Growth rings on the grand finale

Gandalf and Pippin meet the Witchking in Return of the King.

We come to it at last, the great DVD tie-in of our time. Well, the last bit of it, this being the third and final extended DVD from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The three hours-plus of the cinematic version is, with the inclusion of scenes which didn't make the cut, four hours. As Peter Jackson jokes in his director's commentary at the start of the second disc: "Are you still here? Shouldn't you watch the rest of this tomorrow night?"

Or you could, of course, make a day or a long night of it. If you played the extended versions back to back, it would make for an 11 hour-plus movie which, relatively speaking, would help make the much-maligned, never-ending ending of the cinematic version of Return of The King just fly by, wouldn't it? It would also glue it to the book experience and its perplexing chronologies even more.

Some thought the cinematic version of ROTK worked pretty well, me included.

Hey, it won 12 Oscars, including editing and adapted screenplay, which are both about the art of cutting stuff out and getting the story told. So by adding stuff back into this greatest film of our time, does that make it greatest-er?

Sorry, don't know, and a weekend was spent trying to find out. Having come this far and got this wrapped up in the world that Jackson and his army created just down the road, it's hard to work out whether the extended ROTK is any deeper or just much wider. And perhaps it doesn't matter.

One of the chief virtues of the cinematic cut was its pacing. It swung between tension and release and created a snowballing momentum to its narrative until that ending, when the snowball gently melted into a not unattractive puddle.

The extended version tends to plateau more. But it does include some remarkable new variations from the big screen edition. And good news for the weak of bladder: they haven't made the ending any longer.

Otherwise much of the new 50 minutes is largely a matter of a bit more strangulation, decapitation, trepidation and intoxication.

Of the last, a restored scene is a comedy drinking game between Gimli and Legolas in which John Rhys Davies yet again fufils his perpetual role as stumpy light relief, complete with a improvised line cribbed from Jaws - something Jackson didn't know until co-writer Philippa Boyens tells him on that commentary.

Some of the minor characters and their relationships get fleshed out - we see love bloom between Faramir (David Wenham) and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) in the Houses of Healing.

The most significant restoration is, of course, the return of Christopher Lee as traitorous wizard Saruman, whose demise was given cursory attention in the cinematic cut. Jackson copped a serve from the 82-year-old horror veteran and his fans for the snub.

Here though, Lee gets his big finale complete with lines ripe with doom, as well as fireballs, a backstabbing and a high-dive from Orthanc with an Olympian degree of difficulty. It certainly makes you think Lee had a point and it neatly hints at the evil to come.

There is heightened nastiness in other areas. The encounter between Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli with the Army of the Dead now comes complete with a crunchy path of skulls and an avalanche of them.

There's an encounter between the Fellowship and the dentally spectacular ambassador of evil, the Mouth of Sauron, outside the Black Gates. Among the extras, is an intriguing look at how Jackson, initially feeling the movie needed a traditional goodie v baddie pay-off, shot a battlefield showdown between Aragorn and Sauron. But when he and his writers had doubts over its leap from the original text, it was abandoned, and the physical embodiment of Sauron was digitally replaced by a troll. And the movie is the better for it.

If you wonder just how do you cut'n'paste an angry beastie into a scene like that, there are two discs of extras as well as commentaries from just about everybody whose name made the poster.

The one from Jackson, Boyens and Fran Walsh is the most elucidating and amusing and you are reminded that it wasn't always Jackson behind the camera.

Walsh directed many scenes requiring just two actors, while Jackson gives veteran Kiwi director Geoff Murphy his due for helming many of the action scenes.

Talking of other directors, the extras also include DFK6498 and Strikezone - the collected works of Cameron Duncan, the promising young Auckland film-maker who died last year from cancer and whose passing inspired Walsh's lyrics to the theme song Into The West.

And among the docos on The Passing of An Age disc is a look back at those exciting times between the world premiere in Wellington and that all-conquering Oscar night. Having stood on the sidelines on both, I'll be showing that one at the retirement home many years from now, and still getting a kick out of it. And yeah, the movie is still utterly brilliant, too.

* The Return of the King Extended DVD Edition $66.49; Collector's Edition $133: The Extended Editions Trilogy $161.49. Out now.