Wow…so many extras on all of those discs. For the past 5 days at work Dr. 7 and I have been listening/watching the commentaries to The Fellowship of the Ring.
Which means we’ve watched the entire film 4 times each time with different commentators. Some of it was highly interesting and/or entertaining…others not so much. And you can learn some really interesting things.
The point that astonishes me the most is that the script was originally very, very different from the books, but as the filming and writing process was evolving many “new” scenes and lines were removed to bring the story back to the things that Tolkein wrote. My only thought is: why on earth would you ever deviate from Tolkein any more than necessary to present the story as a movie?
I understand leaving out Tom Bombadil, giving Arwen Evenstar more parts, emphasizing the love story, and various other changes for time issues…but they were going to add attack sequences…why? why? why? would you ever consider that? Oh, well.
We also watched the two hour cinematics on the first appendix disc…pretty cool. If you haven’t watched your special extended edition appendices you should.
Sigh…I really wish I could’ve seen some of this in person while it was being setup. I can only imagine how absolutely breathe taking it would be.