Its a pity that the link doesn't go into more detail, but the more the merrier. The extended editions of the first two movies were great improvements on already excellent films (especially the first one), so I have high hopes for Return of the King.
On a totally unrelated note, here is some sophisticated LotR humor in the form of a 2meg wmv file.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
Despite all the arguments to the contrary, Tom Bombadil is not really an important character in LOTR. Yes, he's an interesting character and probably is used as a foreshadowing of future events, but when it comes down to the actual plot, he is just a short meander off the main line.
God knows the main plot is long enough as it is, why in the world would you want to make it longer by adding an insignficant character? This is a movie, not a book. The point of a movie is to tell a good story at a fast enough pace so that the viewer feels he got his money's worth. A book allows the author to do all the meandering he likes and the reader to take as much time as is necessary to absorb it all.
I really want to see...Saruman's demise.
Oh Great, now we get almost an houre of volcanoes blowing up.
Did any one else think that the ending after the ring was destroied was far to looooooong
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
I guess I will have to wait for the release to find out.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
Good question. I never thought I'd say this but Peter Jackson has made me glad that Tolkien limited LotR to just three volumes.
Am I on my own on this one?
Yup, pretty much.
Yeah, just to troll a bit, but I remember people laughing at the end of ROTK in the theater... and not the "har, that was a funny movie" laughter, but the "god, this is painfully embarrassing to be in the same theater as this movie and I can either laugher or cry" laughter. Jackson would have done best to just stick with the book (Scouring of the Shire). That's what made Fellowship the best movie of the three (and that folks, is entirely my own opinion).
Now... to figure out how to integrate blue into my dvd collection... I was honestly expecting brown, yellowish tan, or some shade of greyish something... Blue?
Fun that everyone bashes Lucas for his multiple releases but it is quite silent about Jackson.
The difference is the handling of the whole thing. Lucas created a story with the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars trilogy - he wasn't using a story that'd been around in one form or another more > 50 years. After he created his story, he went back and changed the story around - making some changes that seem to have pissed off a couple of people here and there...
Biggest difference with LOTR is the attitude behind the DVD marketing. The changes & omissions from LOTR (especially the cutting of Saruman from ROTK) pissed off some people as badly as Greedo "shooting first." But instead of hiding behind artistic license or "piracy concerns" a la Lucas, Jackson's giving people a choice. He's releasing versions which reincorporate scenes that got cut - AND he's still marketing the theatrical versions for those who want them. (Do thank Jackson for not wetting on your childhood memories when you can load up your DVD, or your BD-ROM rip or whatever, of the original LOTR in 25 years.)
It's shrewd marketing, of course. Plenty of people will buy the LOTR theatrical disks and then go back and buy the expanded triology. Say what you will about Lucas and his rights to do what he wants with his movies, but I think Jackson's creating a better public image than Lucas - AND he's getting paid for it.
Kinda like the armoured knights that Egg Shen and Lo Pan manifested in the pre-climactic free for all melee in the underground throne room/wedding hall?
Some movies don't need millions of dollars of CGI. Flying elementals, midair swordfights and great big floating eyeballs. Now that's a work of Art!
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the LOTR movies and have the previous 2 extended editions. However I did think that the theatrical release of ROTK did suffer a little from its editing. Now I have read the books and know what things have been missing from the movies and such, but I thought that there were a number of instances in ROTK where it was bloody obvious that a scene was missing and that did (at least to me) seem to interrupt the flow of the movie just a little.
It's great to see an extended editiong offering some great additions that improve the quality of the movie as a whole, as so many DVD's don't offer many feature at all. The commentaries so far have been good as well and I enjoy listening to them.
I am willing to cut Jackson some slack, mainly because we, the consumers, knew ahead of time that there was going to be both a theatrical version AND an extended version. Therefore, we were able to decide which version we wanted to buy. It's not like he release the theatrical version, and then after everyone had scarfed up that, decided to spring the extended version on us. He told us up front that there was going to be an extended version and that if we wanted to, we could wait until that one came out.
Plus, if I remember correctly, there was a rebate for those who bought both versions. So if you really couldn't wait the extra 6 months for the extended version, you could buy the regular version and get a little bit of a break on the extended version.
If Jackson's goal was really to maximize profits, he would have released the theatrical versions, waited a few years for everyone to buy that, and then announce the extended version after profits from the theatrical version had tapered off. Plus, he would make people who bought both pay full price, rather than offer a little bit of a rebate.
Personally I find his attitude a lot more palatable than George Lucas who is obviously out to milk the Star Wars franchise for all its worth.
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
Well they have repeatedly said that Scourging of the Shire wasn't filmed; both in interviews and eg in the commentary track to FOTR (during the scene with Galadriels mirror which is a homage to the last chapter). There is also a lot of talk about why they did this and all that.
Personally I think it's a big conspiracy though. In 20 years time we will get a new release of LOTR the way "it was ment to be". Complete with 10 extra hours of songs in elvish noone understands, and in the new version Gandalf screams as he falls with the Balrog.
Seriously though, if you don't see the movies because of the lack of a specific scene then you're just stupid. Particularly the first movie is very beautiful and even the one with least digressions from the original story. Get the extended editions though.
Very few appreciate Tom Bombadil on the first read through. In order to understand his character you first need to know quite a bit about the world of middle-earth, and at that point on your first read through you still don't have that knowledge. (Just like the hobbits.) Considering that severe cutting had to be done it's no surprise that the 30+ minutes part which actually doesn't have any meaning in the rest of the movie was cut.
Scouring was cut for similar reasons. It is just yet an example of how the media differ. There are other changes I don't agree with in the movies, but these two I understand and agree with.
Well, if you look at almost all editions of the books (many of which will have been personally approved by Tolkien himself) they went with Green/Blue/Red 90% of the time... which to me seemed far more logical, for the reasons I stated above. But hey, like so many things, its just MHO
Movies do not end until the credits have finished and the projector has been switched off. I hate it when everybody just starts getting up when "Directed by" flashes into the screen and getting their jackets and starting to call their friends on their cellphones etc.
When credits roll, you have time to digest and go through the movie experience, relax, and reflect, while still maintaining the 'mood' that the movie has created. (Especially if you happen to be on a date and watching a 'chick-flick' - you can keep the nice, romantic feeling going instead of rushing into the jam-packed exits and stepping on other people's toes). Granted, this may not apply to all brainless actionflicks, but I digress..
I'm glad that more recently, more and more movies are putting stuff (some little joke or something) after the credits (Pirates of the Caribbean:Undead monkey comes at you, Phantom Menace: Darth Vader's breath, etc. See IMDB:s "crazy credits" for more details.). Makes more folks stay PUT until the movie is really finished. Of course, people like Jackie Chan have always inserted bloopers to the credits sequence..keeps people in their seats.
So, if you got up at the end of RoTK for three times...well, too bad! If you really were in such a hurry why didn't you leave on the first time? You could at least wait through the initial credits sequence (Director, cast etc) if you are not interested in names of key grips and listening to the soundtrack in the theatre is not good enough for you.
Why? Miranda Otto is way prettier than Liv. Oh, and she can fight too.
Turbo Smorgreff
When credits roll, you have time to digest and go through the movie experience, relax, and reflect, while still maintaining the 'mood' that the movie has created
Some people don't like mull over what they just saw, like a cow chewing crud.
If a movie leaves you breathless and speechless and touches you so deep that you simply need time to compose yourself, that's another matter. But as a self-serving display of fake sensitivity it's just a waste of time.
If any of the stuff they cut actually made the movie better they would have left it in the theatrical edition.
What you mean is "If any of the stuff they cut actually made the movie better in theaters they would have left it in the theatrical edition."
DVD is not theater - different audience (fans), different viewing environment (couch, pause button, etc), all of which means that the judgement of what is "best" is different. And it seems to favour longer movies, with more extras.
e.g. for the first 2 LotR movies, the DVD versions are in my opinion far superior, but I don't know if I could have sat through either in a cinema.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I'm not so sure about racist bit but I think he's defendable on the sexist charge. His female characters, while few, are strong. Who kills the witch king, after all?
I personally believe that had Tolkien lived and changed with the times he would have loved the movies
It's not like Tolkien was in sync with popular culture and entertainment forms in his own time. Why should he be enamoured of ours?
http://www.switch2firefox.com/
Because Tom Bombadil is, by far, the most interesting character in all of Middle-Earth.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No, this is more proof that you just don't really understand what Tom was about. Tolkien originally wrote of him many years prior as a 'Green Man', i.e. man of the woods in a volume of poetry. In it, Bombadil exerted rather absurd amounts of power over the world, much as he does in LotR. Later, writing LotR, Tollkien included him for the simple reason that he doesn't clearly fit in the mythos of the world: he's not a living thing (since Treebeard is referred to as the Oldest Living thing), and he's not an maia, so much discussion was whether he was the Creator (although Tolkien specifically refuted this). The point is, he's unknown. He's there to remind you that we never have a full grasp of what's going on, and that's something that admittedly wouldn't translate easily to a movie but still has significant value.
"Stumble before you crawl"
A truly hopelessly geeky Tolkien nerd would point out that the Shire calendar was offset from the British calendar by several days. Tolkien described it all in the Appendices.
Damn, now I've outed myself.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
But the (big!) difference is that in the case of LoTR, you have a choice: both versions are or will be available. With Star Wars you have no choice: only the "revised" version is available. (In shops. Now. In a current format. etc.)
oh dear god, i'm crying with laughter!