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One needs to take minor discrepancies with a grain of salt. When it comes to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, one of the things many people complain about is the length of each film. Why would they want to see an additional 40+ minutes of footage if they felt the original cuts were to long. Well, that's the marvel of the extended edition dvds: each movie is split in half. It's like having six regular length movies. You can pop in the first half of Fellowship and watch the second half later that week, if at all. I admit that some of the added scenes are kind of dull, but most of them are fresh and humerous. The added scenes range from a couple seconds to several minutes in length, and are distributed through out each film. If you're a fan of the movies, once you see the extended additions there's no going back. The theatrical release editions feel incomplete when viewed after these. That is not to say that there are not several key elements from the book that are not present in the extended editions, and it is not to say that some of the changes are unwarranted (while some of them are). It may not follow the text to the word, but it successfully captures the essence of the story, backstory, setting, characters, and beautiful imagery. The amount of effort put into these movies is undeniable whether or not the adaptation is deemed a good one. One needs to remember that,like Tolkien, Jackson is a storyteller, and it's the nature of stories to be told in different ways by different people. On a side note, the extras give an indepth look at just how much work went into the movies. In the numerous commentaries we learn why Peter Jackson made the decisions he made, and we can either accept them or not. For instance, I can't forgive Jackson for casting Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, but I still love the movies. The original cuts were great, these extended editions are better. And here they are, in one package with tons of extra features. It's worth looking into, unless you already own the individually packaged extended editions.