The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers / The Return of the King Extended Editions) [Blu-ray]

div class="aplus"The Quest Is Over: All three extended versions in dazzling 1080p and DTS HD-MA 5.1 Audio. Deluxe set includes over 26 Hours of spellbinding behind-the- moviemaking material, including the Rare Costa Botes documentaries, on 15 discs.br / pemstrongThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition/strong/em: With the help of a courageous fellowship of friends and allies, Frodo embarks on a perilous mission to destroy the legendary One Ring.br / emstrongThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition/strong/em: In the middle chapter of this historic movie trilogy, the Fellowship is broken but its quest to destroy the One Ring continues.br / emstrongThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition/strong/em: The final battle for Middle-earth begins. Frodo and Sam, led by Gollum, continue their dangerous mission toward the fires of Mount Doom in order to destroy the One Ring./p /div

As the triumphant start of a trilogy, emThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring/em leaves you begging for more. By necessity, Peter Jackson's ambitious epic compresses J.R.R. Tolkien's classic emThe Lord of the Rings/em, but this robust adaptation maintains reverent allegiance to Tolkien's creation, instantly qualifying as one of the greatest fantasy films ever made. At 178 minutes, it's long enough to establish the myriad inhabitants of Middle-earth, the legendary Rings of Power, and the fellowship of hobbits, elves, dwarves, and humans--led by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the brave hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood)--who must battle terrifying forces of evil on their perilous journey to destroy the One Ring in the land of Mordor. Superbly paced, the film is both epic and intimate, offering astonishing special effects and production design while emphasizing the emotional intensity of Frodo's adventure, and ends on a perfect note of heroic loyalty and rich anticipation. pAfter the breaking of the Fellowship, Frodo and Sam journey to Mordor with the creature Gollum as their guide in emThe Two Towers/em. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) join in the defense of the people of Rohan, who are the first target in the eradication of the race of Men by the renegade wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) and the dark lord Sauron. Fantastic creatures, astounding visual effects, and a climactic battle at the fortress of Helm's Deep make emThe Two Towers/em a worthy successor to emThe Fellowship of the Ring/em, grander in scale but retaining the story's emotional intimacy./p pWith emThe Return of the King/em, the greatest fantasy epic in film history draws to a grand and glorious conclusion. The trilogy could never fully satisfy those who remain exclusively loyal to Tolkien's expansive literature, but as a showcase for physical and technical craftsmanship it is unsurpassed in pure scale and ambition, setting milestone after cinematic milestone as Frodo and Sam continue their mission to Mordor to destroy the soul-corrupting One Ring. While the heir to the kingdom of Men, Aragorn, endures the massive battle at Minas Tirith with the allegiance of Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf, Frodo and Sam must survive the schizoid deceptions of Gollum, who remains utterly convincing as a hybrid of performance (by Andy Serkis) and subtly nuanced computer animation. Jackson and cowriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have much ground to cover; that they do so with intense pacing and epic sweep is impressive enough, but by investing greater depth and consequence in the actions of fellow hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), they ensure that emThe Return of the King/em maintains the trilogy's emphasis on intimate fellowship and remains faithful to Tolkien's overall vision. By ending the emLOTR/em trilogy with noble integrity and faith in the power of imaginative storytelling, emThe Return of the King/em, like its predecessors, will stand as an adventure for the ages. em--Jeff Shannon and David Horiuchi/em/p pspan style="color: #990000;"strongOur Review of the Extended Edition on DVD (Dec. 14, 2004)/strong:/span/p span style="float: right; width: 207px; height: 154px; margin-left: 2px; margin-bottom: 5px;"img height="154" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/warner/gollum2.jpg" //span pThe extended editions of Peter Jackson's emThe Lord of the Rings/em present the greatest trilogy in film history in the most ambitious sets in DVD history. In bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's nearly unfilmable work to the screen, Jackson benefited from extraordinary special effects, evocative New Zealand locales, and an exceptionally well-chosen cast, but most of all from his own adaptation with co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, preserving Tolkien's vision and often his very words, but also making logical changes to accommodate the medium of film. While purists complained about these changes and about characters and scenes left out of the films, the almost two additional hours of material in the extended editions (about 11 hours total) help appease them by delving more deeply into Tolkien's music, the characters, and loose ends that enrich the story, such as an explanation of the Faramir-Denethor relationship, and the appearance of the Mouth of Sauron at the gates of Mordor. In addition, the extended editions offer more bridge material between the films, further confirming that the trilogy is really one long film presented in three pieces (which is why it's the greatest trilogy ever--there's no weak link). The scene of Galadriel's gifts to the Fellowship added to the first film proves significant over the course of the story, while the new Faramir scene at the end of the second film helps set up the third and the new Saruman scene at the beginning of the third film helps conclude the plot of the second./p p/p pTo top it all off, the extended editions offer four discs per film: two for the longer movie, plus four commentary tracks and stupendous DTS 6.1 ES sound; and two for the bonus material, which covers just about everything from script creation to special effects. The argument was that fans would need both versions because the bonus material is completely different, but the features on the theatrical releases are so vastly inferior that the only reason a fan would need them would be if they wanted to watch the shorter versions they saw in theaters (the last of which, emThe Return of the King/em, merely won 11 Oscars). The emLOTR/em extended editions without exception have set the DVD standard by providing a richer film experience that pulls the three films together and further embraces Tolkien's world, a reference-quality home theater experience, and generous, intelligent, and engrossing bonus features. em--David Horiuchi/em/p p/p div class="break"/div h2strongspan style="color: #990000;"Versions of emLord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy/em on Blu-ray and DVD/span/strong/h2 p table border="1" class="data" style="width: 100%;" tbody tr th style="width: 10%;"/th th style="width: 18%;"img alt="Original Theatrical Edition" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001VL0K2.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" /br /Original Theatrical Edition/th th style="width: 18%;"img alt="Platinum Series Special Extended Edition" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000654ZK0.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" /br /Platinum Series Special Extended Edition/th th style="width: 18%;"img alt="Original Theatrical and Extended Limited Edition" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000GTLR2A.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" /br /Original Theatrical and Extended Limited Edition/th th style="width: 18%;"img alt="Original Theatrical Edition [Blu-ray]" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000X9FLKM.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" /br /Original Theatrical Edition [Blu-ray]/th th style="width: 18%;"img alt="Extended Edition [Blu-ray]" border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0026L7H20.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" /br /Extended Edition [Blu-ray]/th /tr tr td valign="top" width="50"strongRelease Date /strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"May 25, 2004/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Dec. 14, 2004/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Aug. 29, 2006/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Apr. 16, 2010/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"TBA/span/td /tr tr tdstrongFormat/Disc # /strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Three DVDs/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"12 DVDs/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Six DVDs/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Three Blu-ray Discs, Three DVDs, Three Digital Copies/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"15 Discs Total: Films are on Blu-ray, with Special Features on DVDs/span/td /tr tr tdstrongDigital Copies/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"No/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"No/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"No/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Yes, on three discs (expired Apr. 4, 2011)br //span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Yes, online (expires Jun. 26, 2012)br //span/td /tr tr tdstrongExtra footage/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"30 minutes added to emReturn of the King/em; 43 minutes added to emThe Two Towers/em; 50 minutes added to emReturn of the King/em/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"For all three films: Both the theatrical and extended edition on one disc/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as extended-edition DVD/span/td /tr tr tdstrongCommentaries/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Commentary by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens; Commentary by the design team; Commentary by the production/post-production team; Commentary by the cast, including Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, and Miranda Otto/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same commentaries as extended-edition DVD/span/td /tr tr tdstrongDocumentaries/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"emFellowship of the Ring/em: "Welcome to Middle-earth," "The Quest for the Ring," "A Passage to Middle-earth"; emThe Two Towers/em: "On the Set: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"; "Return to Middle- earth"emReturn of the King/em: Three documentaries: "The Quest Fulfilled: A Director's Vision," "A Filmmaker's Journey: Making The Return of The King," "National Geographic Special: Beyond the Movie" /span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;""From Book to Vision," "From Vision to Reality," "The Journey Continues...," Documentaries on J.R.R. Tolkein, "From Book to Script" documentaries, "Designing and Building Middle-earth," "Home of the Horse Lords," "Gollum," "Filming 'The Two Towers,'" "Visual Effects," "Editorial: Refining the Story," "Music and Sound," "The Battle for Helm's Deep is Over..."; "Filming The Return of the King," "Weta Digital," "Post-Production: Journey's End," "The Passing of an Age," "Cameron Duncan: The Inspiration for 'Into the West'" /span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Three behind-the-scenes documentaries by Costa Botes, the filmmaker director Peter Jackson personally hired/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as theatrical-edition DVD/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as extended-edition DVD, plus Costa Botes documentaries from the Original Theatrical Extended Limited Edition/span/td /tr tr tdstrongFeaturettes/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;" emFellowship of the Ring/em: 15 featurettes originally created for lordoftherings.net; emThe Two Towers/em: Eight featurettes originally created for lordoftherings.net; emReturn of the King/em: Six featurettes/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None /span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as theatrical-edition DVD/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td /tr tr tdstrongOther Features/strong/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Exclusive 10-minute behind-the-scenes previews of emThe Two Towers/em and emThe Fellowship of the Ring/em; Enya "May It Be" music video; An inside look at the Special Extended DVD Edition of emThe Lord of the Rings Trilogy/em; Preview of Electronic Arts' video games; DVD-ROM features: Exclusive online content; Emiliana Torrini "Gollum Song" music video; "The Long and Short of It," a short film by Sean Astin; "The Lord of The Rings" Trilogy Supertrailer/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Design Galleries; "Middle-earth Atlas: Tracing the Journeys of the Fellowship" interactive map; "New Zealand as Middle-earth" interactive map w/on-location footage; production photos; "The Mumakil Battle" demonstration / multi-angle interactive feature; "DFK6498" short film, "Strike Zone" short film, DVD-ROM access to exclusive online features /span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"None/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as theatrical-edition DVD/span/td tdspan style="font-size: x-small;"Same as extended edition DVDs; see above for complete special featuresbr //span/td /tr /tbody /table /p