The Corner Penthouse

Warner Brothers recently released the The Lord of the Rings (1978) Blu-ray. Read on to find out more about it...

[ SYNOPSIS ]

An evil sorcerer from a previous era created a magical ring which enables its users to call upon its tremendous powers to rule the world, but it inevitably warps them to evil. It was believed lost, but during a resurgence of magical evil in the world, Bilbo, a simple, plain-spoken hobbit, recovers it from its hiding place. The forces of good give his nephew Frodo the choice to bear the awful burden of the ring to a place where it may be destroyed.

[ SPECIFICATIONS ]

The movie is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 2:13:20. The movie has been rated PG. Audio languages include English, French, German, Spanish. Subtitle languages include English SDH, French, German, Spanish.

[ SPECIAL FEATURES ]

All of the content listed below can be found on the Blu-ray disc.

• Forging Through The Darkness (30:25) - This 2009 featurette provides a decent overview of Ralph Bakshi's career, his emergence as a Hollywood revolutionary, and his creation of the film.

[ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ]

No digital copy code voucher is included inside the standard one-disc blue Blu-ray case.

[ NOTES ]

The Lord of the Rings (1978) is available on Blu-ray, Blu-ray+DVD, and Remastered Deluxe DVD. The movie was preceded by the Rankin-Bass animated The Hobbit (1977), which is available on DVD and a supposedly region-free Spanish Blu-ray (alt url). The movie was followed by the Rankin-Bass animated The Return of the King (1980), which is only available on DVD. (I'm ignoring the original DVDs in the crappy snapper cases).

Perhaps one day Warner Brothers will see fit to release the other two films on Blu-ray. They did release the more recent animated Lord of the Rings film The War of the Rohirrim (2024) on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Of course, the Peter Jackson-directed live-action movies are all available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, as mentioned in my review of them.

This item has been provided by Warner Brothers for review on this site.