I heard the 5 hour thing too -- but imagine that not doing pick-ups, editing for another film will ease things a bit for them.

But that means that next Christmas -- no LotR. . . which is sad.

The LotR trilogy was the first movies that I have enjoyed from start to finish in a long, long, ever. They were so good they made me forget completely about the mediocreness of M*trix Reloaded and the absolute suckiness of M*trix R**volutions.

I can't see anything getting me in the theatres for a good long while. Or at least until or if Firefly happens. Then, I may have my mail forwarded to the theatres.

But that means that next Christmas -- no LotR. . .

What? Huh? - I could have sworn someone just said something about no LotR next Christmas but I was so busy what with the staring at the pretty pyramids....

I have a friend who knows nada about the books and movies (but knows I am a freak about them) who saw FotR for the first time last week. She called sooooo sad that Gandalf was dead. She must have seen a zillion trailers for TTT and RotK where he is RIGHT THERE. But - she actually thought he was dead. I tried to comfort her but...come on...that is freakishly un-spoiled.

I highly doubt that any written passage could do justice to how damn sexy they all are.

Er. Heh. *head explodes* No. No, the books are... not so much about the sex.

My roommate is the sort who would watch TTT and be like, "Wait, isn't the White Wizard the bad guy? Surely he --" and I'd have to shush her for the 0:59 that it would take for the story to explain that part. She is very much with the unspoiled anticipatory quibbling.

the reason that I, as a non-Tolkien-reader, expected Frodo to die is that Galadriel says that Frodo is beginning to realize he won't survive (or something to that effect).

"The quest will take his life." Which is actually sort of true, but only sort of. The films don't make nearly so clear how wrecked he is when he gets back to the Shire. Instead of being sore on the anniversary of getting stabbed at Weathertop, he spends the whole day in bed moaning. In the books, it's sort of a relief that he's going someplace where the pain will stop.

I don't know about the extendo-Return on DVD come May. That's pretty fast -- 5 months -- for a normal theatrical film, and leaves not a lot of time for the recording of interviews, the editing and assembling of appendix materials, and then the (1) re-edit of the film, (2) the [re-]completion of the digital effects, (3) the re-recording of dialogue, (4) the reworking of music, and then (5) the recording of commentary tracks. Having nobody busy working on a next film frees up some people-hours, but there are still things that need to be done in sequence, so the process can't be sped up that much.

I heard that the five hours was a mis-statement -- that the > 4 hours and 50 minutes was supposed to be > 4 hours and 15 minutes.

The main reason I can't see the EE coming out in May is that the movie will have only been out of theatres for a month or two at that point. Studios usually like to leave more space than that.

4 hours and 50 minutes was supposed to be > 4 hours and 15 minutes.

That makes a lot of sense. It's still pretty damn long.

I wonder if the May date refers to the release of the theatrical version on DVD.

Not five hours?

t chin quivers

Suela, we can watch the countryside beauty shots in slomo. That will make it 5 hours.

(Although I would prefer a 5-hour cut, because at least there's a chance they'd cover all the story in as much fullness as would make the story flow properly. I.e., nobody disappears for 1/3 of the movie. I'm looking at the time-budget, and all the scenes that got cut, and 4:15 doesn't look like enough.)