The Return of the King: Extended Edition
December 15th, 2004
For the third special edition, Jackson added a hefty 50 minutes, for a total of almost four hours of Hobbit action. There’s more fighting, more dwarf jokes, and more speeches about friendship and hope, all of which I can take or leave. What works are the more fleshed-out bits about the Paths of the Dead (which now has a much-needed bump in the dramatic arc), the Houses of Healing, and various odds and ends that slow the rush toward the finale in the last hour. Saruman gets a final scene (you remember Christopher Lee went public with his anger at being cut out), the Mouth of Sauron makes a great appearance, and Gandalf faces the King of the Nazgul. As always, the extended edition makes for a more filling experience.
Now I’ve got six hours of documentary footage and sixteen hours worth of commentary tracks to watch….
December 15th, 2004 at 9:56 pm
If you took all 3 special editions and added ‘em up, what’s the running time?
And — if there is a major snow storm in Jan or Feb, you up for it?
December 16th, 2004 at 12:20 am
This thing was already painfully slow. I’ll take the highlites reel…