Nazrin—August 22, 2025✓ Verified purchase
The steelbooks art are well made and beautiful ! This considered as bargain , you get theaterical and extended cut which is total 3 disc in 4K with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos ! No only that , you also get a digital copy of Theaterical and Extended Cut to share with your families that living far from you using share family library account. You can enjoy using high quality with disc, and the digital is ease access for anyone else in you family. With excellent design of the steelbook, putting in shelf as collections of iconic movies is striking enough for you to feel honored and proud owning one of the best trilogy ever. Read more
Lisa Shea—August 28, 2012✓ Verified purchase
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring was a powerhouse of an ensemble film, featuring an all-star cast, fantastically detailed sets, an almost insane attention to detail, and gorgeous cinematography. It's no wonder that while only released in 2001 it immediately vaulted to the #50 spot on the new AFI Top 100 listing, while other classics like Doctor Zhivago dropped off the list completely. I should caveat first that I grew up reading and adoring the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I re-read it probably once a year. I absolutely adored Aragorn, and all of my daydreams were about me as Aragorn's loyal companion. In the books, you see, Arwen hardly appears. She's a footnote in an appendix. This first book is all about men, men, and more men. I suppose Galadriel shows up at one point, to pass around presents, but that's about it. So when I went to see the film, it was almost a religious experience. The Weathertop scene, where the hobbits are calling out "Strider" in panic, had me shiver. These were my dreams coming to life. The attention the WETA workshop put into every scene is legendary. They literally had the book open and were reading the pages to know what to do. They hand carved proper Dwarvish ruins along all surfaces of the caves in the Mines of Moria. Viggo learned to speak Elvish and lobbied for more dialogue in the language. They tended to the gardens at Hobbiton for a full year so it had a "lived in" look. Yes, they had to cut out some of the book. Heck, the movie was already 3 hours long! I do not mind that at all. And I also do not mind that they gave Arwen a part! Up until now we had ONE FEMALE. That was it. One. I realize the book was written in the "dark ages" of 1954 but still! Surely there could be more females involved. Even with the TWO whole females in the movie, they never even interact. They are both there solely to be foils to the menfolk. Still, one cannot blame Jackson at all for that. The responsibility for that goes back to J. R. R. Tolkien. Some purists were already upset enough that Arwen got to speak in the movie :). I imagine a hostile rage would have erupted if more than that occurred. So absolutely I adore Lord of the Rings, and I own all the different versions on DVD. I highly recommend watching it. It is glorious in its own right, and so much of what it shows and says has infiltrated its way into modern culture. Watching TV, reading novels, or going to movies can often involve an expectation that you "get" the references involved. Read more
Jake Mohlman—November 25, 2002✓ Verified purchase
I am a lifelong fan of the "The Lord of the Rings" and as such, I'm sure I wasn't alone in fearing that a film adaptation would ruin the magic of the story. I needn't have worried, as Peter Jackson's first installment "The Fellowship of the Ring" does a remarkable job of transferring Tolkien's work to the big screen. Yes, Tom Bombadil is absent, and Arwen is given a greater role to offer something for female fans, but the essence (along with almost all of the substance) is there. In the "Extended Edition" the viewer is treated to an additional half hour of footage. There is more exposition on Hobbits at the beginning of the film, the battle against the goblins and cave troll in Moria was extended, and a few other vignettes were added. However, what long time fans will be most pleased to see is Galadriel's gift giving scene. The whole scene is beautifully conceived and executed, and Sam, and particularly Gimli reveal new aspects of their personalities through it. Now for the specifics of this set: Discs 1 & 2 comprise the film and commentaries. For those of you who haven't seen the film yet, the director, Peter Jackson, chose his native land of New Zealand as the location of Middle Earth. I can't imagine that he could have made a better choice. While there is a great deal of CGI in this film, for the most part it is used to supplement, rather than replace, the landscape. For instance, a ruin might be inserted to imbue with history an otherwise gorgeous, but perhaps disconnected, landscape. As a result, the cinematography has a feeling of being grounded, of being "real", that one would never get from a George Lucas effects extravaganza. The film begins with a history of the Ring of Power drawn from not only "The Lord of The Rings" and "The Hobbit" but "The Silmarillion" and other of Tolkien's writings as well. While not true to the form of the novel, it does a superb job of imbuing the rest of the film with a real sense of history. In fact, throughout the film, it is Jackson's ability to ground the film in an alternate reality that makes it so successful. The viewer doesn't feel so much like they are watching fantasy, as they are watching the history of some remote time. I haven't listened to all of the commentary yet (at almost 16 hours, it will take a while) but the pieces I listened two were for the most part interesting and lively, which is surprising considering how dry such features can sometimes be. One thing that struck me is how much passion everyone associated with the project has for it. It really comes across that this was a labor of love, which goes a long way towards explaining why the film was so successful. Discs 3 & 4 are without a doubt the best collection of behind the scenes special features I have ever encountered. From the start, which is an absolutely brilliant history of Tolkien and his works, all the way through to the final post-production tweaks, the viewer is treated to an in depth, but never dull, look at the creation of Middle Earth. I rarely watch of the behind the scenes footage on other discs because it has a tendency to be dry and geared towards the real film nut. In this instance though, there is enough substance to satisfy even the most voracious film historian, while not being overwhelming to the layperson. Furthermore, all of the features are always firmly rooted in the context of "The Fellowship of the Ring"; the documentary never strays into theoretical jargon or technical challenges. Rather it focuses on how the film was made, and the obstacles that were overcome. In addition to the Tolkien biography that I already mentioned (and which is the best I have seen anywhere) I particularly enjoyed the features on the cast and the costumes. The cast feature does a remarkable job of showing how the primary actors really gelled into a real life fellowship of their own. And the costume feature is absolutely brilliant, as I shows the overwhelming volume of costumes, and particularly armor, that was required the make Middle Earth come alive. Finally, there is a National Geographic documentary on Tolkien and "The Lord of the Rings" included, although it is separate from the boxed set. It's actually a pretty good documentary in and of itself, but it is really overwhelmed by Discs 3 & 4. There is no possible way that they could have covered the length and breadth of Middle Earth to the same degree. That said, there are some interesting moments, particularly, Tolkien's fascination with the Finnish epic, "The Kalevala". "The Fellowship of the Ring" is the superb first installment of what is destined to be a classic trilogy of films. While not always exact in its correlation to the book, it nonetheless does an excellent job of capturing the key components of Tolkien's work: honor, duty, and above all, friendship. At the same time, the DVD's really raise the bar for what constitutes "special features". Aside from spectacular picture and sound, there are hours of fascinating features that should answer just about any question you could come up with about the film or its production. Read more
