The result of all of Park Road’s hard work is a 4K image that’s not just massively better than the previous Blu-ray, but better than the very best theatrical experiences during the film’s original release. dba Freestar (“Freestar”) for the purposes of placing certain advertising on the site, and Freestar will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes.

Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Extended The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Extended

The epic fantasy series details the journey of young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to . And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 4K remaster that made quite this much of a difference over a previous Blu-ray release before. Saruman has built an army of murderous orcs for the dark lord Sauron to attack Rohan and Gondor, and thus destroy the world of men.These shots are scattered here and there throughout the film, but they’re most noticeable early on—nearly all of the “scale gag” shots of Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo in Bag End are of slightly lesser quality. Those experiential advancements, to which mainstream viewers are becoming more attuned, are prompting other filmmakers to ensure that their classics live up to the standards of the “living room cinema” revolution.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended Edition) Blu-ray The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended Edition) Blu-ray

That package too will include Digital Copies, but it will NOT include The Appendices or any of the other previous extras (with the likely exception of the audio commentaries on the regular Blu-rays). All of the film’s upsampled VFX material—though not originally produced in 4K resolution—looks lovely too.An HD upgrade to the documentaries would have gone a long way towards alleviating the disappointment at the redundancy in the supplemental materials. Here Frodo and Sam finally get to Mount Doom, while Aragorn and company go to Denethor (John Noble) in Gondor, where they are not welcomed with enthusiasm.

LOTR Remastered Blu-ray | Home Theater Forum LOTR Remastered Blu-ray | Home Theater Forum

All footage scanned directly from the original camera negative—live action shots without visual effects—looks spectacular, with very light grain, a significant improvement in detail, and lovely fine texturing. While Elijah Wood might have seemed an unlikely choice to play Frodo Baggins at first, he proves in this film that he’s more than up to the task, infusing the Hobbit with the perfect measure of pathos and humanity. The Extended Editions preserve that work, and are made with the understanding that fans want to see it. The scene explains why Faramir would want to give the Ring to his father to prove himself, a plot-point created by Jackson to increase the drama to which fans of the book lamented, feeling it was done at the expense of Faramir's character.

But lest fans get too upset, he’s managed to replace much of that literary texture with its equivalent in production design texture and visual splendor (thanks to cinematographer Andew Lesnie).

The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy Blu-ray

Optional subtitles are available in English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, French, Dutch, and Spanish only—again strange because the Fellowship: Theatrical Cut disc includes a lot more (see above).There’s also virtually no grain visible in them—that might be because a little DNR (digital noise reduction) was used at the time, or it might be because the completed footage is a couple of generations down from that original camera negative, or it might be a little of both.