Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring

Standard Edition:
MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

Two Discs
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
English Subtitles
Original Theatrical Trailers
Behind the Scenes of The Two Towers
Three Documentaries
Fifteen Featurettes with Interviews
Enya Music Video
Video Game Preview
Extended Edition Preview
Run Time: 178 Minutes
Slim Two Disc Keep Case

Extended Edition:

MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

Four Discs
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
English 6.1 DTS
English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
English Subtitles
Extended Edition of the Film
Commentary by Filmmakers
Commentary by Design Team
Commentary by Production/Post Production Team
Commentary by Actors
Six Hour Documentary
Production Stills
Design Stills
Storyboards
Run Time: 208 Minutes
Fold Out

MOVIE
Rated PG-13 for violence and intense situations. Extended edition contains more gore.

One of my fondest childhood memories was that of watching the two Warner Brothers' Tolkien cartoons, The Hobbit and The Return Of The King. Both of these where when I was still quite young, so I didn't really notice the glaring gap between the two of them. Though the inconsistency of memory tells me that Return of the King took care of that quite well. I've hesitated to watch these films again, as my childhood memories of films tend to be much better than the films themselves and I've heard that these didn't age well. My brother, in fact, who is well on his way to becoming a rocket scientist (literally) will never, despite his achievements, live down in my family his habit of singing the minstrels song "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" from Return of the King almost constantly for several years in our youths. Part of the joy of these two films was cut to the quick by Ralph Bakshi's dreadful cartoon adaptation that we rented after. One of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen as a child were those ring wraiths converging on the beds of the sleeping Hobbits. Traumatized and emotionally scarred by this film, I wasn't gnawing at the bit for a new film version. But when one was announced, my film fan ears perked up. When it was announced that it would be three films shot simultaneously, I became more alert. When they tried to get Sean Connery for Gandalf, well, then I started looking into the project. Of course Connery was unavailable and they went with Ian McKellen instead, but by then I was too entrenched in the details, I was too interested to turn away. With one of my favorite underground directors (or down under) at the helm, Peter Jackson, creator of Dead Alive, (known as Braindead outside the US) Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, how could I not be intrigued. This man's films, combined, likely had not made the amount of money that Fellowship was fated to take in on opening day. One hell of a gamble by New Line Cinema, the company built on a gamble named Freddy Krueger.
Let's try to be brief now with the description, because I'm sure you all know, especially by now. Lord of the Rings (all three books, The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King which are really just three parts of one massive book) concerns a ring of ultimate power fashioned by the dark lord Sauron to rule the world. Thousands of years after Sauron was destroyed, the ring was found by a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) who held on to it for many years, allowing him to stay (relatively) young. During his eleventy-first birthday (111) party, Bilbo uses the ring to disappear and then leaves Hobbiton, bequeathing all his worldly possessions, including the ring, to his nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood.) An elderly wizard named Gandalf (Ian McKellen) warns Frodo that the ring is evil and must be taken to the deadly realm of Mordor and thrown into the fires of the volcano Mount Doom to be destroyed. Frodo sets out on this quest with fellow Hobbits, Sam (Sean Astin), Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd). They eventually become part of the fellowship of the rings, a group of nine companions with the express mission to destroy the ring.
Even with much distance, over a year now, and many many viewings, I still can't help but sit there with a silly fanboy grin on my face as those closing credits begin to roll with Enya's song over them. This first part in the trilogy neared perfection as it was, but this extended cut would've forced the Academy to award it best picture (which is much the way I feel about the Untitled edition of Almost Famous.) Between the release of this Extended Edition and the end of 2002, I inundated myself with Lord of the Rings. I rented and re-watched the Ralph Bakshi, um, version of the story. Then I set about watching all of the special features available to me. This is the reason for the delay of this review. I wasn't content to do what many reviewers did (and admitted to) by judging a feature by a short segment of it. I felt that this was a true King Zimf award winner and wanted to experience every moment of it. What ever moment amounted to was, well, all told, with all four commentaries, two viewings of the film with alternate sound tracks, the massive documentary and the still galleries, TWENTY-NINE hours of stuff. And I watched all of it. And you know the best compliment I can pay to this film and its story is, even with watching all of that, re-watching the original theatrical cut and its documentaries, and seeing the new film in the theater, I never got tired of it. I never lost that wide grin at the end as Sam and Frodo look out over their uncertain future. I never fail to hurt at Gandalf's martyrdom (which incidentally forces me to confront in my mind Lucas' near blatant rip off with Obi-Wan's death in Star Wars.) The chases are exciting and the scenes in Hobbiton lyrical and beautiful. Nothing is over done in this film by a man who has made three of the most overdone films I've ever seen (some successful in the case of Bad Taste and Dead Alive, and one not quite so successful as in Meet The Feebles.)
What may come off as mere fanboy ramblings are nothing but truths from me, because I can be tough on films, and even tougher on things I love. Lord of the Rings' first chapter: The Fellowship of the Rings is note perfect from beginning to end in this extended edition. The first film was tight and sleek and blasted you through from beginning to end, this edition gives you moments to breathe. And thank God for them. And thank God for Bilbo's new opening, one only wishes he could've pulled a Judi Dench and been nominated and won an Oscar for his all too brief moments in the film. (Dench won Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare In Love, a film that only featured her on screen for six minutes.)
Further though, you never get the sense that anything is in the film that wasn't meant to be there. Never is there a bit of deliberate foreshadowing, a sort of wink-wink to the audience that there was another film coming. (Unlike Back to the Future II's blatant trailer for the third film stuck between the sequel's footage and credits, that's something that makes me cringe on repeat watchings. You'd think they'd remove that for the DVD edition.) Never do you feel like New Line Cinema reached down their clawed hand (Freddy, remember...) and said "Cut this, change this and add a bit with a dog. Audiences like a bit with a dog." This feels like independent filmmaking on the grandest of grand scales, showing us all what pure cinematic joy can be like.

VIDEO QUALITY
The video quality for both editions is uniformly excellent. I would be hard pressed to tell the difference if asked. The darks are rich and the color scheme beautiful, one need look no further than our introduction to the Shire to see that. Never is there a distraction on the screen. I didn't notice any defects or artifacts or edge enhancement. There are several moments in this film that stand out as reference quality overall, but in addition to the entrance to the Shire, the fireworks sequence is beautiful, as is the final shot of the film. For incredible delineation between light and dark, the Balrog is the standout shot. (This also is an incredible audio demonstration.) One is quite thankful that New Line decided to spread the longer extended edition over two discs so the extra length or audio tracks wouldn't force them to compress it. The film is presented in both cases (though available otherwise) in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and enhanced for Anamorphic widescreen.

AUDIO QUALITY
As with the video quality, the audio tracks present here are also reference quality and stunningly full. Both the extended edition and the standard edition contain the same Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks and the extended edition features a breathtaking DTS 6.1 ES track. The differentiation and separation of speakers for the 5.1 track is fabulous and enveloping taking care and attention to details. This isn't a case of a film with points that occasionally feature fully surround sound, this is an entire film mixed with a full audio experience in mind and these tracks really play to that. Rustling, wind blowing, fireworks shooting, all these things surround you, but also seem to move from speaker to speaker as it would sound in the real world. With that, though, the DTS track is the true standout. I've never been one that believes the idea that there really is no difference between Dolby Digital and DTS. I've always found DTS to be crisper and have greater fidelity. (The highest quality fidelity, if you will.)

EXTRAS 5
Standard Edition
The standard edition boasts some pretty good extras that, were the extended edition to step aside, would be considered a pretty nice special edition. The documentaries are short, but well thought out and quite interesting. One wishes they would've just all been stuck together so I wouldn't have to pick up the damned DVD remote every few minutes, though. Also included is a nice trailer for the extended edition, showing some new footage and behind the scenes shots. They do have the feature sorely missing from the Extended Edition, Enya's May it Be music video (and does anyone have a more hauntingly beautiful voice than her? I haven't heard one) and the original theatrical trailers. All in all, quite nice. Especially if you just pretend all that electronic press kit material doesn't exist. Isn't that nice. But for the moment, banish that DVD to your shelf and pop in what we're all really here to see.

Extended Edition
Well, where to begin? Let's start with the audio commentary track featuring the real brains and heart behind this here project, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. They talk in detail about the genesis of the project through creation as well as putting to rest the notion that no truly great film can be made from a script that isn't locked (finished completely) before production begins. With rewrites and additions and changes coming constantly from this trio of Kiwis, the mind boggles at the notions of a process like that. The next best commentary track (and the other one definitely worth a listen before you do anything else at all) is the track featuring actors Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghen, Liv Tyler, Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom and Christopher Lee. This commentary somehow manages to juggle all these people at several different commentary sessions and make it cohesive, informative and amusing. The hands down best moment in the commentary (you know, aside from all that pesky worthwhile information) is the discussion of the game Tig. Now go listen until you get there. And I don't remember where it is. Fantastic commentary. Next up we have the slightly dryer and less entertaining commentary that you don't absolutely have to give a listen to, but, hey, if you're playing a game of Animal Crossing and you don't need to hear the music (so what, Animal Crossing rocks!) then spin up the Post Production commentary track which, along with the Post Production team (editors, colorists, special effects guys) features commentary by Howard Shore who discusses what it was like to compose such an enormous score. The information about how the effects were designed and the various approaches to editing the film are also top notch. Then there's the track that you really don't need to listen to, the design team commentary. Just pop in disc three and check out the equally dry documentary portion about the design. It's interesting stuff, but let's all face the facts, there are some voices on this track (and I'm not naming names) that are VERY difficult to listen to for a short period of time, much less three and a half hours. (I spaced my listening out to several sittings.) Then we move on to eleven shorter (not short, most are over thirty minutes) documentaries that really are one long documentary covering the entire production from beginning to end and only rarely even hinting at the fact that not one but two other films were being shot at exactly the same time, no small feat. The Tolkien portion is scholarly and, well, dryer than the rest, but get through it, and if you feel the need, you can jump to the end of the design portion when you feel your eyes begin to bleed, but the rest of this amazing achievement in special edition is riveting, especially the portion dealing with the size differential between hobbits and humans and the way that was achieved. The galleries of behind the scenes photos are massive and one wishes they could be downloaded as a screen saver via DVD Rom. One wishes for a lot of things, though. And the extras on this DVD come the closest to reaching the coveted "everything I'd hoped for and more" level otherwise known as "all that AND a bag of chips."

CLOSING THOUGHTS
There is no question in my mind which version is better. Which version of the film and DVD edition. I know that the extended edition is the one I will watch whenever I get the urge to see the trilogy down the line. With all extended editions together, we're talking over ten hours here! That being said, there are those who feel that the original is a tighter film, and I'll agree with that. The extended edition is more free-flowing. But the bottom line here, I think is that you should look at these two editions as a single MASSIVE special edition. A six disc masterpiece of extras including two editions of the film and a myriad of extras that the DVD world has not seen before and has only come close with Criterion's Brazil special edition. So with all that to offer, and with many sales going on, you shouldn't feel at all bad about shelling out $50 or so to have these two editions in your collection. In fact, I think, you should feel elated.