We had a great night tonight. Everyone but Steve made it over. Zach made up some great enchiladas, and then we all piled into the living room to watch the expanded version of Lord of the Rings, which is great. This should be the only version anyone ever needs to buy. The extra scenes in almost every instance add a lot to the plot, and the opening of the movie in Hobbiton is really different, and much better. Really, the only scene that wasn’t improved by the extra footage was Galadrial’s resisting the ring moment, where Peter Jackson lost his mind and decided the best way to show Galadrial freaking out was to invert her. Horrible effect, but I guess I couldn’t really expect them to change it, and if that’s my only complaint about the whole movie, then it’s worked out pretty well.

Heh… perhaps they looked into changing the effect on Galadrial, but it would have been prohibitive. ;)

PS – If you own the special edition, and you want a sneak peek at the Ents in the Two Towers, you can watch the Two Towers preview trailer they showed after the credits in the last few weeks it was in theaters. Here’s how to access it: Go to the “select a scene” screen, and select scene 48. Once that menu comes up, click over to the 48 menu option again, and press the down arrow, which should give you a silhouette of two towers. Select this, and you’ll get the trailer.