LOTR Trilogy (theatrical version) on Blu-ray in 2010

I'd like to see Sauron reintegrated into the Battle of the Black Gate, as in the script and original cut. The films (unlike the books) feel somewhat anticlimactic without Aragorn directly confronting the Dark Lord in some way.

 

When I make the switch to Bluray, I'll pick up this set. I enjoyed the EEs the one time I watched them, but other than a few wonderful additions in Fellowship, I found most of the additional material superfluous in the films. Granted, I'm not an enormous Tolkien guy and I've only read the books once, but the movies are some of the best cinema ever. For me the theatrical additions are just fine.

 

Yeah. I think I can wait a little while longer.

 

I wouldn't. Sauron isn't meant to be that kind of villain by the end of the Third Age. His physical form was destroyed thousands of years before.

Aragorn's climactic confrontation with Sauron was supposed to have come during the scene where he reclaimed the Palantir and revealed himself to Sauron, along with the reforged Anduril. But then that ended up with Aragorn losing anyway.

 

Well, there are things they could tweak. They joked about altering Gollum in the first movie because he's using the pre-Two Towers model (one they changed to resemble Serkis more closely), and of course we did see a scene from the Hobbit in The Fellowship - who knows if that'll be whoever gets the role in the new film now?

Shades of Hayden Christensen in ROTJ, granted, but it's an interesting thought to consider.

Me? I probably should rewatch the trilogy. Been years, but love it to death, I really do.

 

Happy with my standard version EE dvds. No reason to repurchase them on bluray.

 

Gollum tells Frodo that that there are only four fingers on the Black Hand. Ie he has a physical body again.

 

Well that has can be (and has been) debated fiercely on Tolkien forums.

 

You know, I really enjoyed the Theatrical versions, as well as the EE versions (got them all on DVD). Sometimes I prefer the Theatrical, especially when showing them to people who've never seen the movies before (yes, there are such people ). But they're a bit shorter and tighter, and some of the special features are really more "for the fans" than anything else.

I'm sure I'll end up with both versions.

 

Honestly, I think FOTR was the only one of the three that didn't need any extra scenes. Both TTT and ROTK needed some of the additions, but I think they made a few poor choices, such as Theodred's funeral and the avalanche of skulls in the Paths of the Dead.

 

I love you, man.

(In a totally hetero-normative, testosterone-laden, manly man sort of way. Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

 

I am very glad they are doing a staggered release of this, as if they were going to release them all together I am very sure they would have waited for right before the Hobbit for it (now we get the EE right before the Hobbit).

As for putting everything on one release or keeping it as two separate releases, that also pleases me.

In my family I am the only one who wants the Extended Editions, everyone else just wants the theatrical release. Thus they can get that without the extra cost of having dramatically more material on the disc (i.e. more disc in the set, and thus more expensive).

And I the did put a barebones double edition out, but on DVD the quality wasn't as high as the single releases. While I know Blu-Ray has larger storage, these films are huge (significantly logger then most any film), and while branching would help since they also had to change musical cues in footage that both versions had, it would take even more space. Then you had the vast amount of extras each film had, and yeah to do both versions on one release with all the extras and keeping the quality of the transfer high would make for the set to be of many, many discs. While I would gladly pay for that, most casual fans of the movie wouldn't.

 

Branching with the LOTR EEs/TEs isn't really practical... There are so many small differences, in addition to the obvious added scenes.

 

Remember the branching technology on DVDs that made the limited editions with the theatrical and extended possible? Sure, that's been replaced by blu ray for the most part, but why can't t here be such a branch or option with both the teathrical and the extended on one set? I think the technology is possible. Warner and whoever else I think is just milking these releases for all the money their worth. I think they went ahead with this theatrical set for April since the Hobbit has been pushed back a bet. I wouldn't be surprised if they stroked out the extended trilogy between all these hobbit releases.

AND I suspect there will be no new features or magics like we've been promised all these years. I ahve the Theatricals, Extended, and the Limited Editions. And I do intend to get the blu-rays, but Good Lord they know how to line their pockets, don't they?

 

Agreed on Fellowship since i regard it as the best of the three but the scenes added for the EE even improved on an otherwise near flawless movie.

Personally i'll be waiting for the BR EEs since i loathe double dipping (and regard the EEs as the definitive LotR movies).

 

the digital bits has a review up:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewshd/bdreviews032310.html

 

I honestly don't think branching would be a great idea with these films as not only are there a ton of scenes, but that music also changes, dialogue changes from one version to the other during the same visual scene. I do know that out of the few films that have branching that I have I generally don't care for it.

And the thing is, WB has always been upfront about when they believe these editions will come out. This isn't like after the film was released and oh my god it's out I can't wait. 20 million people already own some form of this film in the US/Canada. If you want only the Extended Edition then stop complaining and wait for it. If you don't want the extras (footage and features) and want what was cut for the movies, then get the originals. And as the originals far outsold the Extended it makes perfect sense for that to be the one issued first.

Imagine the reverse them releasing only the extended edition (the one that will be more expensive first), people would be bitching and money forever about WB trying to gouge their pocket books.

And as I states quite a while ago, that if WB was going to wait and release both versions at once then we would be waiting to about 4 months before the Hobbit opens. There is no way it hell that Warners wouldn't use that has a huge amount of basically free advertising for a major film release.

 

wake me up when they release the 100 hour version single mega-collection (containing all 3 parts of LOTR EE and both hobbit films EE)

 

Jackson even admits on the commentary the avalanche makes no sense (after all, where's the rest of the skeleton?)

I mean, feh, if he knew that why'd he do it?

 

I don't know... because that was the absolutely last scene they added for the EEs. Weird.