The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by LordPhillock

Zigûr, wow thanks so much for that! I'm just proud someone of your strong opinion (your blog is so fun to read!) actually is willing to take the time to listen to us talk on our podcast.

Thanks Phil. I'll be lining up your podcast to listen to ASAP. I meant to listen last night in fact but got a bit distracted.

On another note just now I made the mistake of visiting a large, popular "Tolkien forum" that shall go unnamed and one thing struck me in particular: the recurring sentiment of "wait for the Extended Edition."

At the end of the day, isn't the Extended Edition just the Theatrical Edition with a bit more padding shoved in? At least, that's what the EEs of "The Lord of the Rings" felt like to me - points of interest that hadn't made it to the cinema, but ultimately nothing terribly significant. Everything I know about the Extended Edition of the first two "Hobbit" films has seemed to be the same (Dwarves inexplicably washing in the fountain at Rivendell and other pointless vulgarisms).

I think if the "The Battle of THE Five Armies" Extended Edition ends up having tonnes of additional concluding content like Thorin's funeral, the restoration of Dale, the coronation of Dáin, etc, etc, it doesn't make the Extended Edition a more "valid" version of the film, it'll just make the Theatrical Cut seem even more wishy washy and incomplete, and the entire project (in my view) come across as more badly compromised.

I realise something like Blade Runner is an example generally speaking of a situation in which the "Director's Cut" is considered to improve upon the original, but it seems to me that that derived from drastically overhauling the manner in which the narrative was presented, rather than just jamming in a bunch of extra footage which the faceless men at Warner Bros. didn't think was necessary to make back their dough in the winter holiday market last year.