The cast commentary is great but I've always found Boyens, Jackson & Walsh's thoughts more interesting because they delve so deeply into the story behind production & pre-production.

This is a really good commentary. Jackson, Walsh and Boyens talk a lot about the struggles they had adapting the book, about what to use, what wouldn't work on the screen and what they came up with themselves. Jackson also talks a lot about the scenes that were cut from the theatrical version and why they were cut - the conclusion is always "pace reasons" when can get a bit tiresome to listen to, but the rationale to put them back in is really interesting.

This commentary really tells you why it was so important to make an extended edition and it's not to exploit the fans! It also gives really good insight into why each scene became what it is, they obviously gave every detail a lot of thought! Very recommendable!

This is very good. They start out by talking about the prologue, and then move on through the rest of the movie. They talk about the differences between the book and the movie, between the theatrical version and the extended version, the production, the story, the writing difficulties they came across, the characters, the actors, the effects work, some techniques used for shooting and pretty much anything else you can ask for. They have a great love of Mr. Tolkien, which shows through during this track. They explain the many changes they had to make. All the reasons are understandable. You only have a certain amount of money and running time to fill in, so putting all the book into movie format would have been far too expensive. I was sad to hear that the main reason the stuff was cut for the theatrical version was mainly for pacing reasons. It's really annoying to know that quality is compromised simply for running time. This track never really seems long, and there isn't too much dead time save for a few seconds here and there every ten minutes or so. Very good track and definitely worth listening to.

A very interesting track. You’d think the design aspect of a movie wouldn’t be too interesting, but it’s fairly nice to listen to. You get a sense of the insane lengths some of the people went to to try to make this movie perfect. For example, for the scaling issue, they made different size looms so the stitching would look smaller on the hobbits and bigger on the bigger people, and they chose woods with different size grain for the scenes in, for example, Bag End, so that the table would look proportional with the two different size people. Those are just two examples of such unimportant things that these people thought of. It’s really amazing the things they say in here. They talk about the prosthetics (they made 1800 hobbit feet), the miniatures (up to 24 feet high), the images (the balrog and the mine entrance and things), the clothing (the ringwraiths actually have embroidering on their cloaks) and every other design detail you would want to know. It’s quite fascinating; this is one of the aspects of movie-making that isn’t usually explored much in documentaries and things, so it was really insightful to have an entire commentary track devoted to this kind of thing. Worth listening to very much.

From what I can gather, Osborne and Ordesky are together, Porras and Rivers are together, Rygiel and Cook are together, and Van Der Ryn and Hopkins are together. The rest seem to go solo. As far as technical commentaries go, this is a great one. There is only about 15-20 seconds total dead time, and all the people involved are interesting and are passionate about this project. The effects people have their work cut out for them, and they go and explain how they accomplished the shots, be it with forced perspective, matte paintings, miniatures, blue screen, CGI or a combination of any of these techniques. Something I found interesting was that Gollum’s cave at the start of the movie was real size but was made up of a bunch of miniature rocks/boulders they used during the rest of the shoot. The sound people talk about how they accomplished some of the sound effect heard during the movie. For instance, Mike Hopkins explains how he got the elves to sound the way they sound. He recorded the actors at normal speed then slowed down their voices to accommodate the slight slo-mo used when the elves are on screen. Howard Shore talks about the music and its evolution. He talks about how the fellowship theme builds up and changes through the movie, and points out the many different themes used in the various places in Middle-Earth. Out of all the 13 people, my favorite was Alex Funke. He seemed the most enthusiastic and interesting. Being the miniature DP, he talked a lot about how some of the shots were accomplished, especially the many shots of Orthanc and its underground caves and things. All these people had a lot to say and they were all worth listening to. Some them even got into talking about the characters and the story! Interesting all the way.

These guys seem to be having heaps of fun. As far as I can tell, the four hobbits are together, as are Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean, while the rest go at it solo. The four guys talk about a lot of goofing off from the shoot, such as ‘Tig’ the game and how uncomfortable the feet were and such things. These 4 guys are a blast to hear. They seemed to have so much fun filming together, and it shows here. Orlando Bloom seems to just say ‘this is so great’ or ‘this is so beautiful’ or ‘he’s such a great person’. At times, he does get into his character and how he tried to think about how to bring an elf to life. Sean Bean talks about his character and mentions some funny moments (such as his hike through the woods). Liv Tyler doesn’t speak much, but when she does, she talks about her impressions of her character and how she thought Arwen would feel in a given situation. John Rhys-Davis talks about Gimli, his make-up and what he does during a usual shoot. Oddly enough, he also talks about what can go wrong with too much free time while on a shoot. Kind of depressing, but might explain a few things. My favorite people to listen to during this track were Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee. They are such accomplished actors, and are terrific at what they do. I don’t usually like solo people who are spliced into commentaries, but these two guys had so many interesting things to say. Sir McKellan talked about Gandalf, the book, and life in general, as well. I would love to hear more from him. Christopher Lee is apparently a huge Tolkien fan, and so he fills in some of the gaps that might not be too obvious. He also talks about the subtle differences between the book and the movie. He apparently really wanted to play Gandalf. I really would not have minded that at all. All in all, this is a great track, which could probably be listened to over and over again without getting boring. It’s definitely a good commentary track to start with if you’ve never heard one. It’s definitely a good track to hear even if you’ve heard many of them.

This is the way a cast commentary should be!

This commentary was taken from multiple sources, see the previous review for the breakdown. Normally I don't like commentaries from multiple sources, but this was done perfectly. They put the comments by actors during the scenes that they had something to do with and I didn't feel like I was losing out on a lot of good comments. There were never downtimes and all of the comments were insightful, even if some of them were playful. I do wish that I could have listened more to Christopher Lee, he had such a genuine love for Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books, he was very knowledgeable and his comments were excellent.

Listen to this commentary or the Peter Jackson commentary last, as they are the best. I'm assuming you want to end on a "high note"