The Digital Bits: Celebrating Film on Disc - DVD & Blu-ray
We told you last week that Warner Home Video was getting close to making an official announcement on the long-awaited release of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on Blu-ray, and now they've finally gone and done it. Their 6-disc The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy Blu-ray box set will finally arrive in stores on 4/6/2010 (SRP $99.98 - available for pre-order on Amazon NOW for just $69.99), obviously on their New Line label. As we've reported previously, the box set will contain only the theatrical versions of the three films. Per Warner's press release "Extended versions of the films will be released at a later date on Blu-ray Disc." Our own sources tell us that the extended cuts are being held back at director Peter Jackson's request so that he can prepare more elaborate Blu-ray releases of those for debut closer to the theatrical and home video release of the two Hobbit films (now due in 2011 and 2012).
Most every Ring-bearer amongst my circle of friends groaned when they heard this news. Why double-dip, when most anyone with half a brain is going to skip the truncated releases and go straight for the full-blown extended cut?
The answer, I think, lies in something I gleaned a while back when talking to the folks at FUNimation about their "Viridian" line of series reissues. One of the reasons there's such a constant stream of reissues of the same material — original individual volumes, series set, economy series set, etc. — is to keep a steady profit stream coming in. If you have a title you know you can sell a certain number of copies of — even if it's being eclipsed by something else later on — you get it out there and take what you can from it.
The other is to establish "shelf presence". If you don't have something with your name and logo on it on the shelves of Best Buy and Target, you might as well not exist anymore. (I sense a parallel with the Asian film industry, specifically Hong Kong: if you didn't show up in a movie every four months or so, people assumed your career was over.)
Reason #2 is just that much more proof the retailers, not the consumers, are the ones who call most of the shots here.
I don't blame Peter Jackson here: he wants to give his fans something worth waiting for. New Line and Warner Brothers evidently plan to keep the wheels of commerce turning with or without him.
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You know, I'm actually a little torn. Let's ignore for the moment that I don't have a blu-ray player, as that will eventually change, I'm sure.
There's a lot of stuff in the extended version of The Return of the King that I'm not sure should be there. I'm not at all sure it actually makes for a better movie - just a longer one. There are certainly things that were done due to the limitation of film over text - you can't have as much expository, really, so you can't set up the really elaborate and massive stuff going on from the books. (biggest example: You really don't have the time to explain what's going on at the coast, so you can't really adequately have Aragorn leading the strength of the coastal fiefs off of the ships - thus, you have the Army of the Dead show up where they shouldn't - because you've explained them already, so they can be used.)
But other things, like the two different 'Army of the Dead surges forward out of nowhere to attack' reveals, or the waterfall of skulls... doesn't really make the movie any stronger, and I think Jackson's smart enough to know that.
So I'm kind of curious to see what he'll do w/another crack at re-editing the third movie's 'extended' release. It could be a huge improvement... and if it's not, having the theatrical release available for that film isn't a bad option.
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For me, the real test is whether or not the extended edition will have a seamless branching option - a way to get both versions for the price of one, as it were. I think that would make this a no-brainer, but I wonder if New Line is going to invest the time or energy to make that happen when the real "branching" that takes place is on the store's shelves.
I am not of the opinion that the longer version of a movie is automatically better, either. Ridley Scott's recut version of "Alien" is actually *shorter* than the original -- some things were swapped with other, better elements -- and many director's cuts *are* the theatrical prints, with the only material dropped being stuff that the director didn't feel was important anyway or which hampered pacing. (The ultimate version of this might well be "Spinal Tap", where most of the film was written in the editing room, as it were.)
Of all films that have their running times pared down I am most wary of the editing done to animated productions, since they tend to be all of a piece. When they're not, it's a sign that the project didn't have a firm hand at the controls to begin with (e.g., "Rock & Rule").
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In my opinion, The Two Towers was rather improved by the longer version. Fellowship could probably have stood to stay where it was. As far as The Return Of The King, I could do without the skull-waterfall myself, but found the "You and what army?" "This one..." scene to actually very critical for showing that "The King Has Returned." - especially since we don't get the "King's Banner Arwen Made Breaking On The Lead Corsair Ship" shot. :)
I've thought for some time that the blu-ray release would happen just before the release of the first of the two movies that're currently in production, so this move doesn't surprise me at all.
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See, it's not the scene that I object to, it's the duplicated reveal. Once done in the earlier scene, to do it again with the 'surprise' of the AotD. It takes all the potency out of the scene. You have to find another way to do it the second time, and the second time, you need the AotD, because you've hinged the entire resolution of the Pelennor on the AotD. So you're dependant on a reveal you've already taken the oomph out of.
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