Return of the King is in some ways the best film of the trilogy, and in other ways the worst films of the trilogy. Especially the extended edition. This edit is here to balance the extended edition out.

My goal was to make a miniseries edit that didn't simply feel like a chopped up version of the movies. Overall this worked surprisingly well without too much editing, though the Return of the King had to have some extra reordering of scenes to make it work.

The vast majority of each movie is retained, though I changed a handful of things that I thought weren't so well done in the movies (Bridge collapse leaning, Frodo and Sam "rock" cloak at the Black Gate, etc). I cut a few other scenes that were from the extended editions that I felt did not add to the movies at all (extra Gimli humor, Merry and Pippin drinking water to get taller, etc). And lastly, I rearranged some scenes to help the pacing of each episode. With the new format this was needed, mainly in the Return of the King. I added chapter titles to every episode and they appear within the first 10 minutes matching how the original movies did it, I kept the short 45 second intro credits and "Lord of the Rings" Title sequence for each episode, and then added a shortened 60 second credit sequence for each episode.