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[Tertullian]

What's the current status of fan edits of the Hobbit trilogy? I've always been in the camp that thinks Jackson's Hobbit movies are bloated messes, but that they also have strong bones (I love Freeman's performance, I think the acting is generally good, I love Riddles in the Dark and Smaug, I even love certain Jacksonian inventions and movie-specific performances like scrotum-chin Goblin King), so I really think there's a great movie hiding in there somewhere, and a perfect fan edit of the trilogy could be the best adaptation of the book bar-none.

So what's the best edit? Which aren't worth bothering with? Do any of them really hit the bullseye of cutting out all the bloat while preserving the best of Jackson's ideas and flowing smoothly in terms of picture and sound editing? I haven't downloaded any of them yet. I would love to hear from someone who's seen all or most of these edits.

There are a bunch of fan edits of the Hobbit floating around. Here's a useful Reddit thread summarizing some of them. Let me know if there are more. Of the edits out there, the ones that seem to get the most recommendations are the below three. Here is a useful post by the creator of one of these three edits, reviewing the other two.

JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit by Maple Films/Dustin Lee/eldusto84: This one seems the be the best-known and most-recommended these days. Condenses the movies down into one 4 hour-ish movie; incorporated extended edition material.

The Hobbit: The Bilbo Edition by Daniel Udell: Another edit that condenses the movie down to around 4 hours (or 4.5 in this case). Similar to the Maple Films version, just with some different narrative choices. Also incorporates extended edition material.

The Hobbit: The Two-Hour Fan-Edit by Fiona van Dahl/FekketCantenel: The most aggressive of all Hobbit fan edits, hacking the movie down to a mere 2 hours in service of deliberately aping the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated movie version of The Hobbit. This version is by far the most fascinating one to me; I really want to see it.

Some other fan edits:

The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit: The first widely-publicized fan edit of the trilogy, also condensing the movie down to around 4 hours. Possibly rougher than the above edits, according to some online comments.

There and Back Again: A 3-hour cut, made shortly after The Tolkien Edit. Seemingly taken down now and difficult to find. My personal favorite title for a Hobbit fan cut.

The Hobbit: Ironfoot Edition: A 2-movie cut, with each movie around 2.5 hours long. So this one preserves a bit more of Jackson's movies. Sounds like it tries to keep Tauriel and make her a better character by cutting the love triangle, which is interesting. I haven't heard a whole lot about this cut.

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Cut: A 7 hour cut of the movie by some redditor who made it for his personal use. A sort of anti-extended edition, with just 20-30 minutes of fat cut from each movie. Maybe ideal if you think Jackson's movies are mostly good and just need a little trimming? Maybe doesn't even belong on this list?

The Hobbit: The Spence Edit: A slightly-over-3-hour version. Not an attempt at faithfulness to the book, but just an attempt to see how much the movies could be condensed.

Billy Batson's The Hobbit: Another ~4 hour cut. Know almost nothing about it.



(By the way, if you haven't yet, you have to watch the very first cinematic version of any of Tolkien's work, the bizarre 1966 12-minute Eastern European version of The Hobbit. It is an amazingly bad adaptation, but it's beautiful and has a beautiful story behind it. Here's the director telling that story (scroll about 15 paragraphs down the page). Here is my favorite film critic reviewing it.

 

[Tertullian]

Well darn, I really thought there would be somebody besides me interested in these things. But after all, the Hobbit trilogy is met with a shrug of indifference by most everyone. Guess I'll just have to do my own watching. Time to get downloading.

 

[SpaceWolf]

It's always been a low-key dream of mine to sit down for a weekend and edit all three films into an ultimate three and a half hour There and Back Again edition. I absolutely believe you could make a great film out of that trilogy. God knows, there's a lot of material to work with.

Unfortunately though, the endevour would require me to buy all three extended editions on BluRay, which is a level of financial commitment I'm not sure I'm entirely willing to pay.

 

[Xe4]

Your thread got buried earlier, otherwise i wouldve responded earlier.

One of these days, I'll watch a fan edit. There was some good stuff to the trilogies, but it was ruined by so much bloat and bad material it wasn't worth it. Let me know which one you recommend : )

 

[Hastati]

Thanks for the information, I do think the Hobbit series has decent material that some editing could reform into comfortable popcorn entertainment. I haven't seen the later versions of LOTR yet, so I may give one of these edits a shot whenever I get around to watching this series of movies again.

The four hour one sounds like a bit of a slog even so, but I dragged myself through the mud of endless eight in one sitting so I guess I can't complain.

 

[Akuun]

I didn't know that there were so many fan edits.

I agree that the full movies are bloated trash, but I'd be willing to give one of the fan edits a try if one of those 2-3 hour edits are good. Maybe there's a good movie somewhere in that mess.

 

[Hastati]

Actually how are the directors cut versions of LOTR? Would it make sense to try a fan abridged version of the Hobbit, followed by the directors cut LOTR, or would the originals flow better?

 

[orochi91]

I've never watched a fan-edit, I think.

How do these cuts handle music transitions and general story flow? Does it feel natural?

 

[SpaceWolf]

I imagine it's not legal to offer these fan-edits over the internet?

 

[Captain Zyrain]

I skipped around the JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit by Maple Films/Dustin Lee/eldusto84 version (it's on Google drive) and it was pretty well done.

I'll try and make time to watch it proper.

I mostly enjoyed the theatrical versions.. though they were bloated. I really liked the Battle of Five Armies though.

Never saw the extended scenes though.. were they any good?

 

[Tertullian]

I've never watched a fan-edit, I think.

How do these cuts handle music transitions and general story flow? Does it feel natural?

From what I've read, it sounds like The Bilbo Edition and JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit (the Maple Films edit) are pretty smooth with the editing. There are just a few problem places where the editing is jarring and feels sloppy, or so people seem to say. Apparently there's a transition just before Beorn shows up that is notoriously difficult to get right.

I imagine it's not legal to offer these fan-edits over the internet?

Some of these are surprisingly easy to get; the first two I listed seem to be available as normal direct downloads from Google Drive. Fan edits exist in a legal gray area, but I've had an easier time finding these than I had trying to get a hold of the Star Wars Despecialized Editions.

 

[Not]

I've been wondering about this too

 

[Cross-Section]

List is missing The Arkenstone Edition of Unexpected Journey; it's a fantastic edit that primarily focuses on making it a better film through cutting out the fat and plot incongruities of both Theatrical and Extended editions.

Here's a snippet of the editor's changes:

• Cut Thorin’s line about Azog having died of his wounds long ago. The fact that Azog is still alive is so incredibly obvious, and I think it works a bit better to just remove the whole “mystery” angle completely.
• After the Azog flashback scene, we briefly see a warg rider watching the company, but the closeups and dialogue has been cut. Because of a later change, Yazneg’s lines here became redundant.
• Radagast’s introductory scenes have been cut, while still keeping Gandalf’s exposition about the wizards. This is the point where the theatrical version lost me. There’s no real link between the company’s and Radagast’s plotlines at this point, so suddenly cutting to the adventures of Radagast and his bunnies ends up being almost completely random. I think it works much better to not introduce Radagast and the Dol Guldur subplot until the company meets him in the Trollshaws. Some shots had to be reshuffled and I had to add some rain audio in order to make the scene work without cutting to Radagast.
• Added some ominous music for the establishing shot of the ruined farmstead. This was done to create a smoother storytelling transition between scenes, since Gandalf’s line “… for always evil will look to find a foothold in this world” now cuts to this scene rather than to Radagast.
• Trimmed Gandalf and Thorin’s argument at the ruined farmstead. The dwarf/elf rivalry was a bit overdone in the original, so I’ve trimmed it down a lot to make it more subtle and understated.
• Azog’s introduction has been recut and moved to a much earlier point, along with some changed subtitles and music. As mentioned before, everyone already knows that Azog is still alive, so it’s better to introduce him as the villain early on.
• Removed all mention of the trolls’ names. By Tolkien’s own admission, “Tom”, “Bert” and “William Huggins” aren’t proper Middle-earth names.
• The entire troll sequence has been trimmed as much as possible. The whole sequence, and especially the fight scene, goes on for far too long. All in all I’ve edited out about a third of the sequence, but I won’t bother listing all of the individual changes. Among other things, the troll banter is a lot shorter, the fight is more realistic, and the anachronistic references to “parasites” have been cut.
• Some music restored to the troll scene.
• Some music restored to the troll hoard scene.
• Cut Gandalf’s claim that Sting will glow blue because it’s of elvish make. If that were true, Glamdring and Orcrist (and all other elvish blades in LotR) should glow blue. I did consider rotoscoping the other swords, but decided that it wouldn’t be worth it.
• Gandalf introduces Radagast as “My friend Radagast the Brown” rather than simply “Radagast the Brown”. Since we haven’t seen Radagast before, I figured this small clarification could be helpful. The audio is taken from behind-the-scenes footage.

Was always a bit bummed out that this guy never did similar edits for the other movies, but then again, DoS and TBoFA especially are less salvageable than the first film.

 

[Hyun Sai]

I'm downloading the agressive 2 hour fan edit. This should be fun (I tried to watch the first movie, was bored to death).

 

[btrboyev]

I've semi-watched a couple of different ones and none of them work. The edits and pacing are all over the place. Some cuts look very amateur.

 

[aadiboy]

I've only watched the first Hobbit movie but I didn't think it was that bad, for me it was like a 7 or 8. Yes, they added some material not from the books, but I actually like the inclusion of Radagast, and it didn't feel like it brought down the overall quality of the movie. Are the 2nd and 3rd movies that bad that they bring down the series, or is everyone exaggerating the bad parts? People are acting like this was a Star Wars PT level disaster, but it's definitely way better than that.

 

[captive]

i have one of these downloaded, dont know which. I had no idea there were so many fan edits.

 

[QualityPixel]

So, those who have watched a number of these, which has been your favorite?

 

[Tertullian]

My review of The Hobbit: The Two-Hour Fan-Edit by Fiona van Dahl

So I finally got around to watching one of these fan edits, the Two-Hour Fan-Edit by Fiona van Dahl. I even watched the 1977 Rankin/Bass cartoon of The Hobbit in preparation, since that movie was one of van Dahl’s influences in creating her own very tight version of Peter Jackson’s overlong behemoth of a trilogy. Please note that I’ve never worked in film and I don’t really know what I’m talking about, so my impressions of things like editing and sound design in these things is strictly a layman’s. Also, I haven’t actually watched the original Jackson movies recently, and I never saw the extended cuts, so I’m flying in the dark here in more ways than one. That said…

I love this cut. I would say it is my single favorite movie adaptation of The Hobbit I’ve seen so far. In fairness, I probably love it more than it actually deserves as a piece of film, and I’m definitely grading on something of a curve here. Both the editing and the storytelling fall short of flawless, with many moments that seem just a little bit off, and a few moments that seem very off.

But I absolutely think the cut succeeds at what it sets out to do. It tells a version of The Hobbit that is snappy and full of incident and above all feels like a fairy tale. Bilbo and the dwarves fall into scrapes quickly, and escape from them almost as quickly. Things happen; most scenes don’t overstay their welcome; the audience POV is centered firmly on Bilbo. The pacing is very fast, but mostly in a good way (the short length of all the early scenes makes the Riddle Game seem hella long, though). A few dwarves distinguish themselves; most just form a general mass of dwarvishness against which Bilbo reacts. But none of that prevents a ton of great character moments from poking up regularly throughout. It really is very much like the book and the Rankin/Bass cartoon.

There are a lot of clever decisions which help the story hang together in the face of the whirlwind momentum of the thing. My two favorites come right near the beginning. Van Dahl opens her cut in the middle of Bilbo and Galdalf’s initial conversation outside Bag End, with dialogue literally heard over the opening title sequence. The first shot of the movie is of Bilbo’s bewildered face as Gandalf confuses him. I think this opening works like gangbusters, giving us 100% of the plot (and character!) information we need in literally the minimum amount of time possible.

My other favorite decision of van Dahl’s is the use of an alternate version of the Misty Mountains song to do all the heavy lifting in telling the dwarves’ backstory. Instead of a didactic voiceover, the story of the fall of Erebor is told mainly through images, helped along by haunting, evocative music. It is my single favorite sequence in the cut. It makes the dwarves’ backstory feel like a lost golden age from a distant past, rather than “welp, here’s some narration giving us the scoop.”

But it isn’t perfect. I just don’t think you can cut a movie like this down to size this aggressively without the seams showing. As I said above, the editing and storytelling are both under a little strain. The transition from An Unexpected Journey to The Desolation of Smaug is crummy (as it apparently is in all fan cuts; I gather that it’s notoriously difficult to get right). As for storytelling, there are a number of places where the action on screen doesn’t quite make sense until someone sort of explains it later, as when the movie suddenly cuts to the dwarves diving into some cave, but it’s not clear that the cave is the trolls’ loot stash until someone mentions how the swords aren’t troll-made. Or when it’s not mentioned that Gandalf parted with the dwarves again after Rivendell, until someone mentions that Gandalf promised to meet them in the mountains. The Battle of the Five Armies especially seems to have been difficult to edit down to something both manageable and coherent. There is a part where it’s said in dialogue that “the city” (Dale) is being attacked, but I’m not sure Dale had been mentioned at all before that point.

There are also places where a character shows up and seems sort of important, only in this cut, they aren’t terribly important. Azog shows up out of nowhere, and the logical assumption is that he’s just some kind of orc/goblin captain under the Goblin King, only the way he’s shot seems to imply that he’s some sort of terrifying pre-established baddie (which of course he is in Jackson’s movies), and then Thorin sees fit to engage him in single combat for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, and then he actually is the big baddie in the Battle of the Five Armies. Similarly, Bard’s son shows up out of nowhere just in time to help Bard kill Smaug, then disappears without a trace. Nothing here flat-out doesn’t make sense, but it does feel a bit wonky. The only time in the movie that really left me scratching my head is near then end when Bilbo risks death to warn Thorin that there is another orc army that is about to surround his position if he presses on, and then he has to press on and fight Azog anyway, and then… the second orc army just evaporates, I guess?

But a few moments like that were probably inevitable, and there are many more scenes (and individual cuts) that feel perfectly natural. Is the story still clear? I think so. Could you show this to someone who had never seen or heard or read any version of The Hobbit before, and expect them to follow it? Again, I think you could. In fact, I think it would be a great experience for them.

Final Score: 4/5 Arkenstones

I hope to get to the other two highly recommended fan cuts soon, and review them here as well. I probably won’t have quite as much to say about them. I imagine my general impression will be similar: some wonky editing and storytelling, but still quite a good version firmly anchored on Bilbo. I’m sure I’ll be implicitly be judging them against van Dahl’s excellent version as I watch them.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

The There And Back Again cut was 3-4 hours and achieved the job making it about the titular character again, even if there some obvious weird jumps here and there. Basically just having Smaug without that arbitrary separation between the movies improves a lot, as does reducing the third movie to half an hour.
It was definitely a more enjoyable story, even with random jumpiness.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

My review of The Hobbit: The Two-Hour Fan-Edit by Fiona van Dahl

So I finally got around to watching one of these fan edits, the Two-Hour Fan-Edit by Fiona van Dahl. I even watched the 1977 Rankin/Bass cartoon of The Hobbit in preparation, since that movie was one of van Dahl’s influences in creating her own very tight version of Peter Jackson’s overlong behemoth of a trilogy. Please note that I’ve never worked in film and I don’t really know what I’m talking about, so my impressions of things like editing and sound design in these things is strictly a layman’s. Also, I haven’t actually watched the original Jackson movies recently, and I never saw the extended cuts, so I’m flying in the dark here in more ways than one. That said…

I love this cut. I would say it is my single favorite movie adaptation of The Hobbit I’ve seen so far. In fairness, I probably love it more than it actually deserves as a piece of film, and I’m definitely grading on something of a curve here. Both the editing and the storytelling fall short of flawless, with many moments that seem just a little bit off, and a few moments that seem very off.

But I absolutely think the cut succeeds at what it sets out to do. It tells a version of The Hobbit that is snappy and full of incident and above all feels like a fairy tale. Bilbo and the dwarves fall into scrapes quickly, and escape from them almost as quickly. Things happen; most scenes don’t overstay their welcome; the audience POV is centered firmly on Bilbo. The pacing is very fast, but mostly in a good way (the short length of all the early scenes makes the Riddle Game seem hella long, though). A few dwarves distinguish themselves; most just form a general mass of dwarvishness against which Bilbo reacts. But none of that prevents a ton of great character moments from poking up regularly throughout. It really is very much like the book and the Rankin/Bass cartoon.

There are a lot of clever decisions which help the story hang together in the face of the whirlwind momentum of the thing. My two favorites come right near the beginning. Van Dahl opens her cut in the middle of Bilbo and Galdalf’s initial conversation outside Bag End, with dialogue literally heard over the opening title sequence. The first shot of the movie is of Bilbo’s bewildered face as Gandalf confuses him. I think this opening works like gangbusters, giving us 100% of the plot (and character!) information we need in literally the minimum amount of time possible.

My other favorite decision of van Dahl’s is the use of an alternate version of the Misty Mountains song to do all the heavy lifting in telling the dwarves’ backstory. Instead of a didactic voiceover, the story of the fall of Erebor is told mainly through images, helped along by haunting, evocative music. It is my single favorite sequence in the cut. It makes the dwarves’ backstory feel like a lost golden age from a distant past, rather than “welp, here’s some narration giving us the scoop.”

But it isn’t perfect. I just don’t think you can cut a movie like this down to size this aggressively without the seams showing. As I said above, the editing and storytelling are both under a little strain. The transition from An Unexpected Journey to The Desolation of Smaug is crummy (as it apparently is in all fan cuts; I gather that it’s notoriously difficult to get right). As for storytelling, there are a number of places where the action on screen doesn’t quite make sense until someone sort of explains it later, as when the movie suddenly cuts to the dwarves diving into some cave, but it’s not clear that the cave is the trolls’ loot stash until someone mentions how the swords aren’t troll-made. Or when it’s not mentioned that Gandalf parted with the dwarves again after Rivendell, until someone mentions that Gandalf promised to meet them in the mountains. The Battle of the Five Armies especially seems to have been difficult to edit down to something both manageable and coherent. There is a part where it’s said in dialogue that “the city” (Dale) is being attacked, but I’m not sure Dale had been mentioned at all before that point.

There are also places where a character shows up and seems sort of important, only in this cut, they aren’t terribly important. Azog shows up out of nowhere, and the logical assumption is that he’s just some kind of orc/goblin captain under the Goblin King, only the way he’s shot seems to imply that he’s some sort of terrifying pre-established baddie (which of course he is in Jackson’s movies), and then Thorin sees fit to engage him in single combat for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, and then he actually is the big baddie in the Battle of the Five Armies. Similarly, Bard’s son shows up out of nowhere just in time to help Bard kill Smaug, then disappears without a trace. Nothing here flat-out doesn’t make sense, but it does feel a bit wonky. The only time in the movie that really left me scratching my head is near then end when Bilbo risks death to warn Thorin that there is another orc army that is about to surround his position if he presses on, and then he has to press on and fight Azog anyway, and then… the second orc army just evaporates, I guess?

But a few moments like that were probably inevitable, and there are many more scenes (and individual cuts) that feel perfectly natural. Is the story still clear? I think so. Could you show this to someone who had never seen or heard or read any version of The Hobbit before, and expect them to follow it? Again, I think you could. In fact, I think it would be a great experience for them.

Final Score: 4/5 Arkenstones

I hope to get to the other two highly recommended fan cuts soon, and review them here as well. I probably won’t have quite as much to say about them. I imagine my general impression will be similar: some wonky editing and storytelling, but still quite a good version firmly anchored on Bilbo. I’m sure I’ll be implicitly be judging them against van Dahl’s excellent version as I watch them.

I really appreciate the view, and will subscribe. I wanted to love The Hobbit movies, but each one seemed to get worse and worse in terms of bloat and garbage. Whichever you go the highest amount of praise to I'll pick up and give a go.

 

[Slythe]

I want this to happen but I dont have the skillset to make it happen

Edit: I guess what I should say is I would love a definitive edit to emerge. I will have to look into this.

 

[Tertullian]

So I’ve finally made my way through another fan edit. This one comes in at over four hours, making it a much meatier slice of Peter Jackson’s gargantuan pile of Hobbit material than the first cut I reviewed. This cut was made by a guy named Dustin Lee, and is probably the cut that I’ve seen recommended around the web most often, usually under the name “the Maple Films cut,” though Lee’s official moniker for his version is “JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.”

I can’t lie to you: because I watched (and enjoyed!) Fiona van Dahl’s 2-hour cut before I dove into this one, my first instinct as I watched Lee’s edit was “he could have cut more.” And he certainly could have. There are occasional moments that I was unhappy to see back, such as bits and pieces of gross-out humor in Bag End and elsewhere in the movie that van Dahl managed to ditch, and scenes with the master of Laketown and Alfrid that I would just as soon never watch again (as I’ve never liked either of them; they’re far too broad and grotesque).

The length of Lee’s cut gives it a very different pace from van Dahl’s. While van Dahl’s version whistles by at lightning speed, Lee’s version honestly felt a bit clodding to me. It stumps through scenes rather than flying through them, like Jackson’s originals do (though nowhere near as bad!).

On the other hand, there are undeniable advantages to the length of Lee’s cut. While in van Dahl’s cut certain key scenes (e.g. Riddles in the Dark) felt incredible long compared to other sections of the film, in Lee’s cut the pacing is much more even. The battle of the five armies has more room to breathe, and makes more sense.

And for every moment that I actively disliked, there are two or three solid character moments that had to be culled from van Dahl’s edit that I was glad to see back in Lee’s. This includes business with the dwarves as well as more scenes with Bard and his family, whom I liked in the theatrical trilogy. Perhaps most importantly, there are fewer cuts in Lee’s version that feel off, presumably just because he didn’t have to cut out as much material.

And now for some comments on specific choices Lee made that stuck out to me. I probably won’t be able to stitch these together very artfully; they are just my disconnected thoughts on moments that stuck out to me enough that I wrote them down.

Unless I am very much mistaken, there is no “Fall of Erebor” sequence in this version. The backstory of the dwarves is given mainly through the normal course of dialogue (and through the Misty Mountains song, of course). This works well, I think, but I don’t love it like I loved van Dahl’s musical version of the backstory.

On the positive side, this cut still has almost no Legolas and Tauriel (though Legolas gets a name-drop), and it even managed to get rid of the stupid burrowing worms at the battle of the five armies. The cut’s treatment of Azog is solid as well. He is introduced as an enemy of Thorin by the Goblin King, he shows up at the cliff (before the eagles rescue), then again at the battle of the five armies; the “Oakenshield” flashback is not present. Oddly, Thorin does not engage Azog in single combat on the cliff in this cut, while he did in the 2-hour cut. This seems backwards, since it is in this cut where Thorin and Azog have personal history.

As in most of these fan edits, Gandalf in this cut is capricious, disappearing to pursue his own unexplained agenda. There is no meeting with Saruman and Galadriel at Rivendell; there are no scenes of Gandalf at Dol Guldur (though there is one reference to “Azog’s master,” which is a bit odd in a movie with no Necromancer/Sauron). I would not necessarily object to an edit that did not cut all of these scenes, but I think it is generally the right decision to cut them. The Hobbit is a story about Bilbo first and the dwarves second; it is not about heavy-handed foreshadowing for The Lord of the Rings. However! Dustin Lee has cut a separate movie, consisting entirely of Galdalf’s solo scenes, called Durin’s Folk and the Hill of Sorcery. I haven’t watched it, but maybe I’ll throw up a mini-review once I’ve done so.

Another oddity: Beorn. He’s here, but his scene is truncated and doesn’t serve much of a purpose. His presence does help solve two tangentially-related problems, however: he is introduced in a voiceover by Gandalf while the eagles are flying the company to safety, which helps smooth over the transition from An Unexpected Journey to Desolation of Smaug. And he shows up at the battle of the five armies to fight the reserve orc army, which solves the worst plot hole in the 2-hour cut.

Now for the negative side. This cut has an intermission - potentially a good idea - but its placement is awkward and the cut to it is shitty. On a perhaps more controversial note, this cut retains the scene in which Bilbo kills a baby spider because he is already in the thrall of the One Ring. Upon reflection, I have to side with those who think this scene is nonsensical. Bilbo should not be anywhere near that obsessed with the ring yet; he has 60 more years for the ring to work on him before he really covets it. In general, I prefer when The Hobbit is allowed to stand on its own (and the ring is just a cool invisibility ring), rather than when Lord of the Rings matter is shoehorned in.

On the topic of Smaug: this cut maintains a small part of the ridiculous Benny Hill-esque chase scene between the dwarves and Smaug before Smaug heads off to Laketown. Lee’s trick of implying that the dwarven forges are lit by Smaug’s fiery breath rather than by the dwarves is pretty cool. But unfortunately, an included scene in which Thorin evades Smaug by using some kind of elevator pulley scene is rather silly. Even more seriously, the ludicrous “bury Smaug in gold” stratagem is cut in this version (as it should be), but there is still a shot in which Smaug bursts forth from the mountain and appears to be covered in water (or some kind of liquid) for no reason that makes any sense.

Finally, a quick note on framing narratives. This cut retains scenes with old Bilbo at the beginning and end of the film. This works just fine, but I can’t help but prefer the 2-hour edit’s trick of focusing only on young Bilbo and his journey. Part of the reason is that I would very much like for people to be able to watch some version of The Hobbit before watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But those old Bilbo scenes play better as callbacks to the LotR trilogy than as material for a completely new viewer to see first, what with their contex-free name dropping of Frodo and such.

Oh, and I can’t remember if this was an issue with the 2-hour cut, but I found it hilarious how little sense the end credits make here. Evangeline Lilly as… an extra you saw two or three times! Cate Blanchett as… a character not appearing in this cut!

So anyway. It’s a good cut. It really is very solid and professional, with many scenes I loved and only a few I disliked.

3.5/5 Azog the Defilers

 

[Tertullian]

Well, I don’t know if anyone still knows or cares about this niche little thread, but dammit, I said I was gonna review the top three fan edits of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, and so that’s what I’m here to do.

Another viewing, another pretty good cut of The Hobbit. And I want to emphasize that I really have been very impressed by the editing in all three of the cuts I’ve watched. I’ve admitted already that I’m grading on a bit of a curve, and I’m sure that someone actually trained in editing film could probably spot the seams more readily than I can, but on the whole I think these cuts look remarkably professional. Places where I can really feel something off are rare, and most of the time whole scenes pass in which everything feels perfectly natural to me. I am especially impressed by the sound editing; I almost never notice anything off with the soundscape, and I understand that that is a very difficult thing to get right in a fan cut.

My principal complaint about this particular cut from a general perspective of craftsmanship is that the video quality looks a tad worse than in the other two edits in the encoding I watched, particularly (it seems) in some extended edition material toward the end of the movie. There were also certain scenes in Rivendell where there was just horrible stuttering for some reason. I even viewed the file directly on Google Drive, on an iPad, just to make sure the problem was not with my computer or video player somehow, and the same stuttering was still in evidence. I can’t tell if this is native to the cut or some kind of problem with the encoding or what, but it was quite awful.

Anyway, this edit bears many obvious similarities with the other two edits, especially the Maple Films version. As in all three cuts: the voiceover intro to the fall of Erebor is gone; Tauriel and Legolas are very minor characters at best and there is no love triangle; no dwarves are left behind in Lake-town; there is no Radagast the Brown and most everything relating to Galdalf’s actions apart from Thorin’s company is eliminated; many extraneous fight scenes are gone.

And like the Maple Films cut, this cut retains some material that connects The Hobbit with Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, particularly in keeping the “old Bilbo” framing narrative. (This cut also has an added title card of sorts crediting Daniel Udell; it looks kind of tacky and bad, frankly.) In fact, this cut is throughout a bit more eager than the Maple Films cut to preserve material from the book, and also to preserve material that directly connects this movie to the LotR trilogy. This makes it arguably a more faithful adaptation of the book as well as a better companion piece to the LotR trilogy than the other two cuts. Whether these decisions make it a better movie is another question.

So, for example, we get a quite long troll sequence, seemingly with no cuts at all from the theatrical (or extended?) version. This keeps a few bits I find funny, but it also makes the scene drag and retains some more of the childish gross-out humor. We see the stone giants in this cut, unlike in the other two cuts. I sort of dislike this scene; it just doesn’t make much sense in the context of Jackson’s world. But it is adapted from a scene in the book, so I’m sure some people will be glad to see it. Perhaps most importantly, Beorn gets a big role and his proper introduction (from the book and the extended cut), where the dwarves are introduced to him in pairs. I like this; I agree with Udell that if you’re going to keep Beorn, you might as well go whole hog and keep this scene intact.

And as for referring back to the Lord of the Rings trilogy: we get a bit more of Legolas here, as well as Bilbo looking at the shards of Narsil in Rivendell (though that is one of the scenes with the dreadful stuttering). Unfortunately, we also still get the scene of Bilbo killing the baby spider in Mirkwood and showing himself to be deeply in the ring’s thrall already. Finally, before the battle of the five armies, we get more explicit dialogue from Gandalf about the coming war between good and evil.

A few other notes:

We get a longer intro to riddles in the dark, with Gollum fighting a goblin and dropping the ring. I honestly hadn’t even realized this this bit was missing in the other two cuts; I prefer the other cuts’ shorter version.

On the matter of Lake-town: Bard gets a bit less fleshing out here than in Lee’s cut, but his family is still around. Oddly, he is not assisted in killing Smaug by his son, which leads to weird cuts and too many close-ups without any medium shots to break them up as he faces down the dragon. On the other hand, there’s much less of the master of Lake-town and Alfrid in this cut, which is great.

The treatment of Azog is once again different here, and really kind of odd. The “Oakenshield” flashback to the Moria fight with Azog is present, and I sort of like it, even if the whole “he’s Oakenshield because he literally fought with an oaken shield” part is silly. This sequence fleshes out Thorin a bit and helps explain why his dwarves are so loyal even when he acts like an ass later. But Azog does not show up at the “out of the frying pan into the fire” fight on the cliff. In fact, there aren’t even any goblins at that fight, only wargs (except in a tiny number of quick shots, where there seem to be a few goblins?). This is odd; I would expect these dwarves, as presented in the rest of the movie, to be able to fight even a very large number of wargs. Also, there’s a cut with a nasty shift in the sound right after the eagles rescue everyone, and also at the AUJ to DOS transition just after that.

But anyway, Azog: he doesn’t show up until the battle of the five armies. When he does, there is no real acknowledgment that a guy Thorin said was dead has shown up again to lead an army. And then… Thorin and Azog aren’t shown fighting. Nor do we ever see Fili and Kili die. Bilbo blacks out, wakes up to the eagles already winning the battle for the good guys, and sees Thorin collapse. This is genuinely bizarre; one of the bizarrest choices I’ve seen in any of these cuts. The Thorin/Azog fight might not be perfect, but it’s literally the climax of the whole story, and I can’t fathom why the “Oakenshield” flashback was there at the beginning if Thorin would not kill Azog at the end.

Some other choices during the battle of the five armies also stand out. We actually see the dwarves and elves fight, in a sort of ridiculous sequence involving goat cavalry that I believe was taken from the extended edition. The burrowing worms of the goblins not only show up but get more emphasis, which is bad, as it still makes no sense that they don’t actually fight in the battle. Some of the cutting here gets a little sloppy.

On the whole, my impression is that this cut is somewhat less well-put-together than the Maple Films cut (especially if there’s no way to get rid of that damn stuttering at Rivendell). I like many of Udell’s storytelling choices more than Lee’s, but other choices of his are just odd. I like this cut, but I think I have to put it a step below the others.

2.5/5 Stone Giants

 

[Arc]

I'm eagerly awaiting a nice 2-3 hour edit focusing on just the book content. It can be done. There's a good movie somewhere in there.

 

[HStallion]

The fan edit should just throw the live action movies into the garbage and just reshow the animated Hobbit film.

 

[Eylos]

Following this thread, i have readen the reviews which version you guys liked most?

 

[tr00per]

I'm glad you bumped this thread OP. I actually haven't seen all three but if the trilogy is as bad as they say I would be interested in finding the best fan edit

 

[Mighty Chin]

I want these movies to be bloated messes. More scenes would make me happier.

 

[Alur]

Thanks for the thread. Didn't realize these were out there. Pretty cool to see what these guys have done with the movies, will def check out the Maple Films version at the very least.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

I appreciate the reviews. I've been following this thread hoping for you to get around to other edits. I need to pick one of these up now.

 

[Enthus]

The Maple Films one is definitely the best, and I really want to get a blu-ray writer so I can put it on my shelf.

 

[ryseing]

I'm glad you bumped this thread OP. I actually haven't seen all three but if the trilogy is as bad as they say I would be interested in finding the best fan edit

That Benny Hill scene OP mentions was the moment when the trilogy went to unredeemable crap for me.

It's tragic. Hobbit is my favorite Tolkien so it doubly hurts.

 

[ginger ninja]

Just let it go brehs. Even severe editing can't save this shit of a movie.

 

[lunchtoast]

I can't remember which one I watched, it might have been There and Back, which was on youtube or vimeo at the time. I enjoyed it, you don't miss the scenes it cuts out.

 

[Bedameister]

I want these movies to be bloated messes. More scenes would make me happier.

Yeah same for me. Unfortunately the Extended Cuts of the Trilogy didn't add that much, other than the LotR Trilogy.

 

[CaviarMeths]

Thank you for this thread. I'm interested in checking out that Fiona van Dahl cut. The other two sound like they've still got plenty of bloat and kept some of the most baffling scenes in tact, so I'll probably just skip them.

There and Back Again is the best cut I've seen. I downloaded it last year, didn't realize it was taken down. Too bad. It removes the worst of the trilogy like pretty much all the Azrog stuff, the romance, all of the Lake Town politics, the "dragon sickness," and trims the actual battle in BotFA down to like 5-10 minutes. It's my daddy's Hobbit and that's the way I like it.

 

[zeshakag]

Thank you for the reviews. I think I'm going to try the two hour cut thanks to your write ups.

 

[Tertullian]

https://vimeo.com/130716015

So… Durin’s Folk and the Hill of Sorcery is a short-ish film (just over an hour) put together by Dustin Lee as a companion piece for his cut of The Hobbit (reviewed above). It takes the parts of Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy concerned with Gandalf driving the Necromancer out of Dol Guldur, which were of course stripped out of Lee’s main edit, and collects them into a separate piece of media, presumably best watched after Lee’s cut of The Hobbit but before the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The scene structure of the thing is really slick, though you pretty much have to have seen Lee’s version of The Hobbit for it to make any sense. It opens with a conversation in Bree between Gandalf and Thorin about the upcoming quest for Erebor, then transitions smoothly from there to the scene in which the “Oakenshield” flashback with Azog is shown. This is all used, basically, as a way of introducing Thrain and his madness and his disappearance. From there, we’re off to Rivendell where Galdalf hobnobs with Saruman and Elrond and Galadriel, and to Radagast the Brown’s hut, where the foundation is laid for the climactic scenes in Dol Guldur itself.

This all works pretty damn well, and my wife enjoyed it more even than Lee’s main Hobbit edit. The only thing here that’s really unfortunate is the return of Radagast, complete with his rabbit sled and bird shit running down his face. But the plot makes sense, and of course it’s always nice to get more Christopher Lee and Cate Blanchett.

My own prejudice is that I like the movie, but I don’t like the fact that it exists. The material is just too on-the-nose; too eager to foreshadow The Lord of the Rings in a way that kinda spoils The Lord of the Rings. We shouldn’t have to hear Sauron and the One Ring explicitly name-dropped before Fellowship. I would certainly rather have this story situated between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings than woven into the Hobbit material itself, stealing thunder from the dwarves’ story (as it was in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy), but I would even more like it to stay in the background.