Do I want to see what Jackson and his collaborators thought Treebeard’s house should be like? Yes! What about that bit where Aragorn admits that he’s nearly 90 years old? Obviously!īut when I’m sitting down for an all-day marathon, I want the tighter, better version of the movie, the one that’s engineered as a cohesive cinematic story rather than a collection of translated scenes.

I am only human, and a giant The Lord of the Rings nerd. It’s still a great film, and is my go-to pick whenever someone asks, “Wanna watch a Lord of the Rings movie?”

Aragorn falls off a cliff and has a psychic conversation with his girlfriend, Faramir whiffles back and forth about the Ring, and it never quite matters. The Two Towers is baggier than Fellowship, with a few detours that have never felt justified to me. Would I have liked to catch a glimpse of Gildor and his band of elves? See Aragorn visit his mother’s grave? Yeah, of course! Do I want those scenes to cut into the delicate pacing of The Fellowship of the Ring, jarring the exquisitely balanced flow of the movie? I do not. Would I have liked it if there had been room for the scene where Galadriel gave the Fellowship gifts in Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh’s adaptation? Sure, she’s one of my favorite characters. The first act is perhaps the greatest example of seamless exposition in filmmaking ever produced, as the production covers 6,000 years of history, a textbook’s worth of world-building, and the introduction of a dozen immediately compelling lead characters. There isn’t a wasted shot in the theatrical edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. Theatrical LotR is all killer, way less filler The way Peter Jackson really imagined it. Finished with the movie? There are dozens of hours of cast and crew interviews about the techniques used to make the film and the friendships forged on set - enough behind-the-scenes adventures for their own trilogy.īut when I sit down to watch The Lord of the Rings, I want to watch it the way it looked in the theater. They boast “deleted scenes” fully integrated with the films themselves (so big you have to swap discs halfway through, like a VHS copy of Titanic or a 1990s video game), complete with fully treated special effects and a restrung score. The Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings movies are legendary among the canon of home video releases, and rightfully so. This is Polygon's Year of the Ring.īut if there’s one controversial opinion the most likely to elicit a shocked gasp and an immediate accusation of being no real fan at all, it’s this one: I prefer the theatrical versions of The Lord of the Rings to the Extended Editions in the deluxe boxed set. So each Wednesday throughout the year, we'll go there and back again, examining how and why the films have endured as modern classics. 2021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in just one story.

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