Finally! I have completed the LOTR trilogy with crafting the FOTR Book-Cut!
The changes that exist are few… and these I will point out…
I re-cut the film as close as I wanted it… to the book… obviously I couldn’t have ALL
of the stuff from the book because I would need extra footage.
The film begins, not by a prologue but with Bilbo writing his book… it all happens in sequence
until when Gandalf trots to Minas Tirith and looks at the old scrolls… then we see an un-cut and un-
narrated LAST ALLIANCE battle. I took the liberty of putting in “17 Years Later” when the Ringwraith
asks directions from a weary hobbit (Farmer Maggot?).
It goes in order but there are <span class=“Bold”>no</span> Gandalf/Saruman sub-plot intercuts… so now we, the audience
don’t know what happened to him!
The film keeps going (and yeah I couldn’t take out the annoying Arwen thing… it wouldn’t work)
and we stop right at when the Ringwraiths meet their (temporary) doom at the ford of Bruinen.
Disc 2 is inserted, and we fade in with Gandalf sitting near Frodo’s bed. When Frodo asks him what happened
Gandalf recalls the FULL and UNCUT sub-plot of the Saruman “incident”.
I put in the Aragorn/Arwen conversation seen in TTT (where he’s about to leave with the Fellowship)
into this Book-Cut FOTR… I know it’s not in the book… but I was excited about that idea! Hehe…
I also re-graded a bunch of stuff! Because I thought it would be nice to look at things differently AND
I was unimpressed by many grading color choices that are in the real film… so I changed some… you will
see some changes later on…
I changed alot of the doubting Aragorn dont-want-to-be-king junk. I didn’t like that whole idea…
so I took out as much of it as I could (i.e. Aragorn tells Legolas to sit down at the council, etc… that stuff I took out…)
I also tried to make Saruman a little less “central” as a villian… like in the books. So, you won’t be hearing
Gandalf say “It’s Sarumaaaan!” at Caradrhas for example. Nor, will you see alot of Uruk-Hai suiting up and stuff that
takes place in Saruman’s shack.
Moria remains unchanged… heh… except that I severely shortened the broken stairway scene… and they
don’t see any corpses of Dwarves and Goblins until they reach Balin’s Tomb… and that makes the Watcher’s
attack more of a surprise… sort of.
Lothlorien I changed alot! In terms of grading at least… I pretty much hated the cold blueness of it and all that!
It’s supposed to be a nice place to rest and stuff… so I took the liberty of jacking up the colors and making it more warm.
Here you see the comparison (below: original - above: re-graded)… I like it… some of you may think it’s too red… maybe your’e right… ahh whatever…
here are some more re-grades… I think the warmer feel makes it more pleasant.
The gift-giving scenes I’m more happy with… see? Alot friendlier and elvish.
when they boat through the Anduin there is no “Isengard theme music video” with intercuts with the Fellowship
and the Uruk-Hai.
The extended night scene with Boromir, Aragorn, Frodo, and Gollum… I took out where Aragorn and Boromir have
a little quarrel… because Aragorn’s too much of a self-doubting nut in the movie… he should be more heroic (IMHO)…
For the Amon Hen stuff I slightly made the color more warm and added more color to it… what I hated in the whole LOTR
series was the desaturation of alot of things… what’s the use of desaturating it when in real life it would have been more
colorful? (I know it’s for mood expression, but it was just annoying)…
you may not see it… but there is a slight saturation difference (my version is above)
And we do not see Boromir die… he blows his horn once and the trio run for his aid and we CUT to Frodo with the ring.
and end the film that way… without intercutting with Aragorn and company… that, we will see in my re-furbished TTT cut… thank you!
well what do you think? 