Re: The Official "The Hobbit" movie thread
How can anyone prefer the theatrical over the EE??? That's like saying saying, people prefer PT over OT. Blasphemy!
Peter Jackson prefers the carefully worked out faster pacing of the theatrical cuts and thinks that adding scenes and lengthening the cut can hurt the momentum and impact of the films, but he did it for the fans. He calls the longer cuts "too long" and "less strong" and "a novelty" while the theatrical cuts are "the best possible cut" and "definitive" for him. I personally enjoy the added material, but I definitely respect his opinion:
"We had a 4 hour 15 minute cut of Return of the King with everything in there that we shot but it was too long.
It felt like the emotional impact of the film was being diluted, it was just too long. So we started trimming the film back. The length to me was totally related to the emotional impact of the last 20-30 minutes and I wanted that to be as strong as it could.
The longer the film was, the least strong it got because you felt like you'd been there for too long and
it lost its impact.
The extended versions are interesting because I do the extended versions for the fans, really.
To me every time I put a scene in it, it's mucking up the momentum. The theatrical versions are very carefully worked out. We spent a whole year trying to get the best possible cut.
So I do these extended cuts thinking that people will like to see these scenes. But I'm aware every time I put something in [that]
the momentum of the scene going to be slow. This is going to slow the first act down.
Every time I think I'm spoiling the film, but I'm doing it because people want to see it.
The theatrical versions are the definitive versions. I regard the extended cuts as being
a novelty for the fans that really want to see the extra material."
