Never Seen LotR Extended Before? You're Missing Out Big Time
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is famous for many things – including its sheer length.
Each of the three movies clocks around three hours of screentime, or 558 minutes, if counted together. But that's only the theatrical cut.
The extended cut, released on DVD/Blu-ray, adds over two additional hours to the trilogy, with a good number of extra scenes in each movie. That's longer than many limited single-season series.
However, while watching the extended cut is quite a serious time investment, and you would probably need a free weekend to marathon all three movies back-to-back, this investment is going to pay off.
If you've remotely liked the theatrical cut and haven't yet watched the extended one, you should rectify this oversight as soon as possible.
Yes, it is understandable why all the extra scenes were removed – you can only keep your audience in the theatre for so long, and a three-hour movie is already stretching the limit.
And not all of these scenes are great additions to the story.
But overall, they make the movies flow a lot better, explain character motivations better, answer a number of questions that might arise after watching the theatrical cut, and overall make the whole trilogy even more excellent.
They are especially delightful to the book fans, but you don't need to be one to enjoy the extended cut.
Highlights of the extended versions include giving a lot of extra depth to Boromir's character (and redeeming the movie version of Faramir to a large extent), and closing a number of plotholes (such as Saruman just disappearing from the story with no explanation at the end of The Two Towers).
They even added a number of gorgeously filmed action scenes (though it must be said that a few of those are actually among those scenes which were cut for a good reason). Oh, and there are some pretty funny jokes too.
Overall, the overwhelming majority of those who watched both the theatrical cut and the extended cut strongly prefer the latter.
In case you're interested, besides buying the extended versions on DVD/Blu-ray, you can also obtain them online through Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.