Hobbit: The Anti-Cringe Cut, The

First off: my Enjoyment level just beeing 8 is purely because of the Films themselves.
I´m somehow over the Hobbit, if you know what i mean.
I have never read the Hobbit or LOTR and so i was ok with pretty much everything back when it came out. Except, i felt it all in parts repetitiv and to long. That was before the Extended Cuts came out.
And dont get me wrong, all the Fans love the effort and thet Directors even care enough to put so much work into something is great.

This Edit came to play because i wanted to try different approaches to the whole, so i watched the Marple Cut that was mentioned a lot on the net. And than i was given the DonKamillo CVut of The Batman in his Mini Series Format that i loved somuch.
The only thing to do know, was to see the Hobbit again in this Series Format and i did something that i have not expected: I made me have real Fun with the whole thing again.
The Episodical Format works so well in this case, one can start and with ho stress watch the rest later :)

The films really are Dustcollectors on my Shelf now.
DonKamillo's edting is excellent- the cuts are seamless (for me).
Eeach episode moves with the pace it needs and so much Buffermaterial is gone.
I did not miss anything. I had room to let the Episode sink in, when i felt it was needed and came back to the next one.

As a miniseries, done by DonKamillo, this is the second time i enjoyed a film more after his touches.
I tip my Cap to you DK.

V.

I greatly enjoyed this edit. Especially the idea of making it a mini series is incredibly. The pacing is terrific and each episode basically invites the viewer to immediately binge the next.

It reminded me how people when I ask to watch a long movie go NOOO three hours are you INSANE? But then does binge 5 episodes of a tv show for five hours lmao. I think this approach makes the Hobbit far more accessible!

Well done and if I had to nitpick it would be that the ending still feels edited, which is to be expected considering the terrible source material. I havent seen a single edit where the final battle was completely satisfying for me, but kudos because it was very creative with the flashback!

For the origination of the episodic structure golden stars rain down on this fan-edit (and editor) eternally. Not sure about the colours on the intro and outro screens but hey its cool enough.... Gold is just better!!

Never-the-less I score the narrative down. Of course inconsistencies and holes are going to be rife when trimming off and cutting down but one in particular stands out where at Rivendell there is mention of an orc ambush, yet the last scene was the trolls. And the Galadriel scene with Gandalf not followed by any Dol Guldur, is redundant (and it's cringy)..... We must accept this wizard simply comes and goes with little to no notice at all from time to time!! Too; cringy dwarf/elf love at the soiree seeps its way in; Goblin King's 'made in Rivendell... Second Age' throw away remark is cringy; company - by order of the king - attempts to break down their magic door like imbecilic cringemeisters; and the black arrow fiasco needs to be done away with in favour of straight up arrow shot, as it is a cringeworthy moment - better to let Smaug die by surprise (explains away Thorin's cringy madness as being shock, hehe)..... Seriously, if this is 'The Anti-Cringe Cut' these issues need addressing!!

It might be an idea to aim for 4 episodes at ~50 mins and 1 final episode at ~40 mins, with illustrative credits only, and a LOTR trailer/teaser consisting of White Council footage combined with some Frodo at Bag End shots. Calling it 'The Battle of Five Episodes'... if not 'Anti-Cringe' this cringe will be fine!!!

Really appreciate the quick intro title screens and outro 'To be continued....' not breaking immersion too much during back to back play-through. Video editing on the episode title blooms was great except for slight stutters here and there, and the final one that got a different font. Audio editing needs bass depletion at times (mainly durge at begining) as it may anger neighbours.

Oh and one final thought is on the transition between 4 and 5. Definitely difficult here as it gets frantic. To me it seems as though the best end point for 4 is on Thorin's face when he sees all the elf arrows pointing at him. Beginning 5 with Bard looking to Thranduil and the elves lowering their bows. With the 'There And Back Again' title blooming at the point where Bilbo goes to Gandalf if the panning shot looking at Erebor over the spears can be slowed down?!?

Sorry for the long wait for the review, I finally finished the last episode last night.

Audio/Video Quality
Yep this was all good, I didn't notice any audio or visual quality issues.

Visual Editing
The visual editing was mostly good, however in some shots the cropping made the characters look a little stretched. It wasn't really a problem most of the time, only sometimes when the shot was a closeup.

Audio Editing
Again, the audio editing was mostly good. There was the occasional awkward transition, but these were very few and far between. The only scenes that had noticeable edits were in the 'Out of the Frying Pan' sequence and the Battle of the Five Armies. However, these are very difficult scenes to chop down, so it's understandable.

There were some really cool edits, these kind of apply to both visual and audio editing, but I'll just mention them here. I really liked the way you changed the scene where Thorin goes back to normal. I didn't even notice that the scene had been modified until the end when I realized that Smaug wasn't in it. I also really liked the flashback to the Carrock when Bilbo gets knocked out, it made the tragedy of Thorin's death much stronger and made for a really good way to introduce the eagles into the battle.

Narrative
I think you made really great use of the TV show format, every episode ended in a perfect way where it felt like an ending but I still was anticipating the next episode. However I do have some small nitpicks.

One thing I noticed in the scene where Thorin goes back to normal is that some of the stuff he remembers people saying to him are from scenes that were cut from the edit. I think it was just dialogue from the scene where him and Dwalin are talking in the throne room. This could be fixed by just including that scene right before the gold room scene.

I also found it a little strange that Bard pulled out the black arrow from his living room, but seemingly forgot to bring it with him to kill Smaug and needed his son to bring it. I understand that this is difficult to avoid due to what happens in the original films, but this could maybe be fixed by just removing the part where Bard reveals that he had the black arrow all along, and it could be implied that Bain grabbed the black arrow from the Laketown armory or something. This could be a payoff from the scene where he tells the dwarves that the black arrow knocked off one of Smaug's scales. These are only very minor flaws, the narrative as a whole was very enjoyable.

Enjoyment
I very much enjoyed this edit. It did a good job in splitting up the Hobbit movies in a way that felt right with the format, it didn't just feel like 3 movies split into 5 parts. A very well done edit!

I promised to write this review a long time ago. Sorry to the creator it took me so long. My plan was to watch a few of the edits to be able to compare them all, but, as they say, life gets in the way sometimes.

This was my first fan-edit experience and I was totally impressed. (I hadn't seen The Hobbit films before I bought the extended editions, and it was actually how slow and dragged on the films were that triggered the web search that open my eyes to the fan-edit world.) I was completely surprised by the quality of image and sound in general, but especially how there was absolutely nothing that stood out to me to make me think these were anything other than original Hollywood released DVDs. Well done!!!

I burnt the 5 episodes to DVD in order to watch with my kids. The episode format was fantastic for that purpose, so thank you! Yours was their first experience in the HobbitLOTRTolkien universe! In general, I think the episodes are way better than having to sit thru a 3+ hour movie.