The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Extended Edition) (2001-2003)

[levcore]

Having a 2K DI is irrelevant though. Some of my best looking 4K discs come from a 2K DI.

[Geoff D]

Yeah, you and I know that but that's just TheHutt's thing, best to let him get on with it.

[imsounoriginal]

I'll trust Jackson with supervising HDR passes, just please treat Fellowship right.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by NotASpeckOfCereal

Why is it impossible?

It's work and added expense, to be sure, but if they have all of the original elements, they can re-render them.

I'm not in the industry, but it's my impression that it is only impossible for some old projects where they didn't archive all of the original elements that the effect intermediates were made from.

There are stories about those kinds of projects that are impossible to remaster because of missing source, but I've never heard them when referring to LotR — please let us know if you've heard otherwise.

Chris

The effects - as with everything else in the films - will be upscaled to 4K from the 2K source DIs when the time comes. The process for these films should be no different from hundreds of others that have been upscaled from 2K originals, though Two Towers concerns me a little because the DI's baked-in noise reduction artefacts in some scenes (frozen grain, smeary trails around movement, VERY noticeable to me in the Dead Marshes) won't play nice with the HDR at all. Andrew Lesnie said that they were having real trouble with heavy grain in the DI (bearing in mind this was still very early days for the DI as a complete post-production ecosystem) until Jackson "solved" it so there may even be other instances of noise reduction unnoticeable in SDR but gets shown up badly in HDR.

[Batman90]

Originally Posted by jayman3

All I know is it'll just be my luck when I buy the blu ray set a 4K collection will be announced.

Me to but I’m not buying them if they don’t release the extended cuts on 4K. I’m
Done with the double dipping.

[dcowboy7]

Originally Posted by WestMan

Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and a few others are on the top of my list for 4K releases.

What about 8k ?

[brian9229]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

Both LOTR and The Hobbit have 2K DIs. And the one person who could reliably supervise a HDR treatment has died.

I would trust PJ to carry it out. More than anyone else at this point.

[TheHutt]

Originally Posted by brian9229

I would trust PJ to carry it out. More than anyone else at this point.

It took him several years to remaster his first trilogy (Bad Taste / Meet the Feebles / Braindead). And it still isn't out.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

It took him several years to remaster his first trilogy (Bad Taste / Meet the Feebles / Braindead). And it still isn't out.

LOTR's a little more popular than those titles, and WB rarely lets an anniversary go by without trying to cash in. I'd say we get at least the theatrical cuts next year for RotK's 15th anniversary.

[Geoff D]

He's kinda been busy with other stuff, like They Shall Not Grow Old.

Re: LOTR we're a good three years away from any kind of cash-in release IMO (2021 being FOTR's 20th anniversary and the amazon series will probably take that long to reach the screen, if not longer) so that gives Warners and Jackson plenty of time to hash out how they're gonna do the 4K's. It wouldn't surprise me if the Hobbitses were released first because upscaling those to 4K will be a piece of cake, while LOTR and its creaky DIs might prove more of a problem.

[stvn1974]

If Peter Jackson was any slower at getting things done he would be James Cameron.

[TheHutt]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Re: LOTR we're a good three years away from any kind of cash-in release IMO (2021 being FOTR's 20th anniversary and the amazon series will probably take that long to reach the screen, if not longer) so that gives Warners and Jackson plenty of time to hash out how they're gonna do the 4K's.

By 2021 UHD might be an obsolete format already.

He's kinda been busy with other stuff, like They Shall Not Grow Old.

Not to forget Mortal Engines.

[imsounoriginal]

He also keeps promising to hop back on the Tintin train but who knows if that'll ever happen.

[motorheadache95]

Hopefully Peter Jackson finally gets to release that ultimate edition with all the added footage he's wanted to show off (not necessarily cut into the film, but full restored deleted scenes or something). Also if he was wanting to do any Final Cut-style tweaks to the Extended Editions, that would be the time (ideally he'd restore and leave the theatrical cuts as is).

And hopefully they can actually do a 4K scan of the negatives and reapply the post-production stuff. Apparently Lucasfilm did this for Star Wars (according to the screening Gareth Edwards watched), so I don't see why they can't do that for these. Honestly, I love me some Lord of the Rings, but if all they do is upscale the creaky old 2K DI's and give them an HDR pass, don't include anything new, and drop it out for like 80-90 bucks I'd pass.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

By 2021 UHD might be an obsolete format already.

I doubt it bruv.

[Early Memphis]

Originally Posted by NotASpeckOfCereal

There's nothing revisionist about this. You keep using words and phrases that don't apply.

A new Tolkien reader could pick up and read The Hobbit today and remark that there is little character development.

That doesn't mean that everyone that says this hates the book. It's just a valid observation.

Anyway, back to the films: Jackson fixed the above problems with a trilogy of films that fleshed the story out more (though some would call it filler), and this is actually a LotR thread / forum area. Regardless, they ALL need to be remastered and released on UHD.

However, while I would get The LotR extended trilogy on UHD in a heart-beat, I probably wouldn't spring for The Hobbit trilogy on UHD until it was on sale at a deep discount (Black Friday kind of prices).

Chris

I don’t know how old you are, but usually, for example, when people are chosen for serious positions, older people are chosen because their character’s are hopefully developed - they’ve gone through the constant changes of youth and are expected to be more stable - WYSIWYG, lies & secrets notwithstanding. If you didn’t get the incredible changes Bilbo (really, the main and solo focus of the work, the hobbit of The Hobbit) exhibited over what, 12-14 months of the journey, your reading comprehension needs upgrading - also the case with Thorin (the main Dwarf - although all the dwarves changed their view of Bilbo as he changed). Again, Gandalf was ageless and wasn’t about to change over such a brief period of time. Did you want to see Smaug develop, perhaps he could’ve taken up chess like Ringo did during the recording of Sgt. Pepper?

Oh, and forgive me if English is not your native language, but … “promoting a revised attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view.” is one of the definitions of revisionist/revisionism. When a book is widely seen and reviewed as a children’s book, and later seen and reviewed as something more “serious” in light of a later publication, that change is revisionist. Hey, if you want to compare degrees or schools we attended, okay, but this exchange is rather pointless. I like The Hobbit, I appreciate it for what it is and don’t need to quibble about absurdities such as “character development” in a short children’s book. If you do, pardner, carry on without any further obtuseness from me.

[NotASpeckOfCereal]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

Both LOTR and The Hobbit have 2K DIs. And the one person who could reliably supervise a HDR treatment has died.

Oooo, hyperbole much?
.

[NotASpeckOfCereal]

Originally Posted by dcowboy7

What about 8k ?

Now, now — lets not be hasty.

Chris

[Vandal Savage]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

Hopefully Peter Jackson finally gets to release that ultimate edition with all the added footage he's wanted to show off (not necessarily cut into the film, but full restored deleted scenes or something).

I’ve given up hope that those scenes will ever see the light of day.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Hmmm. While I won't argue with your main points overall, that sense of "more is more" did actually work in LOTR's favour at certain junctures, e.g. in my copy of the book the battle of Helm's Deep rated a mere seventeen pages (I counted them ) out of a thousand or so, while it became a major third-act set-piece in Jackson's Two Towers. People didn't b*tch about that being action for action's sake because when you're digging the story that's being told then it's easier to look more kindly upon such transgressions.

I dunno if anyone's read Ian Nathan's excellent book on PJ and the making of Middle-earth but for me it shed a lot of light on what they were trying to achieve with the films and the thinking of why they went about it the way that they did. For all the grief that the trimvirate got for creating Tauriel in the Hobbit films to increase female representation in the story they basically did the same thing with Arwen, turning her into an action woman and giving her story beats from other characters to make it a bit less of a sausage fest.

But I never really heard the reasons why they removed Arwen from Helm's Deep, literally having to digitally erase her from several key moments, and they make it quite plain in the book, that as terrific Liv Tyler was she just didn't convince with the heavier action stuff, despite all the training and whatnot. Who knows, if they'd got to have Arwen kick ass at Helm's Deep (and maybe even extend that to other battles in the series, rather than ultimately turning her into a wet blanket) would they have felt the need to exorcise that demon so readily by creating another warrior woman elf for The Hobbit? It's interesting how these things pan out.

It was my understanding that TheOneRing.net got leaked photos of Arwen fighting at Helm's Deep, and the fan community exploded, and as Jackson had his finger on the pulse of that community, reconsidered the creative choice.