We spent the last two nights watching the extended editions of Lord of the Rings in preparation of finally seeing Return of the King tonight. I can't recall anymore what the new parts to The Fellowship of the Ring were, but in The Two Towers there were two things that struck me as additions. There was much more to Pippin and Merry's adventure in Fanghorne Forest that didn't make it into the theaters, and that was all fine, even though it was a welcome bit of lightness to the movie. It didn't even add that much to the characters, although, truth to be told, those two are probably the most fun pair in the movie (Legolas and Gimli, and their corpse counting, comes second).

The section that shouldn't have seen the cutting room floor for the theater release was the background to Farimar (ack, I'm likely misspelling his name horribly), which explains a lot more about why he took Frodo to Gondor, and also why he let Frodo and Sam go. He was just mysterious in the theater cut; in the extended edition, he lived as a real character.

Two nights of nearly 4 hours of video a night is tiring, but we felt it worthwhile to fully enjoy the movie tonight. More about that tomorrow.