Return of the King: Extended Edition

[bcholmes]

Thoughts:

Not even 50 extra minutes of footage could salvage that dreadfully-edited sequence with Alwyn and Elrond.

One day, I really should read the damn books (the only time I tried, the first one bored me to tears). I'm curious about how much of an impact the lighting of the beacons sequence has in the books. It has such visual impact in the films and I find it hard to imagine them carrying off the same effect in the books.

The recovery of Eowyn was a useful sequence, but it buggered up the chronology of the other after-the-battle stuff.

All the Faramir/Denethor scenes make me cry. This version has more of them.

The additional scenes with Aragorn picking up the Eye of Sauron after the battle of Minas Tirith and the Mouth of Sauron worked for me.

The more I hear the song, "Into the West", the more I think that "You Will Be My Ain True Love" was robbed at the Oscars.

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

My goodness, yes. The movies are outstanding visually and tell a heck of a story, but plotwise it's a shadow of the books. Someone should pay William Golding to write a "Good Parts" version of Fellowship of the Ring, because the pacing of the last two books is much faster. Or, heck, you could just buy FotR and start reading when they reach Rivendell.

In the books, I think Denethor simply gave Gandalf permission to light the beacon for what little good it would do. PJ pretty much rewrote everything that took place on the top level of the city.

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

I totally agree on the Faramir/Denethor scenes. The whole thing with Sauroman (sp?) was awful at the beginning. Made me cringe something bad. Some of the add on stuff was great and some of it was terrible. I really liked the bits and pieces that showed the characters more at rest like the whole drinking scene between Legolas and Gimli. It made them less manly man to me and more "real".

[didactic-cudgel.livejournal.com]

Whenever I tell anyone to read the LotR books, I give them as much encouragement as I can to slog through the first half of the first book (some of the slowest prose in all of Literature). It eventually helps flesh out the book some as you get a better idea of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin's transformations. Otherwise, I couldn't recommend the books enough. By the way, Arwen is given very short shrift in the books and much of what you see in the films never happened in the books. Eowyn is the only woman with any real characterization and I suspect much of that is only because she pretends to be a man (subject for many a dissertation I'm sure). Otherwise women are almost tokens (Galadriel as wise, but icy, elven queen; Arwen as pining girlfriend with the Terrible Choice).

I promise you can skip the Tom Bombadil chapter if you want, but you should probably read the Barrow-wights chapter immediately following.

[blueinva.livejournal.com]

Given the constraints PJ had on how much he could cram in he did a decent job...much more of a fan's version than many studios would have allowed, so whilst it's valid to be critical, you have to bear in mind just how huge a task the making of this behemoth was and the fact that there hasn't been howling for PJ's blood by LotR fans (who are even more rabid than Trekkies) shows you that there's enough of the spirit of the books to make most happy.

The Saruman add on merely showed why it was clipped from the cinema version, with little of what the book conveyed. I was disappointed that it wasn't included originally, but on viewing, not so much. *smile*

[ardasiril.livejournal.com]

The music made the beacons scene. Even now, if I play the CD, it gets my whole spirit all tingly. (And no, it was not nearly as good in the book).

To those of you who have read (and I'm a major fan here, I'll admit to reading at least twice a year as part of a personal geek, er, fan ritual since I first laid eyes on them at age six) -- is the experience better or worse or just different after you've seen the films?

This is my first time around reading after having seen all films, and I'll be damned if I'm not hearing the actors' voices and seeing things the way they were cast. And it's not taking away from the experience at all. In fact, at least for Gandalf, it's adding something -- I hated this character before Ian McKellen.

(And I agree -- everything about Denethor and Faramir should make you cry. Especially if you ever read any other Tolkien material and find out that when Denethor was a young man, *his* father did the exact same thing to him -- not in favor of an older brother, but in favor of a mysterious stranger named "Thorongil" who was none other than Aragorn 50 or so years before the events of RoTK).