Review Detail

9.8 112 10
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FanFix November 06, 2021 17358
(Updated: September 16, 2022)
Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
This edit is an absolute triumph. If the case were ever to be made that The Hobbit would be better told as a multi-part TV Series than three overstuffed movies then this is the proof that it could, and in fact, here it's already been done.

Gone are the overly cheesy comedy moments, gone is the forced and ridiculous romance movie, gone are all the heavy handed references to the LotR movies. Yet, even with hours of footage removed this feels like it's straddling the line between honouring Peter Jackson's original style and honouring the silliness and musicality that really was part of the Hobbit book.

Editing-wise this is nigh on perfect and Stromboli Bones has seamlessly stitched many sequences together with nary a tell of their previous editing. Use of swelling musical themes and dialogue cut from other scenes and overlaid on others is incredibly clever and used sparingly to ensure no narrative beat is missed. Can you sometimes tell a scene has been edited? Yes, perhaps. In a few places there are signs that a conversation was cut short but the seamless nature of the transition onto the next scene carries it. An editor with the original footage would have used an alternate take with different delivery to wrap up a scene earlier but (with what he has to work with) the editing is amazing. He's ostensibly done the work the editing team should have originally done, cutting superfluous dialogue and needless comedy larks to keep the narrative moving on this epic journey.

A bonus feature of the split into 5 parts is that you can now watch this bit by bit, as though you're watching a TV Show each night. There are clear moments to take a bathroom break or grab a drink. And even if you do choose to binge every chapter at once, it's only 5 hours and not the bloated 9+ hours of the original edit. Fantastic work. This is the version I'll always watch in future.

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