Returning from the extended Return of the King: A Return

Hello again everyone. I've been absent this week, despite planning to write several reviews and an opinion piece or two. But it's not my fault. Really it's not. The culprit is the extended edition of The Return of the King that came into my possession last Tuesday. Clocking in at over 4 hours in length (4 hours 10 minutes to be precise), it's a film that almost consumes a day to watch. Of course, I couldn't just watch it straight off the bat. I had to finish up The Two Towers, which I had started the night before. And then, after watching the film (and the two easter eggs hidden on the first two discs), there were two more discs of extras just sitting and begging me to watch them. And I just can't bring myself to disappoint LotR extras. So over the course of the next three days I watched them all (except for the Weta Digital feature, which would just lead to me thinking about how shots weren't really happening). So over the last week I've watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 hours of LotR footage. And that's a lot.

I can't really give you an extensive extended RotK review, mostly because I don't feel it'd be very helpful. Because, you see, I love The Lord of the Rings. The books are some of the best I've ever read, and Peter Jackson's adeptation was done with more precision and passion than I could have thought possible. So any review I give you of the movie is going to be massively tainted. But I will say this: I loved the theatrical RotK, moreso than the first two theatrical films. The extended footage is good, and it makes the movie better, mostly because you get closure with Saruman, as well as more of, well, everything. But there's one thing that really bothered me, which is that (stop reading if you want to avoid spoilers) the Lord of the Nazgul, in his confrontation with Gandalf in Minas Tirith, breaks Gandalf's staff. The Witchking is not that strong, damnit!
"I thought Fangorn was dangerous." [Gimli]
"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord."

"The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider." [Aragorn]

"You cannot enter here," said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go Back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and you Master. Go!"

I guess I could make up plausible reasons for having Gandalf not being as strong as the Witchking (like the necessity of reigning in Gandalf's strength a little bit while showing the rise of Aragorn's character), but it still bothers me. Eventually I'll get past it, but right now, it bugs me. But other than this, this movie has some of my favorite moments in the trilogy. The lighting of the Beacons is an excellent example of a scene that's barely in the book, but works so well on film that you want to stand up and cheer. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields is fantastic, and the Paths of the Dead sequence is greatly improved by the added footage. To say I recommend this movie would be an understatement.

If you want to get a sense of just how hard it was to get these movies done, watch the extras on all three extended editions. These appendices have become the gold standard for DVD extras. They take you into every aspect of making the movie, which allows you to appreciate the work and massive attention to detail (much of which you can't even see) that people put into these films. They document the making of probably the most ambitious film project in history from writing to scouting locations to creating the props to the actors to postproduction. If you're at all a LotR fan, or if you're interested in movies at all, you should watch these extras. If you're not sure you'll like them, I suggest watching the "Filming the Lord of the Rings" documentaries, which contain mostly cast interviews and funny anecdotes of what went on while filming. If you like that, move on to another, but be careful you don't spend three days watching them, like me.

That's all for now. I'll hopefully get a condensed review of The Simpsons season 4 and Ocean's 12 up sometime soon. However, my friend and compatriot Mr. Caleb Bartley returned to Minneapolis yesterday, and I will be in Portland, OR visiting Kathreen's family after Christmas, so I may have less time than usual over the next few weeks. In case I don't get back here before then, everyone have a Merry Whatever-it-is-you-might-celebrate-at-this-time-of-year, and if you're in MN for New Year's Eve, the Party's at Java's.