As I mentioned earlier, this past weekend was a Lord of the Rings weekend.  Regal at Dole Cannery was showing new remastered versions of the extended editions of the trilogy.  While not my my first time seeing the extended editions in the theater (they finally released the extended The Return of the King last year, if I recall), it was my first time to see them all in succession in a theater.  And it was highly enjoyable.  Some thoughts about the extended movie trilogy as seen in theaters:

+ The Fellowship of the Ring is still the best.  The extended scenes flow perfectly.  Granted, this is the extended version that I’ve seen the most.  I also take some joy in seeing movie locations that I visited years ago while in New Zealand that only appear in the extended version.

+ It was interesting to watch FOTR post-Rings of Power season one.  While I don’t think it’s necessary to see ROP Galadriel as the same as the one in Peter Jackson’s work, seeing Blanchett’s moment at the Mirror with Frodo did have more “historical” depth than I had expected.

+ The extended edition of The Two Towers makes for a better story, but not necessarily a better movie.  The additions of the struggle in Rohan add some great context.  The Fangorn Forest additions are nice and welcome, as are the extended scenes with the elves.  I got a better sense of what Jackson was going for by adding the elves to Helm’s Deep.  It’s funny, though: in the theatrical release, I felt like everything was too Helm’s Deep-centric.  This time, it felt like way too much time was spent actually getting to that final battle.

+ I’m not a big fan of Arargorn’s arc in TTT, particularly after he is dragged off the cliff.  But I will say that this clip with Eowyn (and Gimli) is still hilarious all these years later:

+ I did think the Faramir additions in the last half of the movie were nice additions, even though I do think they get Faramir almost completely wrong.  I had forgotten how much of this material was added into the extended edition.  And we even get a pre-ROTK appearance from Denethor, which I had forgotten about.

+ By the time watching The Return of the King rolled around, I found myself most interested in paying attention to the pacing of the story, especially how Jackson toggled between events inside and outside of Mordor.  The pacing held up really well.  And I didn’t mind the slower cadence of Aragorn and Frodo in the closing scenes.  In fact, the whole unending-epilogue feeling of previous viewings was lessened overall, which was nice.

I did have one recurring thought throughout each viewing: that Peter Jackson did so well with so much of the material is utterly amazing.  So many great shots that have become iconic.  So many great visuals that toggled from broad vistas to character close-ups.  So many things were put together perfectly.  It’s funny, I felt that instantly about Avengers: Infinity War (which never should have worked out as well as it did) and then again with Avengers: Endgame (to a lesser extent).  But this just confirmed that Peter Jackson did it first and best.

It will be interesting to see how often movie theaters brings these movies back. Harry Potter shows up every few years.  I get the sense that might happen often with some Marvel movies (particularly Spider-Man).  I can’t imagine the Hobbit movies will ever get this treatment (and I firmly believe the extended versions make those movies better, too).  But I think once every five or ten years would be great for these movies.  Time will tell.  It really was nice, though, getting to revisit the ring like this.