News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Saturday, July 9, 2011

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)

8:54 PM / BD Impressions / 19 Comments

The film: I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS when I was in primary school. If you asked me a decade ago, I would probably have described it as my favourite book, and although I've become more aware of its flaws as the years have passed, I still maintain considerable affection for it. I saw the Ralph Bakshi 1978 animation/live action hybrid film while I was still making my way through the book, and even at the time was aware that it was a deeply flawed (if unique) take on the material. Conversely, the 1981 BBC radioplay, which I encountered some years later, always struck me as a superb piece of adaptation, neatly condensing all three instalments into 13 hour-long episodes. To this day I still consider the radio version to be the definitive adaptation of Tolkien's work, to the extent that when I read Gandalf's dialogue, I always hear Michael Hordern in my head, and ditto Ian Holm for Frodo.

I mention all this because, when THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (FOTR), the first instalment of Peter Jackson's trilogy of films, was released back in 2001, I had a fairly lukewarm reaction to it. I liked certain elements and was impressed that Jackson had managed to turn what many had considered an unfilmable book into something so coherent, but I still found it to be heavily flawed and believe I even suggested at the time that the Bakshi version was the better of the two. (It's certainly the more idiosyncratic, but that's an article for another time.) Rewatching FOTR in its extended form for the first time since that cut was first released in 2002, I like it more than I did before and suspect that I'll end up considering it the most coherent and best paced of the trilogy once I've made my way through all three films, but there remain for me certain decisions on Jackson's part that I just can't get my head round, and I think it does suffer in comparison to the radio version, which proved that you can condense and streamline the material without altering it beyond recognition.

To Jackson's credit, his alterations are not of the "beyond recognition" variety, and although once you look past quirks like his bizarre decision to depict Aragorn as a Native American and Boromir as a Viking, Bakshi's version is actually closer to the original writing in a textual sense, the 2001 film ends up "feeling" more like Tolkien. This is in part due to the decision to hire John Howe and Alan Lee, Tolkien illustrators par excellence, as conceptual designers: having illustrated countless book covers, calendars and the like over the years, their art has become synonymous with Middle-earth (though personally I was always rather partial to Ted Nasmith's paintings). Jackson's attention for detail and accuracy is at times awe-inspiring. Not content to merely get the pronunciation of the likes of "Minas Tirith", "Balin" and "Sauron" right (something Bakshi failed to do), he inserts any number of minor details that dedicated fans will appreciate but will pass most casual viewers by: for instance, Legolas walking ABOVE the snow while everyone else wades through it during the Caradhras sequence is right out of the book, and on numerous occasions characters drop into authentic (subtitled) Elvish.

Where Jackson departs noticeably from the source material, the results are a mixed bag. I like the hobbits' exploits in the Old Forest and their meeting with Tom Bombadil in the books, but I don't mourn their absence here (there's a reason all three adaptations jetison that particular diversion), and I'd even go as far as to say that the alterations made to the Aragorn character, crucially giving him an actual arc, improves on the original. Until Weathertop, Jackson does an impressive job of condensing what is often meandering and leisurely on the page, turning it into something pacy and exciting, while maintaining the guts of the source material (it's worth noting, however, that he lifts two scenes directly from Bakshi - the hobbits hiding under the roots of a tree from a Black Rider, and the Riders' attack on the inn at Bree - something that few reviewers seem to have acknowledged). Considerably less successful is the decision to shoehorn Arwen into the role held by Glorfindel in the book, which reeks of a cynical attempt to fulfil the "girl power" quota (Éowyn doesn't show up until Film 2) and is completely out of kilter with the portrayal of the character in the rest of the series (Bakshi's decision to use Legolas is a much more effective substitution). Having her confront the Riders at the Ford of Bruinen also robs Frodo of one of his few genuinely heroic moments, and although I'm not much of a fan of Elijah Wood's wet, weepy interpretation of the character in general, I do think letting him make his stand at the Ford - one of the most iconic moments in the book - would have gone some way towards mitigating this. Likewise I strongly dislike Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Galadriel as if she's just ingested a considerable amount of some mind-altering substance or other... and I like Blanchett in pretty much everything I've seen her in.

In terms of the differences between the theatrical and extended cuts, I do feel that, with each subsequent instalment, the added material becomes more essential. While I think THE RETURN OF THE KING is severely crippled without Saruman's demise and the confrontation at the Black Gate with the Mouth of Sauron, the additions to FOTR don't really change anything significantly. As with all three films, some of the added scenes work better than others (Frodo's "Gandalf, which way is Mordor?" always makes me cringe, as does the fart joke involving the lembas bread), but on balance I have a slight preference for the extended cut. 8/10

Image quality: I'm pretty late to the table with this review, and it feels as if just about everyone has already had their say about this most controversial of discs. Still, the dust doesn't look like settling any time soon. As regards the rights and wrongs of this release, I'm inclined to take something of a middle of the road approach. Yes, there IS unquestionably a uniform green tint across the entire movie. No, it DOESN'T ruin the film beyond recognition, and it certainly doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as travesties like the original BD releases of GANGS OF NEW YORK and GLADIATOR, or the recent DON'T LOOK NOW disaster.

My own suspicion is that there are in fact two separate issues to consider: (1) the new colour timing created under the guidance of Peter Jackson and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, and (2) the aforementioned green tint. Only around 70% of FOTR received the digital intermediate (DI) treatment, with the remaining 30% being colour timed photochemically. For this extended edition BD release, Warner have gone back to the digital files and created the film's first complete DI, and as a result there are some pretty significant changes to the film's look. I'd hazard a guess that most of the captures you've seen highlighting "problems" with the new release are primarily instances in which Jackson and Lesnie have deliberately altered the colour balance - the now-sickly, undersaturated scenes after the hobbits and Aragorn leave Bree, for instance (see Example 16), or the now heavily blue-tinted Caradhras sequence (Example 26). As a result, this is not the same FOTR we saw in cinemas or on DVD, but if you value directorial intent, it's still a valid representation of the film.

On top of that, though, is the green tint. Not to beat about the bush, but I'm convinced something went wrong here and have a hard time viewing any of the various excuses I've heard as in any way credible. It simply doesn't make sense to me that Jackson (or indeed any director) would choose to apply a green push to an entire film from beginning to end - not given the attention to detail he has shown in every other respect with regard to the trilogy. (And it's worth emphasising that EVERYTHING is affected: even the title card and burned-in subtitles are now green rather than white.) So, either Jackson made a sloppy, unprofessional and decidedly uncharacteristic decision... or someone screwed up at some other point in the chain. I know which of the two explanations I find more plausible.

So, how detrimental is the tint on the presentation? It varies from scene to scene, from unnoticeable to pretty damn annoying. The worst affected material is the early Shire scenes, where the green tint, on top of a palette that already leaned heavily towards green, is close to overpowering (see Example 4), and scenes lit with fire- or torchlight, where the warm yellow and red hues now look decidedly sickly (see Example 8). The opening prologue and Moria sequences also look far darker than they did before, to the extent that visibility is at times an issue, but I'm hard pressed to say whether this is the result of the tinting or the deliberate alterations Jackson and Lesnie have made to the colour timing.

Otherwise, this is a very good presentation, although the clarity improvements (compared with both the mediocre DVDs and less than impressive theatrical BD release) do show up certain inconsistencies in the source material. Some shots look razor sharp, as detailed as anything I've seen on a BD (see Example 35), whereas others look considerably less impressive (see Example 7). Sometimes clarity varies wildly between different shots in the same scene - there's a conversation between Frodo and Aragorn in Bree where the shots of Frodo are wonderfully crisp (see Example 14) while those of Aragorn look almost like a multi-generational dupe (see Example 15). We also get to see some ropey compositing (see Example 6) and a small number of instances where overbearing DNR appears to be baked into the master (see Example 30). None of these are black marks against the disc per se, but it does mean that the presentation is somewhat inconsistent in a way not previously seen (because earlier releases had a "ceiling" that essentially homogenised the whole film to the same level of mediocrity). Certainly, the ugly smearing artefacts that plagued the theatrical cut BD are gone.

In the final assessment, the positives outweigh the negatives. In terms of overal detail and filmlike appearance, this is unquestionably the best release of FOTR to date. The colour tinting, while noticeable and objectionable, is not as bad as you've probably been led to believe - it certainly doesn't make me want to go back to my old DVD. Were it not for the tint, I suspect this would have ended up being the best-looking of the entire trilogy... but I'll discuss this in more detail in my reviews of the subsequent two films. Recommended, but with significant issues.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

19 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at m.r.mackenzie[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.