The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a solid film clocking in at just under three hours long, but for those of you who felt like three hours wasn’t enough, we have great news! There will be an extended cut of the film coming out on DVD.
So what’s all this extra footage going to be? How will it tie in to the second film? Answers under the cut.
A longer look at Hobbiton, extra scenes about the elven-dwarf feud as it manifests in Rivendell, and the Goblin King’s song were all features mentioned by Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens (producer/co-writer). On why scenes like the extra footage of Hobbiton were cut in the first place, Jackson had this to say:
We always wanted to wend our way through Hobbiton, but in the end Bilbo has to run out of the door.
In a less literal sense, that applies to other cut scenes, too. With a movie that has so much footage and so much story, cramming all of that intricacy into anything less than two hours is nigh impossible. It makes sense that the movie was so long. With so much to do and so little time, some things must be cut, for the sanity of the audience an the sanity of the editors.
What features will play into the next movie? Jackson dropped a few hints:
We are putting things in the extended cut that are going to play straight into the second film, like this character Girion, who is defending [the city of] Dale using black arrows against Smaug. And the black arrows play a part in an ongoing story, for they are the one thing that can pierce the dragon’s hide… There are also issues with [king of the elves] Thranduil… We get some of the reason why he and the dwarves had a falling out – to do with these white gems…
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Extended Cut will come out on DVD approximately a month before the December 13th release date of The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug.
(via Collider and Empire Online)
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