Posted on 12/26/2011 5:31:35 PM PST by dagogo redux
Every year now for a number of years my wife and I watch the entire six disc extended version of the Lord of the Rings during the gloomy Northwest winter around the Thanksgiving-to New-Years time. It helps us through the winter gloom, but since Obama's election it also helps us maintain hope and courage.
I grew up on Tolkien before he was well known, and it probably shaped me in ways I can scarcely appreciate. My wife on the other hand, from the Third World, had no inkling of Tolkien until this movie cycle came out. We are both very deeply devoted to our faiths, but we both also find a special sort of inspiration from these movies that speak to us powerfully in these times. So that they won't grow stale, we limit them to a once a year viewing. We're not sure how they will fit in with events next year.
Just posting to stimulate discussion from others for whom these tales and movies might have left an influence in these dark times.
Oh my goodness ... my wife and I do the exact same thing!!!! Usually extended cuts aren’t as good, but these are marvelous!
I think that is awesome you do this too. = )
ALL my battle flags will proudly proclaim "FOR FRODO!"
Our family does this every November and then spend the next 11 months talking about what great movies these are and quoting our favorite lines.
My wife doesn’t like these movies. Ummmm, could I borrow....
What’s the difference with the “extended version”?
I’ve been reading and re-reading the books for about 25 years now, and while I enjoyed the Peter Jackson version, I didn’t enjoy it enough to pay for any DVDs.
Does the extended version include scenes not in the film? If so, can you give us a brief rundown of the added scenes?
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it’s worth fighting for.
Us too. One son can quote most of the movie. The other has become jaded after he read the books and saw the differences between them and the movie.
How wonderful that you have such a tradition!
The trilogy is such a message and rallying cry, isn’t it?
Added scenes: Age of Aragorn, Finding the food at Isengard by the hobbits, death of Saramon, Confronting the Mouth of Saron, Merry and Pippin drinking water at Fangorn Forest, Dialogue with White Gandalf, Scene of the brothers Farmir and Boromer with their Father, Denathor. Ones thought of off the top of my head.
My sons Frodo, Merry, and Samwise, my daughter Éowyn, and my wife Galadriel and I watch it once a week.
...The movies are fine, but, I prefer to read JRR’s work from time to time.
I enjoy reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy every couple of years. The movies were so well done they should be watched again and again.
Too much was added to run through all the differences, but they are enormous.
First the choppiness of seeing three movies, each a year apart, as it was originally released, makes it all hang together so much better.
Then, all the material - all the scenes and parts of scenes that makes the story gel and make sense - all the material cut out to make the movies stand as normal-length features - all that is put back in. The movie just flows now, it lives, it breathes, it makes sense.
The extended edition also contains wonderful behind-the-scenes stuff about the creation of the film. That sort of stuff usually bores the heck out of me, but having seen it once - the first year we watched it - has really helped me appreciate the artistry and vision that went into recreating Tolkien’s story in this film version.
I’ve no problem, or course, if anyone sticks with the books - they are the source, the original texts, and dear to me; but to dismiss the movie after having merely watched the standard theatrical releases years apart or even altogether in one sitting is to have missed something truly worthwhile, IMO.
Either way, I’m happy for your love of the books.
Also the scene where Aragorn orders the pirates to surrender, at the threat of force.
Pirates: HAHA! You and what army??
Aragorn: (whispering) *This* army.
Then the ghost army charges ...
I think there’s about 1 1/2 hours of footage not in the film if I’m adding in my head correctly.
The making of the film, which they go into in the extended DVD, is nearly as good as the film. These guys broke new ground in special effects.
We’re actually watching it right now, I got the blu-ray version today
Precisely. Thanks. It moves me deeply every time I hear it, as does this great scene:
Gamling: Too few have come. We cannot defeat the armies of Mordor.
Theoden: No. We cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless.
LOL......literally
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