Fishing in the Discount Bin - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers -- Extended Edition

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly look at one of the many, many movies in my home video library.  Today, we get back to the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings with The Two Towers.  This entry is originally dated July 15, 2012.

See, the big problem with movies that are 3+ hours is you can't just sit down and watch them. You have to dedicate a day to watching them. I mean, when making the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson said you have to recognize that home theatre is a different medium...that people can stop a film and come back to it later. But what is this, my elementary school lunch hour, where we'd watch a half-hour of a film per day? That's how I first saw Return of the Jedi...a half-an-hour per day over the course of a week. So when I sit down to watch a film, I don't watch a little bit here and a little bit there...I watch the whole damn thing from start to end.

Which is why I dedicated this Sunday to watching the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers...all three hours and 45 minutes of it.

I haven't watched The Two Towers in a while, so I can't really speak as to how it improves over the theatrical edition. But I can tell you this...it just felt longer. Yeah, I know, that's kind of stupid to say. But things I remembered happening earlier in the theatrical edition happened later in the extended edition, and I found myself waiting for those things to happen.

But like the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring, I did notice more character moments added in. We got to know Faramir a little better, which was nice to see. It makes his decisions a little more thought out and it makes him a more sympathetic character.

Hee hee...there's Legolas, surfing down the stairs on his shield, shooting down orcs with his arrows. Man, I remember the fans hating that when the film first came out. "Is Legoals...skateboarding? WTF?"

And speaking of "when the film first came out," I remember my best friend saw it before me, and he said, "Dude, Gollum is the heart and soul of that film." I think in the extended edition, that's diminished somewhat, as there's less of him. Or, at least, it feels like there's less of him.

That being said, I still think Sam's speech is pretty darn awesome.





But yeah...next we'll have to do The Return of the King: Extended Edition.  All four hours.  Sheesh..The things I do to keep by geek cred.