One Disc to Rule Them All? Well, Not Exactly...

Just got my Lord of the Rings DVD in the mail. Which prompted a great big Whoo-hoo! from me initially, but, now that I've had the chance to look at the box in greater detail, I've discovered a couple of things that are majorly annoying.

First of all, it appears that I have purchased the "Fullscreen" edition. Honestly, this isn't something I even thought to check when I pre-ordered the thing. I mean, why in Eru's name would anybody want this movie in anything but letterbox? (I know, I know, some people just don't like letterboxing. But, come on, it's Lord of the Rings! It's a travesty to reduce it to anything but widescreen!)

The second thing is that the disc came with a little rebate card offering me $5 off the "extended version," coming in November. Wait a minute, does that mean that the much-hyped cut scenes that were supposed to be presented to us with the DVD release aren't actually on this DVD? Well, yes. That does in fact appear to be the case. Grrr.

The good news, I suppose, is that these two annoyances kind of cancel each other out. If I'm just going to have to replace this disc with the extended version in a few months, it's not such a big deal that it's not the widescreen version. It probably says a great deal about just how smitten I am with this movie that my response is "Great, now I have to buy both discs" instead of "Screw it, I'm sending this one back and waiting for the edition I do want." Because, you know, that would involve waiting until November! I just hope that New Line Cinema appreciates the extra cash, considering what a sucker they made of me to get it...