My Review of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)"

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition) is a movie I've always wanted to check out. I really liked the original theatrical release of this movie. Despite the fact I was entertained by this film there was always a sense that something was missing. After watching this extended cut of the film I realized I was right.

The movie starts off in the past. It's when Golem was still Smeagol. He's just a regular hobbit fishing with his buddy. All of a sudden his buddy falls overboard and into the water. Upon reaching shore his friend comes out wet and with a surprise in his hand. He had found the ever so famous ring that this whole trilogy is all about.

I found this first part of the movie quite confusing. In the last two movies it was established that hobbits have a resistance to the ring. It was said it would take longer for hobbits to be enamored and seduced by the ring than the rest of the groups on middle earth. In this short opening it seems as though Smeagol and his fellow hobbit are immediately seduced by the ring. The two even fight to the death for the possession of this ring. A very strange scenario that had me scratching my head especially because it wasn't really a necessary scene to keep in the movie.

There are a ton of new scenes and I haven't seen this movie for quite a while so it really made this movie feel fresh and new to me. It also answered a lot of odd questions that I always had about this movie. I always thought the ghost army was really cool but they were only featured at the end of the battle for Minas Tirith in the original movie. In this extended edition they are given more face time and further showed us their significance. I also totally forgot how Saruman disappeared from the story. The extended edition explains a lot more things that I had missed out on.

They also have a few scenes that made sense to the continuity of the extended editions. You simply can't watch this extended edition without watching the other extended editions or else there's a few minor scenes that just won't make any sense.

However that's not always the case. The whole storyline of Merry and Pippin getting taller doesn't carry on in this movie. In The Two Towers the duo drink the Ent water that increased their size. I don't know if they shrunk back to regular size afterwards. This never gets addressed in the movie. They did get bigger parts in this last movie though.

There are still a few minor questions that I have about the whole trilogy. I really have started to become a bit of a geek for this franchise after watching the extended editions. I have questions like, why is Sam the only one that refers to Frodo as Mr. Frodo? He calls everyone else by their regular names but Frodo is oddly called Mr. Frodo for some reason. Nobody else calls Frodo by that name either. That never really gets explained.

The rest of the movie is still great. I keep forgetting how epic the battles were in this movie. They are probably still the biggest movie battles I've seen in my life. I really don't know how they have such painstaking attention to detail with all of these fights. Seeing this movie in 4K is absolutely a sight to see.

I remember the ending being a little discombobulated in the theatrical version. In a way this movie is an extended version of this super long ending. Somehow it doesn't seem so disjointed this time around. It feels more like a nice epilogue than a weirdly paced ending like the original theatrical version.

Overall, I would say that if you're a true fan of this series you'll probably have watched all of the extended editions anyways. If you're curious about the extended versions I would highly recommend them. The only thing is that you'll have to watch through the rest of the extended versions to understand everything that's going on. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. I thoroughly enjoyed it the whole four and almost half hour of it. Time just flew by.