Rude surprise awaits `Fellowship' DVD buyers
By Glenn Lovell, Associated Press, 08/14/2002
According to J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, whoever possesses the One True Ring will be drawn to the dark side and, among other things, be consumed by greed. Obviously New Line -- still drooling over the success of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the first of its three "Rings" movies -- has fallen under the spell of Dark Lord Sauron and the Ruling Ring. How else to explain the company's "Fellowship" DVD, which is, for all intents and purposes, a shameless marketing tool?
For $29.95 (discounts available at stores), you get two discs, meager liner notes and a $5 rebate certificate for something called the "Special Extended Edition" of "Fellowship," due in stores Nov. 12 for $39.99.
What?! The set you've just purchased isn't the one true "Fellowship" DVD? Sorry, no. In a classic bait-and-switch, New Line has sold you the Oscar-winning adventure (in pan-and-scan or original widescreen aspect ratio), a couple of recycled behind-the-scenes shorts and hard-sell come-ons for the next "Fellowship" DVD and the next "Rings" movie, "The Two Towers" (due Dec. 18). The upcoming "special edition" DVD, we're told, will contain six hours of production goodies plus 30 minutes of scenes deleted from the first saga -->How does "Rings" director Peter Jackson feel about double-dipping into his fans' pockets? He's fine with it, in a contradictory kind of way. "I'm not a big fan of the term `director's cut' ... but I'm a huge fan of special edition DVDs," he explains during a teaser for the DVD you thought you were buying instead of the one now in front of you.
So what was dropped from the original "Fellowship"? Quite a bit, judging from this advance peek at the November DVD. Jackson filmed, then deleted, a more elaborate introduction to Hobbiton, scenes of Bilbo (Ian Holm) working on his memoirs, more footage of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) counseling Frodo (Elijah Wood) on the powers of the ring, more intrigue among the elves of Lothlorien, and a touching sequence in which Gimli the warrior dwarf (John Rhys-Davis) confesses his love for Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), the elven queen.
According to a New Line news release, the extended edition "will plunge the viewer into the complex landscape of Middle-Earth, and reveal how Jackson and his team of skilled artists and technicians created a painstakingly beautiful and faithful re-creation of Tolkien's world."
Actually, the current DVD does plenty of plunging -- albeit through two repackaged TV specials. We learn more about New Zealand locations, casting, costumes, weapons and ghastly makeup effects than even the most die-hard Tolkien buff would want to know.
Everyone interviewed -- from McKellen to Blanchett -- swoons over the "realistic" sets and overall Middle-Earth ambience of "Fellowship." McKellen adds that he always had the book "to hand" to catch production errors or inconsistencies, and Blanchett tells us she always wanted to wear pointy ears. During a tour of the makeup shop, Jackson is caught fretting over oversize Hobbit feet that "jiggle."
That advance look at "Two Towers"? Disc 2 reveals the upcoming film to be darker and more violent that the first installment. Jackson, who leads us on a tour of the armory and workshops, describes it as "a story of genocide." We see a lot more of Gollum, the digital creature who is only glimpsed in the first movie. The new movie will climax with the epic battle of Isengard, which, we're told, will be a combination of live action, digitally rendered soldiers and a miniature bastion under siege.
Not content to just flog the upcoming DVD and the next movie, the current disc also pushes publisher Houghton Mifflin's book supplements, including "The Fellowship of the Rings Visual Companion." In a thinly disguised ad, we meet the late Rayner Unwin, the son of Tolkien's original publisher. Unwin recounts how he was paid a shilling at age 10 to review the first book, "The Hobbit." Later, when he inherited the Tolkien account, Unwin recommended that the sprawling epic be divided into three more manageable volumes. "Tolkien hated the idea," he recalls.
My advice: Buy this disc (in widescreen, of course), or wait three months for the Special Edition. Don't get both and encourage Hollywood in this practice of selling variations on the same product over and over again. Should the two-disc and four-disc "Fellowship" both turn huge profits, what do you bet that "Two Towers," when it comes to DVD next year at this time, will be followed by a second, third and fourth edition, each more special than the one that preceded it?
