The EE better represent the source material. This is why they're the definitive versions of the films for fans of the source material. It's also why I'd say 9/10 people would say those are the proper versions of the movie is because they're just a bit better than the TE. Jackson's reasons and yours are totally different.
See Josh, you don't speak for all fans of the source material, no more than I speak for all fans of SW, Captain America, or LOTR either. You can only speak for the opinions of yourself. These are not books or movies that all people like for the same reasons. Don't kid yourself into thinking that they are and that you are their spokesman.
I love LOTR/The Hobbit, and I love the books, and I even love all the vintage animated tellings, including the maligned Bakshi 1978 film which was my first exposure to Tolkien back in the day. I can just as easily turn it around and say why any one version is the "definitive version" for all people who think "x" or whatever. But that would be silly.
I get that you like the EE's because you just want as many scenes from the book to play out on screen and that you want to spend as much time as possible viewing Middle-Earth regardless of how well it flows or makes sense in the context of other movie scenes. Middle-Earth is your "baby" and like a soldier in some foreign land who gets sent home video footage of his newborn son you don't care about the quality of the footage, you want to see your son, for hours and hours and hours even if he's filling his diaper and spitting up his food.
But Middle-Earth isn't so sacred that I'll take any and everything. I still love the art of packaging the stories into tight, efficiently told cinematic tales. And you CAN have tight, efficient tales that hit the three hour mark, just like the theatrical FOTR. I just think that once you pass three hours, it becomes damn hard to keep that quality going. Hell, most films can't maintain it for two hours or even 90 minutes.
And I do agree with PJ with regard to FOTR and TTT. If you're watching these films in one sitting and want the best possible experience then theatrical is the way to go. If you're dividing the movies up over three nights and clinking your tea glasses with your friends in the "Finer Things" club and are just watching some scenes here and there then yeah, the context and dramatic flow is less important and you get more mileage out of the EE's for the first two films. That's what PJ said and I 100% agree with it. But I don't do that. When I sit down to watch a movie I
watch a movie. I don't sit with the book open in my lap turning the pages with the film, nodding in approval when some scene plays out on screen and scowling when something is skipped over. Forget that, and if it means some characters change from the book to the page or you lose some cool line of dialogue from the book so be it.
For whatever it's worth I agree that the EE's are superior for three out of the five films. As much as I hate the ROTK EE spoiling the fact that the ghosts help attack the pirates you just can't have ROTK without seeing Saruman meet a satisfying end or the Mouth of Sauron making his gnarly speech. And the AUJ and DOS EE's add nothing but good IMO. So it's really just the first two films that we disagree on, and NOT because you "understand" or get things better than I do, you simply have different criteria that
you personally are looking for when you sit down to watch them.
