Lord Of The Rings Extended 4k Streaming

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Beverly Denmark

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:15:31 PM8/3/24

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2024 started off on a sour note for some Lord of the Rings fans, as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King's extended edition--considered by some to be the definitive version--was recently unceremoniously dumped from Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is back online, however, and you can stream it now.

GameSpot has learned that the removal of Lord of the Rings: Return of the king Extended Edition was the result of a technical issue that the team at Max worked to rectify to get the title back online.

The extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers remain available to stream on Max, and did not vanish alongside The Return of the King's extended edition. The theatrical versions of all three films are on Max as well. People on social media complained about the absence of Return of the King's extended edition when it was briefly removed. Some said they started the lengthy film in December and attempted to resume watching in 2024 only to find the 11-time Oscar-winning movie to be removed from the catalog.

Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and other popular streaming platforms publicize lists of titles set for removal ahead of time, to help users avoid getting surprised when a movie or show is set to be dumped. Max does this as well, but Return of the King's extended edition was not printed on the "leaving" list for January.

Before this, Max made headlines when the service removed the Watchmen series in 2023 without any prior warning. This was only an accident, though, and it was reinstated very quickly. Return of the King's extended edition, however, was missing for more than 24 hours.

WBD is purposefully removing some titles from Max as a means to make more money by licensing them to other streaming services. If the entire Lord of the Rings series was axed from Max, that could be theoretically understandable as a business decision. The fact that only the extended edition of one film in the series got dumped is understandably raising questions and causing some concern. But it was only a technical issue that has now been fixed.

Another oddity for Lord of the Rings movies on Max is that there are two versions of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers listed as being the extended edition. Only one of them is actually the lengthier extended edition, however.

Anyone who owns The Lord of the Rings on DVD or Blu-ray can of course continue to watch the movies, and some might point to a case like this as an example for why physical media could be a worthwhile investment. The entire trilogy, including extended editions, were updated in 4K in 2020.

20 years after the conclusion of the original film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings returned to the zeitgeist with a beautifully shot half-billion-dollar season of television, and the promise of new movies (like The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and a new Amazon reboot) on the way. The Lord of the Rings is one of the most beloved and accomplished trilogies in Hollywood history, and thanks to the extraordinary craftsmanship of its filmmakers, the trio has retained its ability to entertain and inspire awe two decades later.

For a special, one-time chance to re-watch the original Lord of the Rings trilogy in all its glory, it has been announced that they will be playing in theaters once again starting with The Fellowship of the Ring on June 8th, The Two Towers on June 9th, and then The Return of the King on June 10th. As if that weren't enough, they will be playing the extended cuts of each film AND in their 4K Ultra HD remastered versions released in 2020.

The complete Lord of the Rings saga includes six films and one TV series. Thankfully, all of the movies are available to stream on Max, while the TV series can only be streamed on Amazon. Each of the six films can also be rented or purchased on Amazon or YouTube.

Looking to add a lord of the rings Blu-ray set to your collection? Your best options are to either by the extended edition trilogies separately, or grab the standard collection of all 6 movies. Below are some of the best options avaialable right now:

Watching the Lord of the Rings movies is a fairly straightforward endeavour. However, if you want to be sure you're viewing the movies in the best order for you, whether that be by release date or narrative chronology, be sure to check out our Lord of the Rings movies in order explainer or dive into our guide to the Lord of the Rings books if you'd prefer to start there.

There are "multiple" new Lord of the Rings movies in the works at Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, the companies announced in February. The companies made the deal to create future films in coordination with Embracer Group, which acquired Middle-earth Enterprises (along with the film and game rights to LotR and The Hobbit) in 2022.

Production on The Rings of Power: Season 2 is wrapping up and will be available on Amazon Prime on August 29th, 2024. Ciarn Hinds, who played Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones, was recently added to the cast and Tom Bombadil will be making an appearance as well.

Update November 18, 2023: The Lord of the Rings films have become classic films to watch over the Thanksgiving holiday, given the autumnal color palette, so with that in mind this article has been updated by Valerie Parker with more material about the Extended Cuts and some major highlights regarding each version.

The amount of material added to the extended editions varies from film to film. For example, despite the theatrical cuts of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers being essentially the same length, 30 additional minutes were added to Fellowship, while The Two Towers has about 45 minutes of new material. The biggest addition comes in The Return of the King, which, despite already being the longest film of the three, has nearly an hour of new material in the extended cut.

The additional material that can be found in the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings consist mainly of new and extended scenes that add further context to the overall story and adventure. These add context and richness to the story, giving a fuller view of the world of Middle Earth, its inhabitants, and their stories.

The extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring includes about a half-dozen complete scenes that were previously excluded from the theatrical cut of the film, as well as the extension of some scenes that were previously included. Some of the most significant new scenes or scene extensions include:

The extended editions of The Two Towers and The Return of the King continue the precedent set by The Fellowship of the Ring, as every new addition brings new support and depth to the characters and overall story of the films. The second two films in the trilogy include even more of these kinds of changes than Fellowship does.

As for The Return of the King, the final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy features some of the most notable additions in its extended cut. There are, once again, about 15 new scenes with about two dozen extended sequences as well. However, some of the new scenes in The Return of the King are so crucial and have such an impact on the story that it is hard to imagine why they were cut in the first place.

Speaking on the overall effect of watching The Lord of the Rings, there are significant changes to the experience when watching the extended editions rather than the theatrical cuts. While the theatrical versions of the film still provide outstanding experiences (they were all Oscar-winning films, at the end of the day), the journey provided by the extended editions takes what was already working and adds even more greatness to the top of it.

After The Hobbit came the animated Lord of the Rings in 1978, directed by Ralph Bakshi. While this still isn't great, it does benefit from its interesting rotoscoping animation where animators traced over live-action footage. That makes for a visual style that can be both compelling and kind of distracting. Peter Jackson was a fan of this adaptation and lifted entire shots for his live-action trilogy. There's also another animated film, a 1980 adaptation of The Return of the King from Hobbit filmmakers Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. However, as far as I can tell, it isn't available to rent or stream anywhere. You can buy a used DVD on Amazon for $31, though, if the mood strikes you.

The saga continues with the action-packed The Two Towers. I know everyone has their own personal favorite in the trilogy, and I tend to see this film mentioned a lot under that classification. To me, this is probably the weakest of the three films, but that's not such a bad thing because it still absolutely rocks. Both the theatrical cut and extended edition are on HBO Max.

A big, swooning, sweeping emotional climax that won Best Picture, The Return of the King brings the journey to a satisfying conclusion. Some folks have a problem with the way the film keeps throwing one ending after another after another, but as someone who was in no rush to leave this world, I had no complaints on that front. Both the theatrical cut and extended edition are on HBO Max.

What should've been a joyous return to Middle-earth turned out to be a major misfire. Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro originally teamed up to turn The Hobbit into two movies, with del Toro directing. But del Toro eventually pulled out and Jackson got back in the director's chair. Then, just to make things messier, the two movies were stretched to three, even though The Hobbit is a relatively short book. The first entry in the series, An Unexpected Journey, is probably the best, but that's not saying much. Everything that felt real and lived-in in the Lord of the Rings films feels fake and digital here. A shame. Note: there are extended versions of all the Hobbit films, too, believe it or not. But none of them are available to rent or stream at the moment.