LOTR: The Return Of The King Extended Edition 5 Disc Set [Blu-ray]

As the third movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King had a lot going for it. It was the film where the Academy finally caught on to the breadth of the project, giving everyone involved with the production the notice that comes with eleven Oscars. I think for many people?including director Peter Jackson himself?The Return of the King is the favorite film in the trilogy. I?m not quite on the same page. While I appreciate The Return of the King for its magnificent vision and scope, I kind of wish Jackson had found a way to cut down on the time a little bit.

The Movie:

The Return of the King is extremely long. Not quite Lawrence of Arabia or Gone with the Wind long in its theatrical form, but the extended edition is a different story. The theatrical film clocks in at right around 200 minutes and the extended version is even longer, taking up four hours and 24 minutes of the audience?s day. It?s arduous, and just when you think you?ve gotten through the whole movie, there are multiple scenes that all feel like the end of the film, but are just lead-ins to the actual end.

Complaints aside, The Return of the King was achieved through a lot of hard work and determination. Elements from The Two Towers story and even from filming the second movie were intermixed into the third story beautifully, and with plenty of care. It?s not just the weight of the story that impresses, but the CGI and picture look fantastic, as well, supplemented in this set by the transfer to Blu-ray. On the big screen, when Legolas (Orlando Bloom) took down a furious killer elephant all by his lonesome, the moment was grandiose, and with the Blu-ray picture, the clarity of the scene still makes it seem epic on a much smaller screen.

The Return of the King is the end of the journey for Frodo (Elijah Wood) and company, and in many ways it?s a bittersweet end. Many a journey has been had in film, and when that journey is accomplished, it leaves our heroes with very little to do. Despite having too many endings (in my opinion), The Return of the King never leaves our heroes hanging, and in doing so, it never leaves its audience wanting more. It?s nearly impossible to take a book series as intricate as Tolkien?s and bring a film to fruition, but Jackson does the best he can with The Lord of the Rings series, and the trilogy stands on its own, while nodding constantly to the great literary work that preceded it.

Are you looking for Cinema Blend?s reviews of the Extended Edition 5-Disc singles sets for The Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers? We?ve got them!

The Disc:

The picture in the Return of the King has always looked pretty good, but if you haven?t had a chance to watch the extended edition of the film or catch it on Blu-ray, you should probably do so, now. If you?ve already shelled out for the extended edition in the past, however, it may not be worth it to throw out so much money to simply trade up. The menu page is streamlined, and the remastered audio, in particular, sounds far better than I remember. There?s even a BD Live connection, but there aren?t a ton of brand new extras to justify purchasing the set all over again?unless you are a freak for picture or sound.

The extras on the disc, like the movie itself, are just a bit more extensive than the other Blu-ray Extended Edition 5-Disc singles in the trilogy. When compared to The Two Towers Blu-ray, the commentaries seem a little more detailed, there are a few extra documentaries, there are over 500 extra gallery images, and there are more extra-long looks at the premieres and filming.

Disc 3 features a bunch of segments exploring the making of the film. A ?From Book To Script? section has two segments, ?Forging the Final Chapter? and an abandoned concept. The segment about creating the script actually talks about how it was easy to transfer some of the lengthy and epic material from The Two Towers and put it into the Return of the King, while still maintaining the integrity of the Middle-earth timeline as a whole.

Next on the disc, ?Home of the Horse Lords? discusses the numerous horses onscreen and how the horse work was achieved. While it?s cool the prestigious horses worked via voice commands, this segment is one of the less exciting in the set. Rounding out the disc is an interactive atlas with multiple paths (fun to trace, but kind of finicky) and spotlights on the areas where different scenes were filmed in New Zealand to produce the look of Middle-earth.

Disc 4 is the big one in the Return of the King set. It features seven documentaries, and each is more emotional than the last. This is the big farewell to The Lord of the Rings series. On the other Extended Edition film bonus features, everyone involved in the film is still looking forward to the upcoming work that must be done. This time around, the commentaries are more relaxed and the documentaries are retrospective, and occasionally a little emotional. On Disc 4, a lot of the segments have names like ?The Passing of an Age,? or ?Post Production: Journey?s End.? They probably won?t make you tear up, but 9 years after the final film hit theaters, they will probably still make you feel as if you are at the end of an era.

Disc 4 features some of the best moments from the post-production of the last film, including Jackson cornering New Line Cinema to force them to do the world premiere of the film in Wellington, New Zealand. Fun facts from some of these segments include there were almost 2 million feet of film shot for this movie and Jackson never saw the final cut of The Return of the King before the world premiere. To make things even more surreal, awards season came right after the premieres, and fantasy got a unique nod for the first time.

If fans felt like The Lord of the Rings was an epic journey, those involved with the production were invested even more deeply. Countless relationships were jeopardized, people were tired, and work was never-ending, but everyone on set became very close and it is clear filming the trilogy was the experience of a lifetime. If you have the time to get through the set, even if you are a casual fan, it?s well worth it. I?ve never felt so close to a film, or so invested in its production prior to this set, and I doubt I will again?at least until The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets a Blu-ray release.

LOTR: The Return Of The King Extended Edition 5 Disc Set [Blu-ray] DetailsStarring: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellanProduced by: Peter Jackson, Barrie M. Osborne, Fran WalshWritten by: Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens

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The Return of 3-D - International Edition

John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.It's the week after Memorial Day, and that means it's a fine time to check in with Hollywood's latest favorite moneymaking scheme, the 3-D movie. Last year at this time, as you may recall, there was some moral outrage when 3-D tickets for the final Shrek movie climbed as high as $20 in some places -- while the film itself underperformed. This year, according to a hand-wringing article on 3-D in the New York Times, the numbers are in on several would-be summer blockbusters, and they're not encouraging. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Kung Fu Panda 2 saw less than half of their (relatively soft) domestic opening-weekend grosses come from 3-D, which has typically been garnering about 60 percent of the grosses for "event"-type films.

This is not good news for Hollywood, which has invested heavily in the 3-D process for big films this summer and has twice as many 3-D films this summer as it did last year, including what are (presumably) the final installments for both the Transformers and Harry Potter series. If 3-D doesn't offer the expected box-office boost for these films, it's going to be a long summer for the movie studios, which have already been seeing domestic box-office and attendance declines this year and can no longer rely on home-video sales to bail them out on the back end.

So does this mean that Hollywood will finally get the fact that 3-D is not a magical, mystical money-spinner? No! Because here's the thing: those 3-D declines are here, in the domestic market; out in the rest of the world, 3-D seems to be humming along just fine. Case in point: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which, while tracking below previous editions of the series here in the U.S., has been a monster hit elsewhere in the world. So much so that in two weeks it has grossed almost as much worldwide ($634 million) as the first film of the series did in its entire run ($654 million). And of course much of that spectacular performance is due to 3-D showings, which, as in the U.S., are priced more than the traditional 2-D presentations.

Now Hollywood will be watching to see how the rest of the summer goes, not just here at home but internationally. If 3-D continues to be soft domestically but boffo overseas, then guess what? There are going to be more films than ever in the 3-D process because, at the end of the day, Hollywood makes its movies for wherever there's money to be made. And if that means making its movies for the tastes of people other than North Americans -- well, that's not a hard choice to make, especially when the studios can just ship more 2-D versions to theaters at home.

That said, I think the chances are fairly high that studios might be taking home the wrong message from the overseas enthusiasm for 3-D. It's entirely possible that international markets may simply like 3-D more than domestic markets or, alternately, that the sort of films that do well internationally -- effects-laden, dialogue-light explode-athons -- lend themselves to the 3-D process. But it's also possible that international markets, which are generally newer to the 3-D process than the home market, are simply not as disillusioned with 3-D as North Americans are. They have yet to catch up with the idea that most films don't need 3-D and indeed some films are worse with it -- darker, harder to see, and often manufactured by an inferior computer process after the fact rather than designed with the process in mind and shot with 3-D-native equipment.

In which case, Hollywood isn't necessarily being smart with 3-D; it's merely postponing the inevitable. In a year or two, the rest of the world might catch up with us here at home and shrug at the idea of 3-D films in general, and Hollywood will be left scrambling for the next technological gimmick to get people into theaters.

Or, alternately, Hollywood could do something remarkable: learn from its mistakes and not just slap "3-D" onto every middling film it hopes to get a boost out of and instead make an effort to integrate the 3-D process into the films from the start. Make better 3-D films, in other words. The slapdash approach they took with 3-D has already messed with the domestic market, but it's not too late to keep the international market excited about the format -- and, consequently, paying more money for it. Is that too much to hope for? Probably. But it's nice to think about nonetheless.

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