Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Precious Edition, The

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is already one of the top five fantasy films of all time...no matter what version of the film you watch, you're getting something special. This edit is heavily based on the popular Extended Edition, with a few minor cuts to the beginning, and a masterful melding of the Theatrical and Extended Editions for the Shire opening which utterly delighted me! I couldn't tell whether there were any additional cuts beyond the first 30 minutes or so...but this is the one film in the excellent Trilogy that any edits are virtually always arbitrary in nature. Of course I have a 'definitive cut' of the film in my head, but you can't go wrong here, whether it's your 1st or 20th time viewing.

First of the Cover Art for this fanedit is amazing as there is just so much fine intricacy with the amount of colour and detail that has clearly been crafted with much honour and appreciation for not only Peter Jackson's adaption of The Fellowship Of The Ring but of course the original novel created by the great J.R.R Tolkien and the positioning and sizes of the text based annotations are aligned perfectly, if this were a real poster and I had more room space than I would love to hang it on my wall or even within a picture frame that has the privilege of sitting upon my great room wall.

As to the edit itself well I do think some small stuff could have been cut to enhance the tension such as the removal of a few comedic bits and certain statements during otherwise intense fight scenes or the buildup to such intense fight scenes and certain things could have been rearranged such as Gandalf's scenes at Isengard and Frodo's Mithril Shirt reveal to add that surprise WHAM factor to the narrative I do understand DonkeyKonga's reasonings for keeping these scenes the way they are among other scenes he chose to leave untouched, though on the subject of Frodo and Gandalf I love how he crafted the audio to merge there Theatrical Edition conversation and there Extended Edition conversation during The Shire scene together as it really highlights and elevates Frodo and Gandalf's on screen friendship and flows seamlessly as if it were truly one conversation.

The colorgrade helps to improve the colors. The few cuts were all done in the 1st Act and they mange to fix a few issues, as well as improving the pacing a little bit on this section.

Like others have said, I was left wanting a bit more, that is the only issue here. The audio / video editing quality of the author is remarkable. I was left wondering what other sections in the rest of the film could have been improved.

The DonkeyKonga edits for The Two Towers and Return of the King are remarkable, please check those as well.

This edit changes so little things, I was left wanting more. I’m sorry I don’t have much more to say.
-AV quality: Good
-Audio cuts: Good
-Video cuts: Good
-Narrative: Mostly unchanged. Even though I appreciate the effort, I don’t think those fixes were needed. Like I said, this edit left me wanting more. I don’t believe it should get a perfect score.
-Enjoyment: I have to say I prefer the theatrical cuts of the LOTR movies over the extended editions. Fellowship is a very good movie but not my favorite of them. This edit does not improve it significantly enough to make me excited about it.
-Recommendation: I would not recommend it unless you need to have the entire Precious Edition sitting on your hard drive.
*Please do read my reviews for the other two entries in this series because I believe this one is not representative of the other edits DonkeyKonga has made.

What can be said about such a masterpiece of film? As this is a fanedit, I will discuss that portion. First and foremost, a theatrical color grade helps for a more pleasant view as compared to the downgrade the Blu-ray gave us. The editor made a good choice using this as the base.

As for the other changes, removing the portion of the Ring “betraying” Isildur was a solid improvement for two reasons. First, the editor is correct that it spoils the surprise of making people invisible. Therefore, a first time viewer would be surprised when we see Bilbo’s disappearing act later on along with the characters in the movie. That helps us connect and feel like we are experiencing what the characters experience. The second reason it helps improve the movie in my view was that the very brief scene comes across as underwhelming. We have Galadriel mention in her opening monologue that the Ring betrayed Isildur, which sounds very ominous, but when you watch the footage, it looks like the ring sort of just slips off into the water. I think we are better off being told what happened versus being shown what appears like a clumsy moment versus an apparent betrayal.

I also felt we were better off with the condensed portion of Bilbo looking for the ring as it showed a bit too much a little early in the movie. The changes to Gandalf’s dialogue were better, but I was mostly neutral on that.

Overall, these were a couple of minor changes that make an excellent movie 1-2% better. For those who want a little better of an experience watching this movie, the edit is for you. It also helps visually for those who have the Blu-ray.

I am extremely satisfied for having watched the Precious Editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact, I think I may have now entered my Gollum stage of life. As I have these editions on my flash drive, I find myself looking at my USB device and telling myself, “Nobody will take my precious away from me.”