Hobbit: The Anti-Cringe Cut, The

Holy crap. This edit was beautiful, one of [if not] the best I've seen, alongside Scott Pilgrim vs. the Editor.

I was not a fan of The Hobbit when it came out. I'm 17 now, so I was 10 when then, and a fan of Lord of the Rings. Not a huge fan as I didn't really appreciate things that much back then, but I certainly was entertained by the series. Nothing particularly stood out to me as 'bad' in these films, they were just boring and a little stretched out for my liking. I saw the first one and didn't like it all too much. The second one was better, I really enjoyed Smaug hanging out in the gold, and the stuff with the elves. Never got around to seeing the third one, or rewatching the first two, even after buying the 6-film Middle Earth collection a few years ago (when I became more interested in film, and the Lord of the Rings series).

A little after getting into fanedits earlier this year, I decided that I'd like to try out The Hobbit again. I debated between this edit, and the Original Two-Film structure for my first endeavor, and this one was what I decided on, as there is more cut and the miniseries format lends itself to keeping my attention span.

Anyways, enough about myself. This edit was phenomenal! I can't give very good specifics as I'm not all too familiar with the source content, but I never got bored during the edit, and each episode wrapped up perfectly as it's own narrative. This edit turned me from a [presumed] Hobbit hater, to an actual fan of the series, and debating where I rank it amongst the rest of the Middle Earth set.

I noted a few small issues in editing, not with audio but with visual transitions, most likely just due to the source material available (there was one crossfade from a tracking shot on I think Thorin's head to a landscape, and just the speed/context of the fade was a little strange). Additionally, while, again, I'm not familiar with the source and it could be in there already, there was a few moments where dialogue was cut kind of awkwardly. Not so much that it took me out of the moment, but I felt that some stuff cut messed up the pacing - although I'm sure it successfully "Anti-Cringed" it. (For example, when Bard stands up to Smaug, Smaug doesn't see nor hear him, but somehow notices him immediately and starts speaking to him). However, editing still gets a 10/10 because the % I'd give it would round up anyways...

This edit was extremely well done, and I'm super interested in checking out The Last Jedi - Anti-Cringe Cut now.

Okay, this may just be one of the absolute greatest fanedits I've ever seen. Admittedly, I'm a big fan of the Hobbit trilogy as is, but as someone who really adores the book, I was so happy with how more skillfully and much better this five-hour epic captures the spirit of the original source material. All of the changes, edits, and cuts made are for the absolute better, allowing for the story to flow more smoothly and the characters to be more interesting and involving. In my eyes, this is the definitive adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's unforgettable story. Flawlessly edited and visually stunning. Loved this so much.

Hi, it's been quite a long time since I've gotten this edit but I finally found the time to watch it! I've watched it with someone who has never watched the Hobbit before and she followed the story mostly fine, so that's really great!

The only thing that really threw me off was the "2 months later" when you transitioned between movie 1 and 2.... I don't think it's plausible for them to be at the same location for 2 months. Is there a reason why you chose that time frame? I'd be grateful for an answer.

Otherwise it's an awesome edit, thanks for the great work! I'll definitely recommend it to my friends!

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!

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!