Having full knowledge that the extended version of The Two Towers will be out soon and that I won’t be able to resist it, I went ahead and bought the 2-DVD normal version yesterday. After Fellowship of the Ring, I realised that having the extended version alone can waste more of your time than necessary so it’s best to have both, specially if you’ll be watching it with other people.
Last night was only the second time I watched TTT and it somehow felt better than the first when I was dis@ppointed by quite a few things. Still, they slowed the movie down too much at places and some scenes were totally unnecessary (anything involving Arwen).
Return of the King should be awesome, though I’m afraid I won’t be able to see it until it’s too late. The only theater that might have shown it a bit earlier (Melody cinema) was burnt down and I don’t see any signs of it rebuilding.
Speaking of RoTK, Director Peter Jackson cut out all of Christopher Lee’s scenes from it, though they’ll be in the extended version. More details here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3265475.stm
Kind of makes sense since the 3rd volume is mostly about the battle with Sauron and Saruman’s character becomes irrelevant if they take out the “scouring of the Shire” chapter. I’m still disappointed that they removed these parts from the end of The Two Towers due to time constr@ints. That Warg battle and the confusing and out of place Arwen scenes were more important, weren’t they?