Best of the trilogy, because it's the best edited


It's hard to perceive exactly what an editor does as opposed to all of the other talents involved in a film, but if you evaluate that aspect of the movie carefully, you have to conclude that one of the main reasons why this is the best of the LOTR movies is because it has far more imaginative and entertaining editing than the other two.

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Agreed on this being the best (to the extent that we can say something like that). I'm sure the editing helps any good film but I'm inclined to think that story, characters, setting and music are bigger factors here.

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best of the trilogy would be return of the king I still like of all them, I am lord of the rings superfan,

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I'd say I like this one the best.

"Now, now, he's learned his lesson. Isn't that right my little patient?"-Fluttershy

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I always liked ROTK the best and this second, with TTT a bit alower (albeit still great).

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I agree that it's the best of the trilogy and that editing is a huge part of that. The pacing is great, as there's a huge amount of content yet somehow nothing ever feels rushed or too slow. That's not to say there aren't slow parts, but they never drag, and they're actually a nice respite from the action scenes.

I've always held that this is a capital-A Adventure movie, while the other two are much more action-centric, and that's also a big part of why I like it the most. The introduction to both the world and all the characters never feels overwhelming.

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This is also my favorite of the trilogy. Both novel wise and cinema wise.

For me it's hard to pinpoint why but, I like that all of our heroes are together for damn near most if the movie. Their main villains are the Nazgul, and they also place more emphasis on the Ring here compared to TTT and ROTK.

Among other things, that is. I just don't feel like listing much more. Lol.


------
Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.

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The Fellowship has some of the best editing in film history. Tolkien did most of the work for the film-makers in terms of the shape of the story but I'm glad they took extreme care with it.

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Everyone seems by "editing" to mean the flow of the story, the structure---of course that's very impressive, but there's also the shot-by-shot editing, when a wide-angle cuts to a closeup, etc...

I have an eagle eye for that kind of editing, and can always spot a false note (it's hard to explain). And in 'Fellowship,' there are no false notes. 'Two Towers' has a few of them, and 'Return of the King,' it pains me to say, is 4/5ths nothing but. But 'Fellowship' is always bang-on. Witness Boromir with the arrows, for one. Everything cuts when it must. Such things are done by instinct, and the editor here had buckets of it.

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I will just remark that I don't think the difference one might detect in the quality of editing between the three films is due to a difference in skill or change in editors. It was, I'm sure, all due to time. The were chasing after this movie and the further in they got, the less time they had to perfect things. Shore speaks of this, to some extent, in some of his interviews.

I think people who are perfectionist are especially prone to this. When they first start out, they take much time and care getting things just so but aren't great at budgeting time/resources over a longer span so they are rushing more toward the end.

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This is probably true---but the three films did have different editors, and the styles are all slightly different. Whoever cut 'Fellowship' nailed it.

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