The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition

There are many great film franchises that one can watch in a marathon setting but for me after re-watching The Lord of The Rings Extended Edition trilogy on Blu-Ray I can with certainty say that this is my favorite film franchise to watch. I will go further and say that this extended edition Blu-Ray box set is the bet Blu-Ray set of films that you can possibly own. The extended edition far from being mindless filler actually adds some great depth to the story. Most notably the character of Boromir played be Sean Bean is explored in far greater depth as is his father Lord Denethor. Boromir becomes a tragic figure rather then a man who simply lost his mind. In many ways Lord Theodon becomes the main character of The Two Towers and is extended scenes also add some great new emotional depth to the story. These films have looked outstandingly great in every format that they have been released on  but on Blu-Ray they shine even better then they have in the past. The Ents simply look astonishing in this version. I am already a massive fan of this franchise and this is a rare case when the books and the movies in my opinion are both fantastic. Although there are still significant changes between the book and the film. One big difference being how Saruman dies and what happens when the hobbits return to the Shire. Despite that Peter Jackson kept true enough to the source material and yet was smart enough to change certain things to make the movies more cinematically friendly and it worked great. Arguably nothing can touch the novels but when you watch these sets of films together as a opposed to separate films the epic scope is almost unreal and very few films or films erie shave ever told such a complete story on film. They are just fantastic and I must admit that as films they are better then the original Star Wars trilogy! There I said it and will probably now lose my membership to several Star Wars fan clubs in the process and of course without Star Wars this film would not have happened but they are more emotionally compelling, have much better acting (Viggo Mortensen is just outstanding and he was not even originally cast as Aragorn), and arguably tell a more complete story form start to finish though Star Wars did a better job at creating a new type of mythology! I wound up watching the films over two days and I watched Fellowship of the Ring and the first half of The Two Towers and then I watched the second half of the Two Towers and The Return of the King the next day. If you ever find yourself bored and have a few days or nights to spare I highly recommend watching the films this ways and if you have never seen them then this would be a great way to enjoy them but look at it as trying to watch a mini-series rather then a collection of films because the total length of time from start to finish is almost 12 hours. Another way to mentally prepare to watch this is to think of it as an entire season of a televisions ho and break it up into hour segments. You could also watch one disc at a time over six days as each film is on two discs.  I cannot recommend this box set enough. Simply wonderful!