More Lord of the Rings on August 29th
I just got an update from New Line about the new Lord of the Rings Limited Edition DVDs set to release on August 29th. For the record I first heard about these at Film Rotation. The first discs will provide the viewer the option of watching either the Theatrical Version of Extended Version of each film. The second discs contain:
a new feature-length documentary with never-before-seen “making of” footage. Filmmaker Costa Botes, who was personally selected by Peter Jackson, took a unique approach to telling the story of the cast and crew experience on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. By letting the raw footage speak for itself, the result is a fascinating telling of the challenges, training, and camaraderie that resulted in the greatest adventure on film.
Anyone remember when Peter Jackson made compact little films that received a single DVD release only? This will be the third release for his Lord of the Rings on DVD, not to mention Jackson’s planned Extended Kong release later this year (two editions of Kong exist so far). Furthermore, the version I want to see doesn’t exist on these discs. That’s right. I want to see a shortened version spanning all three films. The Shogun Assassin version if you will. First off, it would drop the dozen endings at the end of The Return of the King, 70% of the slow-mo walking, the majority of The Two Towers, and cut the runtime of each knowing glance between Legolas and Aragorn, Aragorn and Gimli, Gimli and Frodo, Frodo and Samwise, etc. by half. Battles would be relegated to only the best sequences of the large scale fights, without all the Braveheart posturing. The whole Viking land stuff, gift giving ceremony and the like would be relegated to flashbacks. The film would clock in at about 4 hours tops, and be non stop awesomeness, more in line with Jackson’s Brain Dead and Bad Taste. You could even call it something like Rings, or The Ring Master, or A Fistful of Hobbits so it wouldn’t piss off the LotR fanbase. What do you think?
