Current Events > The LotR extended edition is fun for a rewatch but man I can see why they cut it

(+) Yeah! (+)

Most of these scenes are just impressively awful :/
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This feels like a minority opinion, but I agree that the theatrical releases are better.
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TheOnionKnight posted...

This feels like a minority opinion, but I agree that the theatrical releases are better.

I also hear that a lot of people prefer and swear by the extended editions, but I just feel like that's nerdgasming over the lore rather than looking at the movie as a movie. Most of those scenes have corny lines that don't add to the movie and just drag out scenes that should be snappier. Some of them are just plain terrible acting.
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I wish they'd kept the shit with wormtongue in the shire in return of the king still. That is an important part of the book.

Other than that the extended editions drag on for entirely too long.
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pres_madagascar posted...

I wish they'd kept the shit with wormtongue in the shire in return of the king still. That is an important part of the book.

"Hey, Peter."
"Yes?"
"Why did you cut out the end of the book?"
"You mean the part after the avatar of pure evil has fallen, its armies scattered to the winds? When our noble heroes, battleworn and men of war, return home and find that it's been taken over by a powerless wizard who's running a shitty crime gang of hobbits before he gets killed by the ugly-ass dude from the second movie?"
"Yeah, why'd you skip that?"
"....get the fuck off my set."
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pegusus123456 posted...

pres_madagascar posted...

I wish they'd kept the shit with wormtongue in the shire in return of the king still. That is an important part of the book.

"Hey, Peter."
"Yes?"
"Why did you cut out the end of the book?"
"You mean the part after the avatar of pure evil has fallen, its armies scattered to the winds? When our noble heroes, battleworn and men of war, return home and find that it's been taken over by a powerless wizard who's running a shitty crime gang of hobbits before he gets killed by the ugly-ass dude from the second movie?"
"Yeah, why'd you skip that?"
"....get the fuck off my set."

Symbolically it meant a lot, as the hobits stood up for themselves
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pegusus123456 posted...

pres_madagascar posted...

I wish they'd kept the shit with wormtongue in the shire in return of the king still. That is an important part of the book.

"Hey, Peter."
"Yes?"
"Why did you cut out the end of the book?"
"You mean the part after the avatar of pure evil has fallen, its armies scattered to the winds? When our noble heroes, battleworn and men of war, return home and find that it's been taken over by a powerless wizard who's running a shitty crime gang of hobbits before he gets killed by the ugly-ass dude from the second movie?"
"Yeah, why'd you skip that?"
"....get the fuck off my set."

lmao
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pres_madagascar posted...

Symbolically it meant a lot, as the hobits stood up for themselves

Nah, I feel like that's a bit redundant after the hobbits literally save the world and all of Gondor including the king bow in gratitude. They don't have much left to prove at that point.

Pegasus is right. You can't throw in a half-baked action scene after the climax of the movie comes to an end. I mean RotK already had like 17 ending scenes anyway, it didn't need another.
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pinky0926 posted...

pres_madagascar posted...

Symbolically it meant a lot, as the hobits stood up for themselves

Nah, I feel like that's a bit redundant after the hobbits literally save the world and all of Gondor including the king bow in gratitude. They don't have much left to prove at that point.

Pegasus is right. You can't throw in a half-baked action scene after the climax of the movie comes to an end. I mean RotK already had like 17 ending scenes anyway, it didn't need another.

You just reminded me of my theater showing of it where people kept getting up to leave only to have to sit back down.

I retract my statement
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That's not my problem with it, my problem is that they're incredibly bloated, need to switch discs for one movie despite them being on blu ray (what is this nonsense) and yet they don't feature anything interesting in their bloated mess of added scenes (except maybe that one important scene in rotk of course)

WOrse, I remember reading on wikipedia once that for the extended editions they were going to include a scene that peter jackson had filmed which included sauron in his humanoid form! Like pre eye look. I think this was the image wikipedia had

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lucerne/images/a/af/Sauron5.png/revision/latest?cb=20120712144602

I'm not gonna lie I bought the extended edition bluray that released in like 2012 or whatever simply for that scene. I was hoping for another awesome past section where they showed how Sauron used to look, like what they did for Gollum/Smeagle in vanilla rotk.

I trudge through the entire 6 discs of bloat and that scene was no where to be found. I was pretty fucking pissed.
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saspa posted...

WOrse, I remember reading on wikipedia once that for the extended editions they were going to include a scene that peter jackson had filmed which included sauron in his humanoid form! Like pre eye look. I think this was the image wikipedia had

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lucerne/images/a/af/Sauron5.png/revision/latest?cb=20120712144602

I think they originally shot it like that, but then they CG'd a random troll over Sauron because Jackson thought it would be too confusing or distract from the rest of the drama.
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pinky0926 posted...

Nah, I feel like that's a bit redundant after the hobbits literally save the world and all of Gondor including the king bow in gratitude.

I wouldn't say it's redundant. You've defeated the evil fantasy overlord, and you expect to go home to your quaint little Shire and rest on your laurels... but you can't, because your quaint little Shire was also destroyed in the conflict. And it didn't take an evil fantasy overlord to do it. Just a scummy wizard.

Basically, defeating Sauron wasn't the auto-win button you thought it was. Life is more complicated.

In the movies, the Shire always remains this untouched paradise. So you lose that message, which is arguably the main message in the book.

However, I get why they cut it. The way the movies are structured, it would've been a giant hiccup in the pacing. At the very end too, when audiences think everything's over! If they wanted to feature it, they would've had to rearrange the plot to set up an expectation for something like that. The approach they took worked well. I have no complaints about them leaving it out.
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pinky, are you shitposting again? I liked most of the extra scenes, but the extended editions are too long. Some should never have been cut; they should've cut other stuff, it they could've. The Mouth of Sauron scene was excellent, and I really like the extended version of the Battle of the Pellenor Fields.
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TheOnionKnight posted...

pinky0926 posted...

Nah, I feel like that's a bit redundant after the hobbits literally save the world and all of Gondor including the king bow in gratitude.

I wouldn't say it's redundant. You've defeated the evil fantasy overlord, and you expect to go home to your quaint little Shire and rest on your laurels... but you can't, because your quaint little Shire was also destroyed in the conflict. And it didn't take an evil fantasy overlord to do it. Just a scummy wizard.

Basically, defeating Sauron wasn't the auto-win button you thought it was. Life is more complicated.

In the movies, the Shire always remains this untouched paradise. So you lose that message, which is arguably the main message in the book.

However, I get why they cut it. The way the movies are structured, it would've been a giant hiccup in the pacing. At the very end too, when audiences think everything's over! If they wanted to feature it, they would've had to rearrange the plot to set up an expectation for something like that. The approach they took worked well. I have no complaints about them leaving it out.

Yeah, makes logical sense but doesn't make movie sense. A relatively small skirmish in a backwater town after the final crescendo of the ring being destroyed and all of mankind fighting for survival would just feel pretty pathetic and dull by comparison.
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Well, if it had been included, it wouldn't have been another action scene that tries to compete with the Ring being destroyed. The idea is just that it's not a bow-tied happy ending. You go home, and your home is in ruins. You have to clean up the mess, try to heal, but the trauma's still there. In the movies though, you do get a bow-tied happy ending. About five of them!

...actually, knowing Jackson, he probably would've tried to turn it into a big action scene if he included it. Another good reason to leave it out!
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Actually I always liked the ending for how it showed the hobbits being forever changed by the journey. While everyone else around them was having fun, they have all survived an ordeal unlike any other. It can even lead to PTSD, due to them having gone through war and then returned home with no one knowing what happened to them, being none the wiser.

Yeah it showed Sam getting married to his beard but I always thought that was very inorganic and just there to feel happyish. And then there's what happens to frodo, and I doubt the other 2 can go about their lives as normal. I mean they can but the fact is they went through something huge.
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Yeah it showed Sam getting married to his beard

lmao
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TheOnionKnight posted...

However, I get why they cut it. The way the movies are structured, it would've been a giant hiccup in the pacing.

The way the book is structured, it's a giant hiccup in the pacing.
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pegusus123456 posted...

TheOnionKnight posted...

However, I get why they cut it. The way the movies are structured, it would've been a giant hiccup in the pacing.

The way the book is structured, it's a giant hiccup in the pacing.

Tolkien was never great with pacing.
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pres_madagascar posted...

pegusus123456 posted...

pres_madagascar posted...

I wish they'd kept the shit with wormtongue in the shire in return of the king still. That is an important part of the book.

"Hey, Peter."
"Yes?"
"Why did you cut out the end of the book?"
"You mean the part after the avatar of pure evil has fallen, its armies scattered to the winds? When our noble heroes, battleworn and men of war, return home and find that it's been taken over by a powerless wizard who's running a shitty crime gang of hobbits before he gets killed by the ugly-ass dude from the second movie?"
"Yeah, why'd you skip that?"
"....get the fuck off my set."

Symbolically it meant a lot, as the hobits stood up for themselves

This.

That said it really would not have made for good cinema.
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instead of extended cuts, I wish they just made a trilogy for each book. for a total of 9 movies. I know they wish they had. that's why Hobbit, the shortest book, got it's own trilogy. if they ever reboot LOTR, they will for sure do this.

Extended Cut at least explained why Gandalf lost his staff in the middle of RotK
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I prefer the extended cuts
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extended version is best version
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Zikten posted...

instead of extended cuts, I wish they just made a trilogy for each book. for a total of 9 movies. I know they wish they had. that's why Hobbit, the shortest book, got it's own trilogy. if they ever reboot LOTR, they will for sure do this.

And the hobbit was a mess of boring scenes and nonsense that was half made up for padding because of that.
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Oh god, a trilogy for every book would have been horrible! The Hobbit was bad enough.

Anyway, I always thought the best way to do the scouring of the shire would be if Jackson had made a short animated film, a high quality homage to the Bakshi films, voiced by the movie actors. And just have it be bonus content on the DVDs. I know there is no way they would have let him, and maybe he would have screwed it up, but done right it could have been awesome.
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pinky0926 posted...

Zikten posted...

instead of extended cuts, I wish they just made a trilogy for each book. for a total of 9 movies. I know they wish they had. that's why Hobbit, the shortest book, got it's own trilogy. if they ever reboot LOTR, they will for sure do this.

And the hobbit was a mess of boring scenes and nonsense that was half made up for padding because of that.

Maybe not a trilogy, how about 2 movies each if they HAVE to be that long? It would at least justify why my blu-ray of the movies has me switching discs like I was playing a ps1 rpg.
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You know, while we're talking about this, lemme add one more thing.

Fuck Tom Bombadil.
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They cut the real ending because they changed the story from centering around the hobbits to centering around Aragorn the action hero.
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And another thing. Didn't they already put the scourging of the shire in the first movie? Remember Carte Blanche showed it in a vision to Frodo as what would happen if he did not take the ring to Mount Doom volcano.
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lilORANG posted...

saspa posted...

WOrse, I remember reading on wikipedia once that for the extended editions they were going to include a scene that peter jackson had filmed which included sauron in his humanoid form! Like pre eye look. I think this was the image wikipedia had

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lucerne/images/a/af/Sauron5.png/revision/latest?cb=20120712144602

I think they originally shot it like that, but then they CG'd a random troll over Sauron because Jackson thought it would be too confusing or distract from the rest of the drama.

Wait, that scene where Aragorn fights the big armored troll 1v1 at the Black Gate was supposed to be Sauron? That would have been awesome
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saspa posted...

And another thing. Didn't they already put the scourging of the shire in the first movie? Remember Carte Blanche showed it in a vision to Frodo as what would happen if he did not take the ring to Mount Doom volcano.

No, Sam saw such a vision in the books as well, IIRC.
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What is this heresy? I love the extended versions.

Is there some extra padding for superfans? Sure, but there's also some stuff that really helps. Off the top of my head, extended edition scenes that outright resolve otherwise unanswered questions/plot threads:

-Galadriel's gifts to the fellowship
-Death of Saruman
-Gandalf vs Witch King
-Gothmog's death
-Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli getting the boats

And then generally great/fun stuff like:
-Mouth of Sauron
-The Fellowship leaving Rivendell
-Fangorn at Helm's Deep
-Faramir/Boromir flashback
-Faramir/Eowyn meeting
-Bilbo/Frodo actually having a scene together before Rivendell
-Aragorn being Dunedain... and hating Eowyn's cooking

Etc

You can definitely get by on just the theatrical cuts, but there's not a very good reason to skip the extended cuts.
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Well I mean if you're going to talk in terms of heresy, then the movies are the wrong thing to praise from the start...
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The reason to skip them is that a lot of the new scenes are unnecessary and interrupt the flow. The Houses of Healing segment is especially poorly placed. Only Saruman's death really adds anything, but the way that scene is inserted is awkward, and it's pretty cheesy.
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There are definitely some fun extended scenes that I love but a lot of them do drag on and feel tedious on rewatches. I think they made the right decisions with a majority of them.


And yeah, LotR is the one series where I wholeheartedly preferred the movies to the books, the books dragged on way too much. It took me, like, three tries to finally finish Fellowship because the first 100 pages are filled with almost nothing. Two Towers was the best book to me, Return of the King started to drag again in a lot of parts. On the other hand, all three movies had me attentive.
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I really like the early Fellowship chapters. Their tone feels a lot like The Hobbit. You can trace how Tolkien is seguing from that kind of folklore style into the more epic mode that comes later. For some reason, whenever I hit Helm's Deep, that's when I start to fade. I must've fallen asleep on four different occasions trying to read that part!
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Mr_Biscuit posted...

What is this heresy? I love the extended versions.

Is there some extra padding for superfans? Sure, but there's also some stuff that really helps. Off the top of my head, extended edition scenes that outright resolve otherwise unanswered questions/plot threads:

...

You can definitely get by on just the theatrical cuts, but there's not a very good reason to skip the extended cuts.

About 95% of the extended scenes are completely unnecessary and the rest add so little that you could figure it out anyway. It's all just fanservice and subplots from the book that don't go anywhere.

I mean let's go through them one by one:

-Galadriel's gifts to the fellowship - the only one that mattered is Frodos and they kept that in
-Death of Saruman - this is more satisfying than it is necessary, the entire scene really dragged on. It answers a question but the scene kinda sucked.
-Gandalf vs Witch King - this was cool I grant you that, but it also caused a massive hit to the pacing
-Gothmog's death - this was a cool scene but wasn't necessary because the theatrical cut leads you to believe he gets trampled to death
-Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli getting the boats - again just a fun scene, not necessary.

For me, I think the extended addition is fun for a rewatch but I wouldn't recommend it to someone watching the trilogy for the first time because it turns an already very long movie into an even longer one without adding anything necessary.
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pegusus123456 posted...

You know, while we're talking about this, lemme add one more thing.

Fuck Tom Bombadil.

I like him because of the concept, he's an all powerful being provided he hangs out in his backyard. I even enjoy how they mention potentially giving the ring to him but realize after so long he would probably lose it because he's so far from the concerns of mortals. But yeah he is a silly fuck but still one of my favorite parts when I read it as a kid.
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