Another Big Blu Ray release for the year.

The Extended cuts of Peter Jackson's Adaption of the Lord of the Rings will be making their way to Blu Ray later this year hot on the heals of Star Wars. This makes obvious sense in order to keep the brand awareness for the run up to the first Hobbit movie coming out hopefully December of 2012.


I however am not terribly enthusiastic about it. I've already got the extended Editions on DVD, and the early information suggests that the blu rays will simply be higher definition transfers of those original Extended edition with no additional material.. be it extra scenes or supplementary material.. of which there exists at least 4 sets so far.. From the Theatrical 2 disc sets, 4 disc extended cuts, 2 disc extended cuts, and Theatrical blu ray set.. thats a lot of supplementary material that requires a lot of extra helpings in order to collect together.

The Rumoured "Ultimate Edition" box set, which presumably would contain all of this material is still just that.. Rumoured.. much like the enormous box set of the Howard Shore scores.. which was supposed to be released 2 years ago but has not yet surfaced.. I think I can be patient however.

It's a reasonable certainty that there are at least a few more scenes finished, mainly from Fellowship and from the Two Towers.. and these are scenes which explain why characters appearances change from one scene to another. The disheveled appearance of Legolas on the platform in Lorien in obverse of his relative cleanliness upon leaving Moria is explained by a running battle which they barely survive only because of Haldir's intervention. And another is an extended version of the "Orc Count" after Helm's Deep. You can see some stills from both of these, and indeed scenarios for replaying them in Games Workshop's rulebooks for the miniatures games that they released for those two movies.

I'd love to see these two scenes added into the film, they are scenes which make sense and would add to the overall experience.. certainly more so than a drinking contest with dwarven farting or pot jokes courtesy of Cheech Merry and Pippin Chong. But what I would really want, and would have to have, in order for it to be considered an Ultimate edition by me.. would be a completely new edit of the 3 films, into one multi-disc film.. And all of the supplementary material from all of the difference versions... thats what it would really take to get me to rebuy the movies for a 3rd time.