One of the greatest films ever has come home to DVD with a truly impressive special features disc.

In order to pull off a convincing story of such magnitude, it became necessary for Peter Jackson to immerse himself into the story that was created by Tolkien an age ago. He takes us along for the ride in a series of shorts and featurettes based on the production of the film and the exploration of the story. Add that to the hours upon hours of behind the scenes footage and individual character featurettes and you have a production epic just as vast and sweeping as the film itself.

Anybody who’s seen this film is just about bursting to see the next installment, The Two Towers. This DVD presents a 10 minute look at the upcoming film both behind the scnes and on the screen. Highlighting the battle between man and orc and the meeting of Gollum, this short gives us just a small taste of what greatness we can expect from the next chapter of the trilogy.
	Oscar Nominated Ian McKellen as Gandalf The Grey

As with most DVDs, there’s an abundant collection of theatrical trailers and TV spots to go back and look at. It’s almost become a given that you’re gonna find these trailers and things on DVD releases so don’t get too wet about these.

	For you new age music fans, you’ll find the music video to the Oscar nominated “May It Be” by Enya. I like when companies throw the music videos to their songs on the releases. Much like with The Goonies DVD, you get to have some cool, related material on the disc with the movie. I’m not too much of an Enya fan but I do appreciate the fact that this was thrown into the package.
I WANT MY MTV!!

Just about any blockbuster movie can expect to have a video game based on it. Electronic Arts, makers of Madden NFL 2003 and SSX Tricky are taking on that duty as they bring The Two Towers to video game consoles around the world. Not only are we getting to see the footage of the video game on screen but we get to take a quick look at the creative aspect of the game. From what we see, it looks like a very impressive and versatile game that plunges the player right into the world of Middle-earth. With locations and character motion based on the actual films, I think we got a genuine and enjoyable game on our hands.

For the most part, this is a pretty good package put together for an awesome flick. Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of deleted scenes or bonus footage. You can imagine my dismay when I found out that a special “extended” edition DVD of the film will be released in November. There’s a preview for it on this disc. Sure, it’s a good way to keep interest up for the coming of the next film and a decent way to make a buck but dammit…I want it now.

What Do You Mean We Gotta Wait Till November For The Extended Edition!?

As for this edition of the DVD, it’s a great buy and definitely worth picking up.

Grade: A