Because Christmas TV is unremittingly awful, I have a tradition of spending the Holidays in Middle Earth. This year’s entertainment was provided by the Extended Edition of The Battle of the Five Armies. The Blu Ray version has a total of 11 hours of additional material, most of which is well worth watching as far as I’m concerned.

Of course what most people are interested in is the extra material in the film itself. There was around 20 minutes of it, but very little in the way of additions to the plot. There’s a lovely scene between Biblo and Bofur. Also we get to see the funeral of Thorin, Fili & Kili, after which Dain is crowned King Under the Mountain. The rest of it is extra battle scenes. Because who needs more plot and dialog when you can have more ridiculous CGI effects, right?

I’m probably being a bit unfair to Peter Jackson there. The battle does actually make a lot more sense with the extra material. We do also get to hear Bifur and Bombur speak. There are, thankfully, no new Legolas dance routines, but the extra bat material is actually crucial to that whole episode. Most importantly, however, there are

LOTS MORE GOATS!!!

And this is a good thing, because the dwarf war goats are by far the best feature of the whole battle.

We also get to see the elves and dwarves fighting each other, which will doubtless please everyone who ever played a dwarf in my role-playing campaign. And there’s some comedy stuff to do with Radagast giving Gandalf his staff to replace the one that was destroyed by Sauron.

One of the delights of the extra material is that you get to find out what the film-makers were trying to do, which doesn’t always come across in the film. The whole Thranduil-Legolas backstory makes much more sense after you have heard it explained. I was also pleased to hear how Thranduil’s character developed during filming. Originally he had been intended to be a sort of super-Legolas, but eventually the crew realized that, being older and wiser, Thranduil would not waste so much energy showing off.

The attention to detail is phenomenal. There was a lot of time and effort spent on bringing in an expert costumer to make some stunning leaf mail armor for Tauriel, which was eventually abandoned when they found out that Evangeline Lily looked fat in it. Lee Pace was so impressed by the workshops that he begged for a job and spent a lot of his downtime making dwarf armor.

One of the highlights of the extras is the section about Dain, because it features Billy Connolly. Where most of the actors gush about how much they loved reading Tolkien as a kid, Connolly makes no bones about his hatred for the material. That probably makes him an even better choice to play Dain.

As always, family played an important part in the production. Billy Jackson was old enough to play one of the Laketown warriors. Both Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom enthused about being able to have their children see them make these films.

That’s an important thing about films. They last a lot longer than people do. Parents today are suddenly discovering the joy of taking their kids to see Star Wars. They can also show them Fantasia and The Wizard of Oz. I’m pretty sure that Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films will still be getting watched in 50 years time.

Christopher Lee certainly thought so. He was so happy to be able to play Saruman when he was on the side of good, and he said in his interview that these films are likely to be what he is most remembered for. Remembering is, of course, all we can do now. I was wonderful to see him in action again.

Next year I’ll do the Hobbit marathon to see how well it holds up as a single work.

Meanwhile I still want to see Lee Pace play Elric.