Be Excellent To Each Other

Yo.

LOTR Blu Ray boxset on the way. Theatrical version with no extras. Can you say... double dip?

http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/4-/9351 ... oduct.html

Bloody money grubbers, why couldn't they release both at the same time?

As money-making moves go, it's surely not even that clever? Anyone who cares enough to want the premium extra-length editions will know they'll cone out eventually, and just wait for them. Maybe it's not money making, just that it'll take longer to remaster the directors cut edition so they are releasing these in the meantime.

Never considered the remastering. You wouldn't think they'd be short sighted enough to only master the extended editions at DVD res do you?

I doubt it, unless they had to cut corners on the CG and deliberately worked in SD as a time saver. But I don't know. Obviously it was all film shot, so if they were rushing to meet a shipping deadline on the DVD box set (IIRC it came out in November in time for the Christmas rush) they might have done I suppose.

Paging ChinnyHill10 to the thread, DV production knowledge needed.

Are the extended versions actually better, though?

I saw Fellowship at the cinema twice, then watched the extended DVD. So convinced was I that I didn't see Towers or RotK at the cinema, I waited for the extended DVD releases instead.

The first one is a huge improvement, certainly. It adds back the scene where Galdriel give them the very important items they use later in the movies.

The second adds some interesting, non-hobbit central scenes with Aragon mainly. Fleshes out the characters more than anything.

In ROTK, it extends an already epic film into a bum number, but for the life of me I can't recall any added stuff. I reckon it's down to me only seeing the normal version once, and the extended one about 4 times.

Bear in mind that I was willing RoTK to FUCKING HURRY UP AND END ALREADY when I saw it in the cinema.

Extended version contains 100% more dwarf tossing.

I'm pretty sure they could use some fancy branching tech to put both versions on the same disc...

I claim: four hours at home with a pause button is much more palatable than three hours in a cinema.

I liked the way it was on 2 DvDs so it provided a nice break.

Oh dear fucking God this.

Wasn't helped by the fact that it seemed to end about five times, each one shittier than the ending before it.

Memo to directors: when you kill Godzilla, END YOUR FUCKING FILM. A brief scene of the whole Rebel Alliance lining up to watch Princess Leia hang medals around your heroes' necks while awesome music plays is THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ADDITION.

I would totally start letting BluRays talk to the Internet if they grabbed intermission settings from some website or other. Then, at some determined ideal spot, pause is hit, a fairly-bright screen fades up and some gentle music plays.

The need for a pleasant-enough pause, balanced against presumed alcoholic beverage intake and bladder capacity. Over the end credits it could pop up a "Was the intermission too early/just right/too late/unnecessary?" box for feeding back.

Why is this not already in place? It's 200-fucking-9 Goddammit.

How can they justify subplots and backstory (merchandise tie-in ching!) without the bookend scenes.

Also, showing the Ghostbusters boogying outside the building over the credits is also acceptable.

Thread retool!

Secret back story of Tom Bombadil REVEALED!

It's a whole page of crazy.

He was a male stripper in a go-go bar.

Witch King of Angmar was the lead Nazgul, Bombadil was just a Maia. Same as Gandalf, same as Sauron. That's the reason the ring had no effect. The Elves (*spit*) knew him well before Angmar rose. They called him Iarwain Ben-adar "Oldest and Fatherless".

Ah, here we go..


So there you go. He was a giant pixie. Like Goldberry was.

I just *know* you did that from memory.

The man himself:

Like Frank Black?

Hey, some people like to follow football or throwball or cricket.. I do Tolkien.

This. RotK was the best of the films, but I found the trilogy on the whole (in the cinema) quite boring. Travel...fight... rinse and repeat. I've not watched them since.

Clerks 2 takes the piss out of the story quite well. It's the funniest bit in the film.

I have a friend who described it as 'like being a UPS driver in an S+M dream' which made me laugh.

I'm no avid reader by any stretch of the imagination, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit as a kid, and subsequently the LOTR trilogy as an adolescent; these are surely required reading of sorts. Equally, I loved the LOTR films (and even the incomplete animation that well preceded it back in the day, even if I couldn't really get past Arathorn being Avon off Blake's Seven ). Similarly, I'm also very much looking forward to The Hobbit film as well.

All of that said though, does anyone else think that the whole King/Army of the Dead thing - a bunch of invincible ghosts facilitating the final victory, was a bit of a cop out story-wise? Basically, chuck in a bunch of things wot cannot be killed etc., rendering everyone and everything else pretty much superfluous.

To me, this was always most unsatisfying; to my most nonliterary mind at least, there were surely better ways of wrapping up the whole yarn than this?

Sorry if this has been done before and/or pisses anyone off. [delete as applicable]

Ghosts aren't invincible.

You just need a transient curse or a cursed weapon.

It was a bodge that fucked the last film for me. In the books you never see the Army of Dead, just hear that they helped Aragorn clear the corsairs of Umbar out from Pelargin. It was the threat of these corsairs that stopped the whole region of Lebennin from sending any troops to aid in the defence of Minas Tirith. Aragorn arrived at the battlefield at the head of these reinforcements, and with the near simultaneous arrival of the Rohirrhim managed to clear the field.

The film also has this take place in almost broad daylight, when in fact it was pitch black due to the outpourings from a newly awakened Mount Doom. The only light was from trenches dug by the Orcs which were filled with lighted pitch.

The contractions of scale in the final film also annoyed me. The fact that Gandalf could look from the battlements of Minas Tirith and see Amon Amarth, Minas Morgul and Mount Doom had me spitting with rage. Gandalf also appeared to make the run from Helms Deep to Minas Tirith in a single night. Gah!

Ah right, thanks Dimrill. It's been 30 years since I read the books, so I did not appreciate how badly the film reflected Tolkien's original story in this (key) respect.

There is a lot to criticise the LOTR films for, but expedience in order to keep an already excessive running time down isn't really one of them.

(But yeah, the closeness of Minas Tirith and the Black Gate really rankled. It made the - arghIveforgottenthenameoftheplaceinthemiddlewherehtebrotherbumpsintoFrodoandSam - seem completely superfluous.)

Osgiliath.

Which is a fuck sight closer to Minas Tirith than it is to Minas Morgul.

LotR was designed as a folk talke because britain didn't have enough. Folk tales fluctuate in the telling, though it's a wave and the centre stays true. We can't expect cinema to work the same as literature. I think one of the main things about Aragorn, the human hero of the piece, is his battle to overcome his own issues, the crown, arwen etc... the ghost army, in the context of an epic action trilogy, is a fair way of doing this.

LotR was a language experiment taken way too far...

Lord of the Rings was a book written by a man asked to write a book. It wasn't written with any intention other than that. Read the 4 accompanying dry as a corpse collections of his work in progress drafts for proof of this. After it was published Tolkien loved to over-analyse it in the letters he wrote, which you can also read in a collection unentertainingly edited by his boring son Christopher.

"We loved The Hobbit, John. Could you write a sequel?"
"Aye, why not. I'll give it a go"

...

500000 words later

...

"There you go."
"Erm... thanks. WTF?"

And this, kids, is how a never ending cash cow is born.

"We loved Star Wars, George. Can you release them for the last time ever again?"

"Oh fuck, yeah."

Speaking of which, I take it you've all seen this, right?

I remember reading the Silmarillion and all the very interesting stories in there and wondering why he didn't try and do a readable version. Still, I reckon whether it was JRRRRR's intention to bsah out a folk legend for the UK or that was something he retconned into his intent is neither here nor there, as it's what we've ended up with.

I really liked the Silmarillion. It was light years better than most of the other ancillary books.

It was, and Raoul Moat was much less murdery than Peter Sutcliffe.