Release Date:
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that The Return of the King was too short. Luckily, for those of you still in denial about the end of Peter Jackson's journey through Middle-earth, the special edition packs 50 extra minutes onto the final cut. But that's only the startthere are so many extras that the packaging comes with a map to help Tolkein-heads navigate the featurettes. Experts sit down to discuss everything from Tolkein's childhood spent developing languages that would eventually make their way into the books to detailed timelines comparing the book to the movie. There are leftovers, like the storyboard of a one-on-one battle between Aragorn and Sauron cut from the film just prior to shooting and effects featurettes on the beauty of creating murderous elephants and spiders. Animal coordinators try their best to corral the thousands of horses that made their way into the battle scenes, and you can tour specific New Zealand locales that appeared in the film. "Cameras in Middle-earth" is an hour-and-15-minute video diary of production, with stories and footage that range from the first scene on the first day to burning unused film on the last. It wasn't until we saw Andy Serkis parading around on-set in a full body suit that we'd finally had enough.