Liv Tyler as the elf Arwen, beloved of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen).


appended to the credit scroll, listing all the Char- ter Members of the Official Lord of the Rings Fan Club. The remaining 44m 27s consists of 15 added scenes and 18 extended scenes omitted from the theatrical cut. Thankfully, New Line took the ex- tra effort and marked the extended and added scenes with asterisks on the scene selection menus and on the nicely designed inside booklet. The additional and extended scenes in general tend to add comic material—an early scene involving Frodo and Sam, additional banter among Pip, Merry and Treebeard (and more on the Ents)— but also contain background information about Éomer. Perhaps most importantly, it expands the role of Éowyn, who has a much larger role in THE RETURN OF THE KING. Yet none of the additional material clarifies what is probably the film’s most ill-defined and failed character, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett). Galadriel is an important figure in Tolkien’s personal mythology, her exploits com- prising a substantial section of THE SILMARILLION. Certainly the film cannot afford to delve into much of Galadriel’s background, but, frankly, her role in the story is entirely unclear in both the theatri- cal as well as extended cuts. Like the earlier Extended FELLOWSHIP OF


THE RING, THE TWO TOWERS Extended Edition includes four separate audio commentaries with over 40 participants. As one might expect, one commentary features Peter Jackson and co-writ- ers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. A second


42


commentary consists of members of the concep- tual design crew, among them WETA workshop director Richard Taylor and artists Alan Lee and John Howe. The third commentary contains the insights of several members of the produc- tion and post-produc- tion crew, including co-producer Barrie M. Osborne and DP An- drew Lesnie, joined by composer Howard Shore and visual effects su- pervisor Jim Rygiel. The fourth, and per- haps most enjoyable, assembles over a dozen members of the cast, among them Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd,


Dominic Monaghan, joined by an energetic and always interesting Andy Serkis, and newcomers Miranda Otto, Brad Dourif, and Bernard Hill, with occasional comments from John Rhys- Davies and Christopher Lee. (Absent from the cast commentary on this set is Ian McKellen, who was present on the FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING commentary.) Given the number of par- ticipants on each commentary, it would be im- possible to keep them all straight, but fortunately the name of each speaker is superimposed in the black bar on the top of the screen as each takes his or her turn—a practice which other DVD manufacturers should emulate. The four audio commentaries represent only a portion of the supplements. The third and fourth discs contain roughly 7.5 hours of material. Called “Appendices,” they are split into two parts. “The Appendices: Part 3,” titled “The Journey Contin- ues...,” includes a 1m 48s introduction by direc- tor Peter Jackson. Part 4, titled, “The Battle for Middle-earth Begins,” offers a 1m 4s introduc- tion by Elijah Wood. We are hard-pressed to imag- ine any aspect of the production that remains unexplored. In addition to design galleries, Part 3 includes five documentaries, covering such top- ics as J.R.R. Tolkien and the origins of Middle- earth, adapting the epic novel into a screenplay, designing and building Middle-earth, and the New Zealand locations used during the film. Perhaps the most interesting of the documentaries is the

Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84