Reeling Backward: "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, extended edition (2001-03)

I've in a groove. (Some might say a rut.) Exploring Ralph Bakshi's fantasy animation rekindled thoughts of his version of "The Lord of the Rings," which led me back to the Peter Jackson-directed trilogy of the early 2000s.

The 1978 animated film, which ended suddenly a little more than halfway through the novel -- even with skipping large volumes of material -- was sorta/kinda "finished" with the release the following year of a TV movie, "The Return of the King."

Bakshi was not actually involved in the second film, which picked up at roughly the same point his left off but featured a completely different voice cast. It was made by the same team that had done the lackluster 1977 animated version of "The Hobbit," and they apparently changed gears when they heard Bakshi's LOTR saga would not be completed. They even turned it into a musical, for God's sake.

Nightmares of "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" still haunt me at night.

In contrast to this slapdash effort, the live action trilogy was carefully planned from start to finish, with most of the principle photography for all three films completed over a contiguous one-year shoot in New Zealand. Jackson and his screenwriting team also wisely chose to separate J. R. R. Tolkien's 1,000+ page novel into three separate parts, as has generally been done during its printing history: "The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King."

For our purposes here I'm going to deal with them as one work, and specifically the longer, extended editions that were released on video within a year or two after "RotK."

Specifically, I want to focus on how the movies differ from the book, and how the extended versions for home video vary from the theatrical films. And why I think that, although the extended versions are superior, they're specifically better for the more leisurely experience of watching them at home instead of a movie theater.

To wit: let me be up front and say I did not watch the trilogy in one sitting. With additions the extended versions hit right around four hours per movie, adding somewhere between 30 and 50 minutes of screen time to each. I watched them over a one-week period with my 9-year-old as my enthusiastic companion. My 6-year-old was also there some of the time, flitting in and out as his interest waxed or waned.

I should also preface that I am a lifelong fan of LOTR and was both excited and greatly afeard of the project before the first movie came out. The Bakshi film and its wayward "sequel" are pretty universally loathed by true fantasy fans as kiddie cartoon bastardizations of a great work of literature.

Perhaps the biggest way the movies differ from the books, and the extended version from the theatrical, is the love affair between Aragorn and Arwen. If you had just read the book (and not the long appendices) you'd wonder if there even was a romance going on. It's barely mentioned in passing in the text.

This interracial affair between Man and Elf is a continuation of another romance, between Beren and Lúthien, that previously occurred in Tolkien's vast mythology of Middle-earth. You have to dive into his much less readable works like "The Silmarillion" and "Unfinished Tales" to get at that stuff.

Suffice it to say that Arwen's father, Elrond, disapproves of their love. He wants Arwen to take the ships west to the Undying Lands -- roughly the immortals' equivalent of passing into the after-life -- and Aragorn to take up the throne of Gondor. Aragorn and Arwen try to do their duty but find the pull between them too strong to resist.

Uplifting this romance, nearly to the point of having it equal Frodo's quest to destroy the One Ring, essentially makes Aragorn the trilogy's co-leading character. In the books, he's a sort of generic, stolid hero-type who mostly stays in the background, doing his derring-do, until nearly the end.

In the films we watch him gradually transform from surly Ranger to reluctant leader of the Fellowship to a kingly figure embracing the incredible weight of his destiny.

Among the added or extended scenes, we learn more about Aragorn's lonely childhood upbringing among the elves, how the romance came to be and how their love for each other presses heavily on their actions. "The Two Towers" in particular is replete with quite languid flashbacks and visions that help us embrace their melancholy.

There is also a lot more footage of the relationship between Aragorn and Eowyn, the princess of Rohan who falls in love with him. The extended editions have a number of interactions added not in the book, from taming a wild horse to the revelation that the long-lived man of Númenor is 87 years old at the time of the events in LOTR, having fought alongside King Théoden's grandfather during his wandering years.

Eowyn's ache is quite palpable in the longer version, and the addition of glances and dialogue heightens our sense that he returns her affection in at least some way. (This takes place during the section where he mistakenly believes Arwen has departed Middle-Earth.)

The additions also flesh out Eowyn's character to a much greater degree, so at the moment when he dismisses her -- "It is but a thought and a shadow that you love; I cannot give you what you seek" -- her pain is sharply palpable. It colors her subsequent decision to secretly accompany the men to war as not just proto-feminist bravery but the actions of someone who has truly given up on life.

Another character who sees a lot more screen time and shadings than in the book or theatrical movies is Faramir. When I first read the book, he instantly became my favorite character: an introverted, scholarly figure whose worth is often discounted in a world of men-at-arms. Living eternally in the shadow of his older brother, Boromir, Faramir is openly scorned by his father, Denethor, the increasingly mad Steward of Gondor.

The late romance between Faramir and Eowyn is given, I think, just a few sentences in Tolkien's text, and got even less in the theatrical films. Here we get a couple of sequences of their interaction, and we grasp how these two, wounded in body and soul, would find refuge in each other's company.

One addition to the extended versions I'm not especially keen on is Faramir's interaction with Frodo and Sam on their journey to Mount Doom. In the extended version Faramir forces them to return with him as far as the river fortress of Osgiliath -- quite a diversion from their journey, both geographically and thematically -- before allowing them to continue on their way. This never happens in the book.

Ostensibly this makes sense, since Faramir learns of the Ring and seeks to give it to Denethor as a way to show his "quality" to his father. But from a strictly narrative standpoint, it feels like a bit of a bait-and-switch, creating tension solely for the purpose of releasing it.

I have the same quibble with Treebeard initially refusing the plea from Merry and Pippin to declare war on Saruman, something wholly absent from the book. The ents have their (ridiculously overlong) entmoot and say no, preferring to weather out the coming storm. The hobbits trick Treebeard into taking them south, instead of west, so that he can witness the destruction of his beloved trees of Fanghorn Forest by Saruman and become enraged into action.

Aside from the obvious question -- how would the halflings know Saruman had done this? -- it again feels like a screenwriting ploy that's too clever by half. It also presents a logistical impossibility, of Treebeard being able to travel for hours through his forest for what must be dozens of miles, do a little toodley-toot to call the other ents, and having them appear almost instantly.

I caught one other temporal incongruity created by the addition of the extended footage. In this case Sam and Frodo, having finally made it inside the rim of Mordor, talk about having to "find a way down" to the plains below infested with orcs. We then cut to a discussion of the surviving leaders after the battle of Gondor, followed by a mustering of their forces and riding to the Black Gate many leagues away to draw Sauron's eye and armies. Then we cut back to the hobbits arriving at the bottom just in time to watch the orcs shuffling away.

So we have parallel timelines conjoined even though one action must have taken, at most, a couple of hours and another that would have needed, at a minimum, a few days' time.

Gimli the dwarf and Legolas the elf get bits and pieces of added screen time, mostly to affirm their growing friendship. Their friendly competition in killing the most orcs, which seems like a Hollywood add-on but is right there in the book, is given a few extra beats.

Similarly, Merry and Pippin are both rounded out a bit more, with some shadings to make them seem more than just fun-loving rapscallions. I also enjoyed the addition of the little subplot about them growing much taller as a result of drinking Treebeard's ent draught, with commensurate one-upmanship.

Within Tolkien's book the younger two hobbits are supposed to be in their "tweens," aka in their 20s, which would make them about late teen years for humans -- so not beyond the possibility of a late growth spurt, with a little entish help.

Speaking of ages, Tolkien was quite specific about those of Frodo and Bilbo. At the time of their shared birthday party that launches the book and films, Frodo is turning 33 (roughly 21 for human), signifying full adulthood, and Bilbo is turning 111. However, the movies omit the 17 years that passes between the party and the beginning of Frodo's quest with the ring.

Both Frodo and Bilbo were about 50 when they had their great adventures, which would be approaching middle age for humans. I think that greatly colors Frodo's personal journey. Elijah Wood was only 19 when they began shooting the movie, and was fresh-faced as a new apple. By the end of RotK, he legitimately seems decades older.

It's also harder to explain such a large gap of time in a cinematic version than one on the page. It makes it seem like Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel and the other leaders of the resistance against Sauron were tragically inept. As one of the five Istari sent by the godlike Valar to Middle-earth to oppose the enemy, what else exactly has Gandalf to do?

Maybe he was off spending too much time infatuated with the halflings' tobacco leaf, as Saruman mocks.

Samwise Gamhee also is greatly elevated in the extended versions of the films, almost to the point of being the dominant character in the last film. Many people were vexed when Sean Astin did not receive an Oscar nomination for his performance, and my recent viewing has only served to underscore those complaints.

In many ways, Sam is the heart and soul of LOTR. Not coincidentally, both Tolkien's book and the extended version end with his return to Bag End.

With regard to the film's historic haul of Academy Awards, "The Return of the King" won an astonishing 11, despite not receiving a single acting nomination, which must represent some kind of record. It also won in every single category in which it was nominated, besting the batting averages of even "Ben-Hur" and "Titanic," which also won 11 each, the most ever.

Finally, let us talk of Tom Bombadil.

None of the film versions of LOTR have even attempted to depict him. Even Peter Jackson saw no reason to include him in the extended versions. His part in the story is not long, and surely could've been handled in 10 minutes, or even less.

But I understand the reason for the omission. He's a mysterious figure, resembling a dwarf but having druid-like powers over his domain. Indeed, his Old Forest on the borders of the Shire is described as being very similar to Fanghorn, overgrown and dark of mood, and in many ways he's analogous to Treebeard. He's depicted as being the one entity in Middle-earth who is immune to the temptations of the One Ring.

In the end, the hobbits' encounter with Bombadil is little more than a diversion that forces them to tarry on the way to Bree, which is where the story really picks up. The only thing notable that happens in his company is when Tom rescues them from the barrow-wights and gives their ancient blades to the halflings. In the movie, Aragorn simply pulls them out and hands them over.

Reading a book and watching a movie in a theater are very different experiences, and watching a movie at home is more different from the cinema than we would think.

In general I think two hours is about the most amount of time a person can concentrate deeply on an activity without needing a mental (or bladder-related) break. We're human and our minds begin to wander, even if we are intellectually and emotionally engaged. None of the LOTR movies were distributed with an intermission like "Lawrence of Arabia" or other long films of antiquity.

(For the record, 2003's "Gods and Generals" was the last one to include one, and I don't believe there had been another since "Gandhi" in 1982.)

My DVD edition of the extended versions each came with two discs about two hours each, so we essentially watched the movie in six parts. This makes for a very satisfying experience, as we can enjoy the enhanced storytelling and have time to think about it in between.

I'm not here to tell which version of "The Lord of the Rings" is "best." The book is its own singular experience, with Tolkien's dense imagination and writing style of the language-loving academic he was. I wouldn't be the first to admit that I tend to skim over his long stanzas of poems and songs.

The theatrical movies were marvels, made for the big screen. And the extended director's cut, or whatever we want to call them, are a more sumptuous experience for watching at home.

Watching the last credits roll to the end, I let Annie Lennox's marvelous "Into the West" wash over me, with almost heartbeat-like pulses of emotion. "The Lord of the Rings" represents the apex of the fantasy genre on film, even better than anything during pop culture's brief fascination with these kinds of movies 20 years earlier.

Fantasy has largely moved to television shows and streaming platforms, with wildly varying degrees of success. For every "Game of Thrones," there's a crappy show with shallow-end actors swinging swords or miming spells.

But there will only be one "The Lord of the Rings" -- even if there are now several ways to experience it.

Video review: "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"

Too much or too little? When it comes to Tolkien screen adaptations, there seems to be little agreement in how much material to stuff into these movies.

The choice by director Peter Jackson and his team to divide “The Hobbit” into three films may be a bridge too far for many viewers. There certainly is enough story in J.R.R. Tolkien’s slim novel (273 pages in my paperback version) to justify splitting it in twain. But the filmmakers chose to go further, layering in all sorts of material from extended Tolkien lore to pad out what was a simple children’s tale into something as grand -- and grim -- as “The Lord of the Rings.”

The result is languidly paced and overstuffed. The iconic “Unexpected Party” dinner that opens the tale, with meek hobbit Bilbo Baggins being invited by dwarves to go on a great adventure, overstays its welcome by at least 10 minutes.

They also bring in all sorts of figures who weren’t in the book, including Galadriel and a flighty colleague of Gandalf named Radagast. It sometimes feels like a “Greatest Hits” retread of “LotR.”

I still enjoyed the movie, while recognizing that people less enamored with Tolkien’s dense fantasy mythology won’t like it nearly as much. And several sequences, such as Bilbo’s deadly game of riddles with the creature Gollum, are positively thrilling.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” shows it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

It’s being released with a decent amount of extras, including 10 making-of videos that cover a broad range of production topics, from initial conception to the decision to shoot in 3-D with a special frame rate of 48 fps (which reportedly turned off some viewers).

If Jackson & Co. hold to form, though, expect to see a special edition come out in the next year or so with even meatier goodies and possibly an extended version that pushes the run time past three hours. For some hardcore Tolkienites, more is never enough.

Movie: 3 stars out of four  
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"

Let me say right up front that I quite enjoyed "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," but I don't expect most other people will. At unless they're hardcore Tolkienites like myself.

Director Peter Jackson and his creative team have more or less abandoned the modest children's book by J.R.R. Tolkien that acted as a gentle precursor to the grander, grimmer "Lord of the Rings." In its place, they've given us something like "LotR 2: The Prequel."

In tone and in story structure, the first triad of the "Hobbit" adventure feels like a further extension of the trilogy from 2001-03. There's a big fight in the goblin mountain home that visually owes much to the Mines of Moria sequence in "Fellowship of the Ring." Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), the wandering wizard do-gooder, again whispers into a moth's ear to summon giant eagles to save the day. Andy Serkis, the digital acting god who brought the tortured Gollum to slithery life in "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King," is back to play the ultimate riddle game with wayward hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

In stuffing "The Hobbit" with all sorts of elements from Tolkien lore not contained in the book -- and inventing a whole bunch of new stuff entirely on their own -- Jackson and his cast and crew take a major risk. Splitting the 300-page book into two movies seemed like an obvious move, given the carryover of ambition from the "Lord" trilogy.

But in choosing to make it into three flicks (and not short ones, either -- "Journey" clocks in at 169 minutes), they may have crossed the proverbial bridge too far. This movie seems overstuffed and languidly paced. The iconic "Unexpected Party" that opens the tale just seems to ramble on and on, like ... well, an uninvited dinner guest who overstays his welcome.

And yet I did not mind the extravagance, because I'm such a big fan of Tolkien's various works. The real appeal to people like me is the expansive mythology that the British author spent a lifetime building. Reading his books always felt like we were exploring an entire world, but only seeing a small glimpse of it any given time.

As a result, I did not mind the inclusion of another wizard character named Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), despite the fact that he gets a mere one mention each in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings," and never plays any kind of significant role. Here, he more or less takes over the movie for a small stretch.

The one thing I find most questionable was the choice by Jackson et al to raise the stakes of the story. The novel starts off as a simple adventure yarn about 13 dwarves determined to kill the dragon who drove them off their mountain kingdom long ago, and gradually snowballs into important events that affect the entire world of Middle Earth.

This movie appears to lose patience, adding to and twisting around the plot so it seems like all the great powers of the land -- wizards, elves, orcs, a mysterious Necromancer occupying a dark corner -- have their entire attention bent toward this little misfit band.

Bilbo (Martin Freeman) acts as our eyes and ears, the proverbial normal person recruited to go along on the adventure at the behest of Gandalf. Purportedly a professional burglar, Bilbo is a timid soul who seems to possess no discernible skills other than writing letters and taking long walks. But he soon shows his true stuff, helping the dwarves battle three lumbering trolls and conniving his way past the murderous Gollum when he's cut off from his troupe in the bowels of the Misty Mountains.

Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), the leader of the dwarves, gets the Aragorn treatment by being gifted with all sorts of backstory and inner turmoil that's only hinted at in the book. Armitage is a commanding presence, and helps us see why others would follow this beggar prince on his outlandish journey.

Having other actors from the "Lord of the Rings" films thrown in haphazardly quickly grows old -- Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian Holm as older Bilbo, and Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett as elf lords Elrond and Galadriel, respectively. The latter pair show up to fret and scowl at Thorin's trouble-making ways.

"Every good story deserves embellishment," Gandalf tells Bilbo at the beginning of the film, and Peter Jackson appear to have taken this up as their motto and mantra. Personally, I mostly welcomed the copious add-ons. But my guess is that casual fans of the "Lord of the Rings" will be turned off by what they may regard as an unnecessary reboot.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Celeste and Jesse Forever"

I really wanted to like "Celeste and Jesse Forever" more than I did. It's a smart, wryly funny dramedy about a divorcing couple who can't quite seem to let go. Rashida Jones is a revelation in it, playing as distinctly drawn a female character as we've seen in a while.

My disconnect is that it's supposed to be the story of two people, when really it's about Celeste. Jesse is certainly in the picture, but his role is more to hold up the frame and let the audience gaze at her. We never get into his head the way we do Celeste's.

Given that this is a pet project of Jones -- she also is a producer and co-wrote the screenplay with Will McCormack -- it's not surprising that the light shines mostly on her. But the imbalanced nature of the way they're presented leaves us with a film that feels only partially complete.

Late in the story, Jesse complains to Celeste that she never saw him as an equal in their relationship. The same can be said for the movie.

Things aren't helped by Andy Samberg's lackluster performance as Jesse. A goofy actor from "Saturday Night Live" and several film comedies, Samberg simply doesn't have the acting chops to pull off something like this, with aspirations toward depth and complexity. He reads his lines as if he's searching for the hidden joke inside.

Although there are plenty of funny moments in the film, its essence veers more toward the somber than the profane. Samberg's presence makes the material seem more lightweight than it wants to be.

The story opens with a typical evening of the pair hanging out, cracking jokes and generally fitting together like hand in glove. These are the rare lovers who are also best friends. Except, at the end of their reverie, we learn they split up six months ago, and divorce proceedings are underway.

Certainly their friends have difficulty grasping the notion. They tell the couple they're just putting off the pain, but Jesse and Celeste insist their friendship will outlive their breakup. That seems a possibility, until they start getting interested in other people and sparks of friction begin flying.

Celeste is the more ambitious of the pair, a professional "trend forecaster" who's co-founder of a successful marketing firm. Elijah Wood has a neat little turn as her partner, who keeps making lame attempts to play the role of the catty gay pal, except he's too much of a business type to be convincing.

Meanwhile, Jesse is a failed artist who's never had a real job or even a checking account. Without it being said directly (at least initially), it would seem their breakup was initiated by doubts about Jesse's fitness to be a father, both hers and his.

The movie, directed by Lee Toland Krieger, is at its best when it's not trying to do too much. The story has a loose, easygoing feel and the characters interact the way real people do (or at least they way we'd like to think we do).

Most every person we meet turns out to be a little more nuanced than our first impression. For instance, Celeste's firm takes on a Ke$ha-like singer as a client, the sort of shallow pop songstress she despises, and finds out there's more to the young woman (Emma Roberts) than she thought. Or the slick business guy (Chris Messina) who tries to pick her up at yoga class.

"Celeste and Jesse Forever" is still a worthy movie, even if it's really more about one-half of a breakup than a whole.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "9"

"9" is one of the boldest, most original films to come out in 2009. It didn't get much of a box office reception, but now that it's hitting video, audiences have a chance to discover this animation gem.

Director Shane Acker based the feature film on an Oscar-nominated short he made about a dystopian world where all of mankind has perished. About the only living things around are tiny puppet-like creatures made out of burlap and bits of metal, with numbers for names.

The voice cast is especially good, with Elijah Wood as the title character, Christopher Plummer as 1, the authoritarian leader, Jennifer Connelly as the knight-errant 7, and Martin Landau as 2, an old tinkerer.

They must battle a faceless army of machines looking to dominate the post-apocalyptic word -- and capture the strange talisman 9 is carrying around.

The animation is just terrific, with inky pools of darkness and a wonderful tactile feel -- things you don't normally get from computerized animation.

Despite the PG-13 rating, which I feel is misplaced, this movie should be suitable for children above toddler age.

Extra features are good, not great. Neither the DVD or Blu-ray versions come with a digital copy of the film, which at this point should be standard fare.

Both versions come with original 10-minute short by Acker, and the commentary is especially interesting; he talks about working on his UCLA senior thesis film for more than four years while taking leaves of absence to do things like work on the last "Lord of the Rings" films.

There's a 16-minute making-of doc that includes all the principle talent, even producer Tim Burton, who lent his name (but not much hands-on participation, it appears) to the production. There are also two featurettes focusing on the design and animation process, and seven minutes worth of deleted scenes, still in storyboard format.

A commentary track by Acker and several key collaborators adds few new insights, but is still worth a listen.

In addition to these, the Blu-ray comes with a tour of the Starz animation studio hosted by Acker, and interactive features you can turn on and off during the movie.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "9"

"9" is a cyberpunk fantasia disguised as an animated children's movie. It's also one of the boldest and most original films of 2009.

And along with "District 9," it's the second movie to come out in the last month based on a short film by an unknown director that was expanded to feature length with the support of an established filmmaker (and with the numeral 9 in the title, to boot). In this case, Tim Burton liked the 2005 Oscar-nominated short film by Shane Acker so much, he signed on as a producer for a full-size "9."

The world Acker has created -- along with screenwriter Pamela Pettler and an army of computer animators -- is a dystopian apocalypse, in which all of mankind has been wiped out by war. The only critters moving about are these funny-looking puppet creatures with big, mechanical eyes and a slapdash of zippers and buttons holding their burlap torsos together.

These are stitchpunks (though they're never named as such), the last remnant of humanity, created by a dying scientist with a terrible burden to bear.

Even though we're used to being dazzled by each new CG animation feature, the textures and tactile quality of "9" really jump out at you. Despite having no names, only numbers, the stitchpunks are readily distinguished from one another due to the animators' minute attention to detail.

As the story opens, 9 (voice of Elijah Wood), the newest of his kind, awakens in the dead scientist's laboratory. He finds a strange device, and takes it with him as he ventures out into the urban wasteland. (The setting seems to be WWII-era London, or what's left of it.)

There he encounters 2 (Martin Landau), an old tinkerer who fixes 9's voice transmitter so he can talk. But they're attacked by a fearsome mechanical feline that makes off with 2 and the scientist's totem.

In short order, 9 encounters the rest of his kind. 5 (John C. Reilly) is one-eyed and friendly, while 8 is a lumbering bully who barely speaks. There's also 6 (Crispin Glover, who also sings a song for the soundtrack), the half-crazed oracle; 3 and 4, the symbiotic twins who compile lost human knowledge; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), the heroic knight-errant of the bunch.

Leading them, ostensibly, is 1 (Christopher Plummer), though he seems more interested in hiding from the threatening machines than challenging them.

I don't want to reveal more, since part of the film's delight is discovering the frightening implications of the movie's themes, and what they say about humanity.

If there's a criticism to be leveled, it's that the opening 20 minutes or so feels rushed, as if it was edited to introduce the action scenes as quickly as possible so younger audience members wouldn't grow bored. Although "9" is perfectly appropriate for older children (say, 7 and up), I am certain adults will find it most satisfying as a film-going experience.

After watching this movie, I was astonished to learn that it has been given a PG-13 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. The mild depictions of violence are wholly undeserving of anything harsher than a PG.

Perhaps it's the dark tone and post-apocalyptic setting that negatively affected the ratings board. But these are also integral parts of what makes "9" the best animated film so far this year.

3.5 stars