| ▶ PLAY TRAILER | Own it: | Search for streaming:      | With: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Billy Boyd, John Noble, David Wenham, Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, Bernard Hill, Miranda Otto, Dominic Monaghan, Hugo Weaving, Karl Urban, Ian Holm, Sean Bean, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, Brad Dourif
| Written by: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, based on the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien
| Directed by: Peter Jackson
| MPAA Rating: PG-13
| Running Time: 557
| | Date: 18/03/2013 | | | | The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (2010)
'Ring' Masters By Jeffrey M. Anderson Here we have Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings on a gorgeous Blu-Ray, from Warner Home Video, but in its theatrical version. Now that we have seen the extended cuts on DVD, does anyone want the theatrical cuts anymore? If I may play devil's advocate, there is a certain purity to the theatrical cuts; this is how we first saw these films, and how many of us fell in love with them. They were good enough to win a whole bunch of Oscars, including one for Best Picture in 2003 for the third installment. Frankly, I was initially going to dump this new Blu-Ray set in favor of my extended versions on DVD, but once I got a look at the Blu-Ray quality, I decided to keep both. The new set comes with nine discs. The three movies are on three new Blu-Rays, each movie has its own DVD's worth of extras, and then each movie comes with its own digital copy on a separate disc. In June of 2011, New Line followed with the "Extended" Blu-Ray box set, featuring 15 discs(!), a whopping 681 minutes of movie, and some 20-odd hours of extras. Please see my individual reviews of the three films for more details: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). |
