Season 4 DVD easter egg question

[B5_Obsessed]

LOTR Extended

PJ may have contradicted himself. I could swear that on the DVD promos for the Extended Edition, he refers to them as definitive and the theatrical versions as being cut for time constraints. He was most notably pleased to have the Boromir/Faramir material added to the "Two Towers".

I dunno.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: Thanks, Adrian

Basically because his primary motivation is in making movies for the movie theatre and not for DVD/home viewing. Hence, as far as he is concerned, the TE is the definitive cut of each of the movies because his goal was to make the LotR trilogy for the movie theatre.

And I'm not really disagreeing with you. Let's put it this way: Jackson is a film maker, not a DVD maker, and therefore the theatrical versions are what he set out to make and he designed them to be the best possible adapation he could make within the constraints of a theatrical film. But he wrote and shot more material than could conceivably fit into a theatrical film in each case, and he was aware as a Tolkein fan that the theatrical versions, even at three hours plus each, necessarily left out much that was in Tolkein that really needed to be in the films.

And he hasn't been as perfectly circumspect in all his public pronouncements on the films as he was in the commentaries. One of the reasons the subject has come up as often at it has is that every so often over the past few years he's been quoted as saying something that really sounds like the theatrical versions are more compromised than he'd like and the EEs are more "complete" from a Tolkein fan's perspective and then the next day he has to issue a retraction or clarification. (I don't know if Jackson has political ambitions, but it sounds like he's practicing to run for public office. )

Frankly how really feels about the two versions probably depends on his mood on any given day. But for public consumption there are obvious reasons why he'd stick with the "theatrical version is it" position, even if he were privately, or in when in a certain mood, to prefer the other. And there are enough of those "slips of the tongue" in print and in video interviews to at least make it plausible, whatever he might have said in the second or third take of part of the commentary.

Regards,

Joe

 

[zantarous]

Re: Thanks, Adrian

I am sure that Jackson position on which is the better cut will change in due course. And why spend all the time and energy on producing a four disc set and doing commentary and adding DTS sound to the EE if the theatrical cut is his "preferred" version.

It’s all political and you tell by listening to the commentary that when he had to cut stuff for time constraints it was usually character building stuff that had to go. Heck some of the stuff probably doesn't even make sense if you don't watch the EE's.

 

[A_M_Swallow]

Re: Easter Eggs

The S4 Easter Egg is a CGI demo showing partially rendered and fully rendered versions of a station "fly-by". At least that's what I hear. I have a problem with the arrow keys on my remote, they sometimes register two "hits" when you only press them once and I haven't been able to get the damned thing to play.

Does the Easter Egg play on your computer?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: Thanks, Adrian

Jackson has denied that the EEs are "the director's cut" and has said the theatrical version is what was intended for the theater and in no way inferior to the EEs. Politically speaking that's really all the man could say. New Line does not want people to get the idea that the "real" films are the Extended DVD Editions or too many of them might be tempted to skip the film in the theater and not buy the theatrical cut on DVD. And given the realities of showing films in a theater the theatrical versions are the "correct" version for that venue. But the EE's are in many ways a superior verison for home viewing. In short there are two different "valid" versions of the films. (And I think Jackson leans towards the EE but that he can't say so publicly.) This is simply not the case with most other films that include "deleted scenes" on their DVD versions. They don't spend the money to complete FX sequences that they knew would never be seen in the theater, etc. So my central point remains accurate: the Rings filsm are an exception to too many of the "normal" Hollywood rules to be lumped in with other films that have "deleted scenes" on the DVD.

Regards,

Joe

FYI, Jackson doesn't call anything of his "a director's cut." He hates the term because it implies a preference for one version, which to him is silly because he had final cut on all of the versions. For instance, he always calls his "director's cut" of The Frighteners his "fun cut"--he's actually happier with the theatrical version as a film.

This is supported by his criticisms of certain scenes that he's placed back into the EEs of Lord of the Ring (which you can hear on his commentary track).