Game of Thrones: A Tale of Kings and Honor

A true achievement to trim 10-ish hours down to a perfectly reasonable 2.5 hour-movie. I certainly didn't miss anything, but I did have to recollect a few times to remind we of what happens "in between" the cuts. No biggie unless you dive in to this without having seen the entire first season.

The audio and video editing is flawless and the LotR-music worked better than I thought, to be honest. Some of the musical cues do remind me too much of LotR, though, and did bring me out of it momentarily. My big issue with this edit is the letterboxing. Does it give a more cinematic feel? Sure. Is the framing thrown out the window? Mostly. It becomes evident that this is a fan edit (an otherwise stellar fan edit) the moment the framing feels off in a scene. A hair too much there, a foot there; it is noticeable throughout that the framing was not intended for 2.35:1 (or what the result here is).

Other than that I would certainly recommend this edit to anyone, really. Maybe one should be familiar with the first season in order to pick up some of the missing parts. Bottom line: A great edit in every way and an interesting concept, what with using LotR-music and all.

TV-to-movie edits are tough. It's really easy to take a 10 hour TV season and make a 4 hour TV season. What's difficult is taking a 10 hour season and making a proper 2.5 hour movie. In that sense, this edit passes with flying colours. There's another edit of season one that didn't do a good job with the narrative but this is on another level. This is a gripping story with all the right elements. The opening is genius and it flows like a proper movie. The only bad thing I can say about the narrative is that it's not a self-contained story and relies on the fact that sequels are coming. But that's a minor quibble because you'll definitely want to watch the sequel right after this anyway.

The picture quality is great and the addition of the LOTR score is a great bonus. But there's a serious issue with this edit in that there about a dozen or so spots where the picture becomes very pixelated for a few seconds. It's bad enough that it takes you out of the movie and the editor really should have corrected this before releasing it. Were it not for that, this would easily be a 9 or 10 out of 10, but as it stands now, I can't recommend this edit. The editor should really take another shot at this because the narrative is so good that it deserves a release without technical issues.

Having never read the books and having rather enjoyed the GoT series (up until Season 5), the best compliment that I can give this edit is to write that it is "watchable".

The biggest critique/folly of this edit is the inability to fully immerse myself in the story due to the editors decision to use music from The Lord of The Rings movies.
That, is a HUGE mistake.

It is tantamount to someone editing the Star Trek movies and using music from the Star Wars films.

The editor underestimates the power of music. He/She does not seem to understand that movies are not exclusively a visual medium; they are an auditory medium just as much if not more so.

As such, I cannot give this edit a higher score and I only recommend this edit to those who have either, never seen The Lord of The Rings movies, those who do not hold The Lord of the Rings movies in high regard or those who are deaf and have never heard the score from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.