Every Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray You Can Buy Right Now

We don’t think it’s too controversial (or nerdy) to say that The Lord of the Rings film trilogy are essential to any physical media collection. They’re universally beloved, they won awards galore when they came out, and they’ve been the gold standard for high fantasy on film for over 20 years. But you’re here to read this, so it’s safe to assume that you probably don’t own a copy of your own yet. Maybe you’re here because you want to (admittedly very beautiful) DVDs and want to expand your collection. Or maybe you’ve asked your friends which versions to buy and they’ve all given you different answers. Or maybe you just want to finally fill that Lord of the Rings Blu-ray-shaped hole in your bookshelf. Here’s everything you need to know about how and where to buy the LOTR Blu-ray movie collection of your dreams.

Which Lord of the Rings Blu-ray set should you buy?

The thing about getting your own copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is, depending on what you end up getting, some versions have things that others don’t. The 4K releases have incredible picture quality, but unfortunately they don’t come with all that juicy extra stuff That’s what DVDs and Blu-rays do.

The Blu-rays, on the other hand, offer great value for money, but the Blu-ray version of The Fellowship of the Ring has, somewhat controversially, a strange green tint(None of the other two films have it, and neither do the DVDs or 4Ks.) If you don’t mind a little tint (it makes all that New Zealand green look even greener), and if you like the extra scenes and bonus material, you can’t go wrong with this one. The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition box setwhich comes with two discs per film, three discs of appendices, three booklets per film, and a map of Middle-earth on the inside cover. Yes! The expanded editions! We are completists!

Every LoTR Blu-ray you can buy

In the interest of providing our readers with variety, here’s a rundown of everything Lord of the Rings is currently available on Blu-ray: box sets, extended editions, theatrical editions, and individual discs in case you’re only looking for one or two. Oddly enough, the individual Blu-rays of the theatrical cuts can be hard to find, but we’ve done our best to track them down:

The Lord of the Rings: The Film Trilogy

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Middle-earth: Six Film Collections

Middle-earth 6 movie collection

The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Steelbook

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Steelbook

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Steelbook

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

LoTR Trilogy and The Hobbit Trilogy Blu-ray sets

If you want all three films, it’s best to buy them all in one set. As mentioned, the boxed collection of all three extended versions is the best option, but there are other options available if you don’t think you can sit down that long. If you can even longerthere are a few sets with The Lord of the Rings And The Hobbit films, for those who want to fully experience Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings: The Film Trilogy

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Expanded editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with two discs per film, three discs of supplements, three booklets per film and a map of Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

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Three-part set featuring theatrical releases from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Middle-earth: Six Film Collections

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Expanded editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy in a 30-disc set.

Middle-earth 6 movie collection

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Includes the theatrical releases of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit Trilogy.

Individual LoTR Movie Blu-rays

The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

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Two-CD set to be released in theaters.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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Two-disc extended edition set.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Steelbook

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Steelbook of the theatrical release.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Steelbook

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Expanded edition with five discs.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Steelbook

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Two-CD set to be released in theaters.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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Expanded edition with five discs.

How do the Extended Editions differ from the originals?

The theatrical vs. extended release debate has raged on endlessly ever since The Lord of the Rings films were made available on home video. Unable to expect the average audience to sit in their seats for more than three hours for three consecutive Decembers, New Line Cinema trimmed the films slightly and now exists as official theatrical releases. There’s nothing wrong with these versions of the films; they’re just a bit shorter (they’re all still well over two hours long) and some would argue that they’re tighter-paced and more action-oriented than the meandering extended cuts.

But the extended versions have much more stuffadd scenes here and there, extend a few others and bandage you wouldn’t necessarily get (or know you needed) if you watched the abridged versions. The main difference is length: The Fellowship of the Ring extended is about 30 minutes longer, The Two Towers about 45, and The Return of the King has almost an hour of extra footage that you don’t see in the theatrical version. Sure, they’re a lot longer, but when you get to spend even more time in Middle Earth, can you really complain?

Emma Stefansky is a freelance culture journalist who writes about films, TV shows, and books for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic, Esquire, IGN, IndieWire, The Ringer, and Vanity Fair.