Blu-ray Movie Reviews

"The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring": With the help of a courageous fellowship of friends and allies, Frodo embarks on a perilous mission to destroy the legendary One Ring. Hunting Frodo are servants of the Dark Lord, Sauron, the Ring's evil creator. If Sauron reclaims the Ring, Middle-earth is doomed. "The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers": The Fellowship has broken, but the quest to destroy the One Ring continues. Frodo and Sam must entrust their lives to Gollum if they are to find their way to Mordor. As Saruman's army approaches, the surviving members of the Fellowship, along with people and creatures from Middle-earth, prepare for battle. The War of the Ring has begun. "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of the King": The final battle for Middle-earth begins. Frodo and Sam, led by Gollum, continue their dangerous mission toward the fires of Mount Doom in order to destroy the One Ring. Aragorn struggles to fulfill his legacy as he leads his outnumbered followers against the growing power of the Dark Lord Sauron, so that the Ring-bearer may complete his quest.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade it is probably safe to say you’ve already either seen these films, or know pretty much anything you need to know about them already. Easily one of the greatest trilogies ever put on screen; Peter Jackson’s theatrical cuts are presented (finally) on Blu-ray for the first time. Unfortunately New Line didn’t see it fit to include the even better extended editions, but have said they will find their way to Blu-ray later down the line, most likely in conjunction with The Hobbit films that are in production now.

Let’s face it, this is probably one of the biggest titles to hit the Blu-ray format yet. And in my opinion, every expense should have been spared to ensure that these presentations were the best this format had to offer. After watching the trilogy, sadly I cannot say that. The video presentations are a bit inconsistent. The first film isn’t on par with the second and third film in terms of detail and dimension. Instead it has a rather flat and processed look. Now these films never looked spectacular in theaters either, with overblown contrast and a murky color palette, but I was surprised at how much detail seemed to suffer with the first film. It still has an acceptable film-like look, but I hoped for better. The follow ups fair quite a bit better with obvious improvements in resolution and dimensionality. Some of the VFX shots still waver in overall quality, but fine object detail is considerably better. On the audio side I don’t think you could ask for more. While the packaging states that these films feature a 6.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, they are in fact only 5.1 discrete mixes. I am sure adding ES or PLIIx processing will reap a solid rear surround soundstage though as the previous DVD mixes were matrix encoded. These have always been some of the best sounding movies ever made and their sound design continues to impress. Dynamic range is flooring and the deep bass response is some of the most aggressive I’ve ever heard in my theater room. Shore’s score is just as moving today as it was the first time I heard it and the mix of all the elements is seamless within the soundstage. It just doesn’t get much better than this!

Each film gets a companion disc full of extras. Most are rather short, but there are a lot of them. You get inside looks at all the production and what looks like an exhausting amount of filmmaking. From the sound design, set design, character makeup to onset footage, there is a lot to see here. You also get digital copies of all three films for your portable device. I’m sure the next set will have even more goodies, as I remember the DVD extended editions being a bit more complete in terms of breadth of supplements.

We’ve waited a long time for these films to hit Blu. While the video wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, it was still fun revisiting this remarkable trilogy. Keep in mind that it may be a few years before we see the extended versions hit Blu, so this may be your only Rings fix for awhile.