Anyone seen Red Book of Westmarch?
 

I heard about this project a while back, and it sounds intriguing. A fan pieced together a more canonical version of the movies by rearranging scenes and using deleted footage. The trilogy is split into six movies, each bearing the original title of Tolkien's six books of LotR.

Thoughts? Comments? I would be interested in watching them if they are more faithful to the original.

I haven't heard of this project yet and will be interested in any responses that come. Since the question refers to a movie rather than a book version of Tolkien's story, I'm moving the thread to the Movies forum. Please continue to read and post there - thanks!

LotR Fan Edit
 

This project was discussed at length on TheHallofFire.net...

Here's link to the thread for the first "Book" The Return of the Shadow,

http://www.thehalloffire.net/forum/v...=200424#200424

Hmmm... I need to watch these at some point. With the level of devotion and detail that some fans put into their own works, it's a pity that more directors do not embrace the "experts". Although, I must give PJ credit for openly stating that the fans were now able to go in and do their corrections. While I was not a fan of the changes, PJ did make an excellent choice on location for the movies (considering his limitation of working on Earth). After all, location is at the heart of Tolkien's mythology.

I have downloaded all six 'books' and watched the first all the way through, and I have to say, I was quite impressed.

I have a few comments:
1. The intro is the only part not taken from the original films, and features Christopher Lee (I believe) reading the Ring-Verse.
2. The pacing was a bit strange, though I suppose it was mostly because I'm used to the normal versions.
3. It follows a narrative closer to the EE than the standard version.
4. I was quite surprised by how smoothly the music was cut, considering that a lot was taken out.
5. The whole thing has been cut down massively (considering it's from the EE) to about 7 and a half hours. Obviously there were some things they had to keep, such as Arwen taking Frodo to Rivendell, but it is definitely cut down a lot.

So basically, I enjoyed it and recommend it, and I'll just have to see how the others are.

For anyone who's interested, this is the official page of the fan edit. It also tells you where you can download it from (I can't say here because I don't want to get the Barrow-Downs in trouble. While I'm sure most of us do have the EE, which makes it legal to download this version, if you don't it's not, so I'm not taking the risk on behalf of the Barrow-Downs).

So yeah, I'm giving it the thumbs up and I'd like to see what anyone else here thinks of it (If you get the time to watch it).

Interested, but time may not be kind. Better not wait for me. I'll catch up when & if I can....

Thanks for the links, this is a must see for me (and I do own the EE). I am a quite busy at the moment though, so it might have to wait until after December 13th.

Would anyone be interested in a Chapter-by-Chapter/Scene-by-Scene style thing with this, i.e. Book-by-Book?

There are 6 of lengths varying between 47 minutes and 1 hour 45 minutes.

Ok, I finally got round to watching them all. On the whole, they're a pretty good job. Pretty seamless editing, using the complete recordings, EE, etc.

• Books I and II (FOTR) are good. Not much is lost overall (I believe it still reaches over 3).
• Books III and IV suffer a bit, because most of the TT is pretty uncanonical. So there are some pacing issues, and they're not really satisfying to watch separately.
• V and VI are also short (even shorter, in fact), but even so, they seem to flow better.

General comments:

• Almost all the Gimli jokes are cut, so he becomes a pretty serious character, but some of the enemy-to-friend banter feeling between him and Legolas is lost because of this.
• Narrative is split more like book, so III-V only follow one group each, intro is moved, etc.
• There are some awkward cuts in an attempt to make it more book-like. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
• Most of moany (and therefore most of) Elrond is cut.
• No Saruman Uruk-Hai spawning from mud.
• Far less Saruman scenes, but at least his final scene appears.
• The EE flet-scene is gone, which I thought was kind of a pointless cut.
• Faramir doesn't really get tempted by ring- but is therefore cut a bit too much for us to feel anything. I think that keeping the Boromir/Faramir flashback scene may have been useful.
• Denethor gets very very cut, but is far more canonical.
• There are some sneaky/clever edits to avoid some scenes, but I'll leave those as a surprise.

All in all, very good. Though I'd recommend that if you have 7ish hours, you should watch it all in one go the first time.