Battleangel

Sure, Lord of the Rings was released on DVD a week or so ago, but is it worth it? As we all know there are two more versions of the movie being released later this year. Which one should you get? I can recommend reading this, a funny and still comprehensible article on the different LOTR DVD versions.

To sum in all up for those who slept through the last six months: The recently released version of LOTR is the cinematic cut. For some reason the movie had to be rated PG-13 and thus some (a lot) gore and stuff had to be removed. You might also have noticed that the movie eventually became very long (around three (3) hours). Well, almost 30 minutes of additional material had to be removed. Those ‘almost thirty minutes’ and some additional violence make up the essential difference between the two releases. Of course things aren’t really this simple. There will be both a Collector’s Gift Set and an Extended Edition. The latter will be bare bone. And on top of this there have been several versions of the Gift Set announced.

I don’t really care. I will buy the Extended Edition once it comes out. Extras is one thing but this is extreme. I draw the line when National Geographic is including a special documentary It’s all very nice, but this comes at a high price.

I am often wondering if the extra-material renaissance we have been seeing in the last year or so will soon come to an end? Probably not, but enough is enough. It’s all about the movie, right?