Extra Scenes in FotR Special Edition DVD

gdr writes "Lights Out Entertainment have an article on the extra scenes that will be in the Fellowship of the Ring special edition DVD. It will be nice to have the relationship between elves and dwarves fleshed out a bit. I'm not sure the final battle scene really needs to be any longer." There are quite a few bits mentioned for the extra 30 minutes of footage that I'm looking forward to seeing. Just be careful to buy the November 12 release and not the august release if you want the extra mojo. I'll be waiting.

Wrong Battlescene?

[FortKnox]

I heard the battlescene that was supposed to be extended was the battle with Sauron at the beginning. I heard it was to be, not only elongated, but a lot more gory, giving the movie an "R" rating.

This is just heresay, though.

Re:Will they...

[sdjunky]

"Will they have more minute-long shots of them walking? I really don't think their was enough in the original version"

Considering this is mostly what they did in the book I believe it shows the labor of their journeys. I believe it fits well. If you don't like the walking then you'll hate the book since it takes forever to even get to the point where
<spoiler>

Frodo gets stabbed with the knife by one of the Ring Wraiths
</spoiler>

I understand that for some it may have been boring but the Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece. There is no part that doesn't fit in some small way to the whole. It's said that JRR Tolkien scrapped 3 chapters of work because he realized that the phase of the moon was wrong and had to rewrite earlier chapters to take into account of the differing light.

He not only wrote the languages of the Elven Tongue and Dwarfish etc. But those languages predecessors and their predecessors. They are real languages ( considering he was a linguist - no surprise ). If you read the Silmarillion you see references to words in their earliest form "Orkos" which later was termed "Orcs" etc.

You'll note ( a part taken out of the movie I believe ) that in the Bar Frodo was saying what was to be an earlier form of the childrens nursery rhyme where "The cow jumped over the moon".

He was a perfectionist. His work is a masterpiece and maybe some will appreciate the intended meaning of the "long walking scenes" since they add to the air of the FotR.

Re:Well I wouldn't buy a DVD for extra footage...

[Knacklappen]

Those who aren't fans of the book should be perfectly happy with the August release.

I wouldn't quite agree with that conclusion. In my world, No-fans of the book are just persons who didn't spend the time reading it. I went to the movie with friends who didn't - and consequently they were bored by the movie! Can you belive this? Well, I can... because the movie throws a lot of characters and small stories in the air without connecting them to the larger picture of Middle Earth. To be fair - this is a Mission Impossible. The movie does the best it can in the limited amount of time. It would need trice the time to explain the FotR story to the uninitiated, so that they can fully appreciate it.
I wouldn't be too surprised if TtT will attract less viewers than FotR just because of this... A shame, though.

One thing missing? - 'The Sword That Was Broken'

[cprice]

Am I the only one who thinks they could have spent
2 more minutes talking about the 'Sword Of Elendil'? They show the sword in the preface cutting the hand of Sauron, and then they show Boromir doing his 'Still Sharp(e)' shtick. I think a quick scene with Elrond presenting the re-forged sword 'Anduril' to Aragorn would have been a worthy plot addition ('The sword that was broken goes to war'). To me, its part of the 'Aragorn claims his birthright' story within the story.

Re:Jackson is going to trigger mass piracy...

[DoctaWatson]

Hmmm... I can pay 30 or so bucks and watch it on a big tv, with high quality picture and sound, spending the four hour movie time sitting on my comfy sofa.

Or, I can spend an hour or two downloading it off the internet so I can watch it on my 17" monitor, with mediocre video and mediocre sound, all while sitting in my less comfortable desk chair for 4 hours.

Jackson is a genius, kill piracy with comfort.

Why I'm Buying Both

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a huge fan of the movie, I think that buying both wouldn't be a bad idea. You see, the November edition is the extended edition. I keep wondering if it's going to include the theatre edition (like T2: Ultimite Edition) but from what I have read out there, it looks like it won't have seamless branching. I would like to be able to watch both. The August edition will be the theatre, and the editing choices will be that for theatre. It will have a quicker pace, although less detail. Sometime I may want to watch that edition. Some days, when I have more time, I may want to delve deeper in the story so I will pop in the November Extended edition. Apparently both are good, but they are different and I would like both. Those are my reasons for buying both.

Tom

[zephc]

For the people complaining about Tom Bombadil, he wasn't really NEEDED in a movie version. The enigma of Tom is that he represented the *reader*. He was a safety net of sorts for the reader, a character of goodness who could remained unharmed by the evils in Middle-earth, even from Sauron et al.

Here is a great analysis of Tom [cro.net]

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

how about...?

[Twister002]

Not MAKE any special features and just release the same movie in the theaters that they release on DVD. Because that's the latest craze, every DVD has to have special features. Wow a cast biography and behind the scenes photos. Uhm, how underwhelming.

I can't believe that they can't just allow the user to set an option to watch either the theatrical version or the extended version. We're talking about DVD here not VHS.

I'm watching my James Bond "The World is not Enough" DVD, a little icon flashes in the upper right hand corner, I press a button on my remote. Bingo, I get to see extra behind the scenes footage. Why not make the DVD with an option to turn on all the extra footage? Then release all the "Behind the scenes" extras on a separate DVD for $19.95 US? The people that want to watch the theatrical release can, the people that want to watch the full movie with the extras can.

Because they want to suck as much money out of us as they can. I doubt that, for me at least, there will be anything extra on the first release that I'll care about so now I'll be waiting for the 2nd one.

The Original Cut?

[drdink]

According to IMDB [imdb.com], the original cut "ran four hours and thirty minutes." If this is truely the case, I'd like to get my hands on all of that extra footage and see what else we missed. Sure would be nice if Tom Bombadil was in there somewhere.

Re:Tom

[WNight]

Tom, a safety net? You're right and truly cracked.

Tom was an accident and a toy's cameo, so says Tolkien himself. He started writing a more humorous book where Tom was appropriate (similar Bifur, Bofur, Bombur type naming in The Hobbit) and it gradually turned darker and more serious. He said he wouldn't have put him in, if he had it to do again.

Also, Bombadil is a name he'd given to one of his kid's toys, and he wanted basically to give the toy a cameo. He admit in his letters that Bombadil doesn't have anything to do with the story, but says that he liked the idea of the world having some mystery, so he never explained Tom's presense.

Making up some crap about how he represents the reader, etc... That's not only painfully wrong, but it's elitist, egotistical, and above all, against documented fact. Try lecturing about how the ring represents technology, that's another symbolism that Tolkien vehemently denied.

Re:Please no Tom

[ziggles]

Peter Jackson was trying to make a movie, not photocopy a book. I'm not a filmmaker, so I don't know how well any of the things cut from the book would work in the movie. Peter Jackson is one and does know. He's also as big a fan of the books as anyone(or so they say), so obviously he's going to be as respectful of the books as possible when making a movie adaptation. He's not second guessing Tolkien, he's just taking out the things that he thinks would not work in a movie like they work in a book. As far as I know Tolkien never wrote screenplays :)

Actually....

[frobozz3.141]

To some extent, I view a director as a conductor. I would not be very happy if I went to an orchestral performance of a Beethoven symphony and discovered that the conductor took it upon himself to cut out major portions of the work.

I know what you're saying, but this happens all the time. Just an example: George Szell and Otto Klemperer both cut a lot out of their (quite famous and popular) recordings of Bruchner's 8th symphony.... In fact, Klemperer said something along the lines that "Bruchner was getting carried away with himself"!

The fact of the matter is that PJ just couldn't fit everything in. My favourite part of the FOTR (A Conspiracy Unmasked) was cut, and I was disapointed. PJ needed to get the plot moving along, and skimming and cutting his way to Rivendell was the only way he could do it without tacking another hour onto the movie (not that many of us would complain....) At least PJ was respectful of the material, unlike Klemperer was. I think since TTT and ROTK have more meat on 'em, we'll see less cutting in the next movies.

-Frobozz

Re:Please no Tom

[Nos.]

I'd oppose that argument. Tolkien's books were badly paced, his storyline brought in new elements with little or no forshadowing, and the climactic scene of entire story took place in book 5/6, and was solved by a villian. And the fact that the ending is brought about by a villian (even if accidental) is one of the things I loved most about this story. The fact that the hero, in the end, was corrupted. Its not your typical movie where in the end, the hero always makes the right choice and saves the day. Here, we know the hero wouldn't or couldn't have.