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I finally finished watching the documentaries on the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King Extended Edition DVD. The last two documentaries are by far the best on a personal and emotional level, closely followed by "Editorial: Completing the Trilogy"
The last two are "The End of All Things" and "The Passing of an Age" and as the names indicate, we are definitely on the home straight by this point. A lot of revealing interview footage shows how close the final film came to slipping its deadline. One crew member jokes that someone will be blow drying the prints before they are shipped to the premier, and more seriously, Peter Jackson is very much looking forward to the film's NZ premier because he "hasn't seen it yet".
Elijah Wood's reaction? "That's awesome!". True, but he does tend to say that about everything, except of course, if something is "fucking amazing".
Not to quibble though (I'm only kidding!), this was something I'd waited for a long time. I will probably scribble and scratch some more once I've rewatched the documentaries one more time. The first time through each disc I just like to bathe in it, not enable too many critical faculties.
For now though, I think the highest praise I can give this
entire project is that, for me, there are really some scenes
that are "better in the film than the book".
posted at: 22:43 | path: /tolkien | permanent link to this entry
RoTK Extended Edition - Comments on the extras
The third film in the series had some serious omissions by my estimation :-
Additionally, there were plenty of other minor bits and pieces that turned up in the EE. Here are some thoughts on these and more
Excellent. Christopher Lee completes his role as Saruman and possibly one of the last roles in his career, although I'd be happy to see him keep going. They didn't make the Voice of Saruman as cheesy as the Bene Gesserit voice in Dune, thankfully.
Mixed. Glad to have this sequence, but the visual interpretation is a bit too literal. The Palantir seems to be a bit like a cheap webcam, you have to hold things up close to it for the image to be transmitted. [It's another device similar to how the great eye becomes a giant red searchlight scanning Middle Earth. I completely understand that film is a different media where things have to have visual representations to be depicted, but still, it's a little cheesy, to me.]
In the book, Aragorn turns the device to his own purposes, and it is this power of will, not to mention his birthright to the stone of Numenor that truly signals his presence to Sauron. Nevertheless the effort completely drains Aragorn who is visibly aged afterwards. This could have added more to this scene. No idea if any more footage was filmed.
Pretty good, but surprising. The Witch-King wins this one and destroys Gandalf's staff. I don't remember it this way! I'll have to go back to the book to refresh my memory.
Excellent, and a nice surprise. The Voice is another triumph of
visual design - really grotesque, and even better, Aragorn shows a bit
of spirit by whipping The Voice's head right off. Nice one! Again, I
don't remember it quite like that from the book, but it works.
posted at: 19:43 | path: /tolkien | permanent link to this entry