Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Edits, The

*Edited for v3

I had several complaints on an earlier version I watched. Stromboli has gone through and fixed most of them with his current version. I think right now this is the best edit of the Hobbit out there!

The vast majority of transitions are great and mostly unnoticeable. This goes for visual and audio transitions. I absolutely love the pacing, especially the beginning and end. You aren't rushed between each chapter as most Hobbit edits are. You get to breathe between each mini-story. The latest version has better pacing in the middle chapters.

Another thing I enjoyed was keeping in a lot of the dwarf character moments. I know they get a little goofy, like Bombur breaking the bench, or the burps at the table, but a lot of other edits lose the group dynamic by taking so many of these out to make it more serious.

Since the story of the Hobbit is basically a bunch of self contained mini-adventures, putting the format in 5 hour long episodes rather than longer movies works great. Each one has a start and a proper conclusion.

Individual episode notes:

E1: I think this episode is perfectly paced. Loved how it started a bit slower than most edits, and then ends well right after the trolls. I think this episode was done exceptionally well. I wouldn't change a thing.

E2: Also loved this episode. The story is mainly confined to the caves and then their escape and works really well. The whole Gollum sequence is fantastic. And the escape from the wolves is great. Most of my original complaints were fixed. Just one thing I think would serve this better:
- A lot of editors cut the goblin cave escape fight way down, but not usually completely out. I wish some of it was left in. They jump very quickly from Gandalf arriving to them escaping the caves. It was nice to see some of their capabilities as fighters because they haven't done much yet.

E3: Stromboli reinstated the longer sequence in the forest and the pacing is much better now. I like that some of the river barrel fight was left in. I think it's a fun battle that most edits cut completely out. I just wish Kili's leg being shot could have been removed as it creates a bit of a continuity error because his injury just gets forgotten after that.

E4: Overall this episode was pretty good, mainly focusing on the dragon and his demise, and then the buildup to the battle of the five armies. I do wish we could have spent more time with the dragon and have his death be the climax of the episode, but the episode works very well regardless. This edit gives a bit more fleshing out of Bard than other edits I've seen especially the book edits. His character works much better than those other edits in my opinion. I only have a few critiques:
- During Bilbo's time with Smaug there is a cutaway to Thorin not wanting to go in to help. This scene feels weird without any buildup of Thorin going crazy. I think it could have been left out. After the dragon dies there are more natural scenes building to his madness.
- Also, the scene a little later where the dragon breaks out and Balin comments that it is a dragon just feels out of place. They already heard the dragon before when they were debating to go in to help Bilbo. If the scene before was removed then this one would feel better.

E5: This final episode concludes so well! This is definitely my favorite edit of the last battle. It isn't cut completely down like so many edits do, and it feels like a proper finale. A big change was to not show Bilbo delivering the Arkenstone to Bard. While there were some good character moments there with Bilbo, I like Stromboli's choice to cut it. It worked really well. The goat ride up to the top of the fortress is kept in. Other edits kind of just have them appear up there. Much better choice to keep it in. The only thing about this episode that still doesn't work for me is Thorin's change of heart. Him simply recalling things his friends said to him and then going back to normal is so anticlimactic for his arc. I'm not sure there is a way to fix this though, so no fault to the edit. Other than that I loved this ending!

This is a great edit. Combining the best of the top edits was genius, as was splitting it into 5 hour-long episodes.

Breaking into episodes makes it easier to digest the whole massive work. The breakpoints are pretty good. I was initially annoyed with the first one, continuing on until Bilbo sees Beorn in bear form, then I thought "aha, teaser 'coming next'" treatment.

Now, I haven't watched (or obtained) all of the five edits Stromboli based his on so I'm hitting many of the ideas fresh here. I'll definitely get my hands on the ones I'm missing, and watch the ones I've been remiss on. So many great ideas in there.

The excising of the side plots was masterfully done with no continuity issues that I could detect. I did miss Radagast a bit, but the story didn't suffer for missing him.

Cutting Azog down to "just that Orc general in the final battle" worked wonderfully well. If you hadn't watched the originals that is just who he would be. This added side plot was one of my pain points in the originals and it's fixed here.

Same with the love triangle. That's just annoying and distracting, good riddins I say.

In goblin town there's just enough silliness left in for the children's book origins, but not so much as to be annoying. It's a (tiny) bit of a shame to lose so much of the running fight in the dwarves' escape, but keeping the bad physics CGI would have been worse. Bilbo's Riddles in the Dark section is perfect; losing the added goblin and change to how Bilbo finds the ring resolved the little issues there.

The handling of Smaug was just as masterfully handled. Just enough of chasing Bilbo to maintain a good flow between the chat in the treasure room and Smaug having enough & leaving to raze Laketown. Losing the battle there was great; much as I enjoy most of the sequence, it is over the top an unnecessary. Smaug bursting out of the gates was an especially satisfying shot--no more gold! He looks right! Reworking the sequence and reactions of the dwarves was great--it makes more sense now.

Lastly the battle of the five armies was well handled. Just enough silly/over-the-top stuff for the children's book origins was left in. Reworking Azog/Bolg and the heroes' final fight at the summit worked extremely well. Before that, the handling of Thorin's dragon fever, Bilbo's actions, and the Arkenstone also worked very well. Lots of extraneous stuff eliminated and moving things along.

So this is the first Hobbit fan edit I've seen. Overall it's very good. I'm not really one to compare the edits vs the original (or the book for that matter) and I mostly just base everything on the "enjoyment" factor. I would say I enjoyed all 5 episodes very much.
I'm not sure yet if I liked 5 bite-sized episodes. It seemed like I was watching a mini series. I watched the first 2 episodes on a Saturday night, the next 2 episodes Sunday night, and the last episode the following Saturday.
Losing Radagast and most of Legolas is indeed the best lol.
I do think that shortening everything and editing this way made the whole story much easier to follow.
However, I think the origin story of how the dwarves lost their home to Smaug is quite important to be shown first thing. If someone who has not seen the original trilogy watched this, s/he would have no idea why suddenly a bunch of dwarves barged into Bilbo's home. I suppose this would really be putting the audience in Bilbo's perspective. In any case, who am I to judge becuase as far as I know, most fan edits also removed the origin story and just let it unfold itself later.
There were some glitches in the audio but Stromboli told me he was aware and fixed it.
Thank you Stromboli for my very awesome first fan edit!

To the fanedit community,

I am the wife of the great Stromboli Bones himself! Prepare yourself for a long one and please read this knowing that (while biased) my review will be quite honest!

Stromboli and I got together after these movies came out. I am a very avid fan of the Lord of the Rings universe and I have always enjoyed the Hobbit movies (I went and saw them all on opening night of the original theater releases). I want you all to know I never minded any of these movies and having more time with the characters I so loved is a treasure to me. That being said I only watched The Battle of the Five Armies the once in theater. When I say I never thought that cutting these movies down I mean I NEVER thought that fanedits were a thing nor would I ever take an interest in finding a better version.
This Journey for me started when Stromboli decided the originals were not "good enough". There was AMAZING potential but the studio really stunted the greatness that could have been the Hobbit franchise. So he found this website. Where he combed through what felt like a BILLION fanedits of this film to find the version that felt perfect. I cannot even to begin to put into words how EXHAUSTING it is to see the same movie and the same scenes reworked over and over again in another person's vision of how it "should" go. I heard "Babe look at how DonKamillo put it into episodes" and "YOOOOOOOO check out how Maple Films made this song flow into this other song" IN A FREAKING SECOND TRANSITON THAT NO ONE IN THE WORLD WOULD NOTICE. We combed though every edit that this stupid website had to offer way past the point where I was tired of seeing these movies. Until, to the dismay of us both....he decided to make his own...

This man of mine obsessed over these edits, taking his favorite bits from his hardworking precesessors. Stromboli took bits and bobs and even full scenes yes from other people but he had to recreate, mesh and come up with his own ideas as the time went on. The barrel scene was probably the MOST painstaking. I cannot tell you HOW MANY TIMES I would be in the middle of putting away laundry or watching my own show when I would hear "Honey will you watch this it will only take a sec!!!" (when it rarely ever took one sec).
When I say he obsessed I mean it he OBSESSED over getting every minute detail right. On game nights, I kept hearing from his coworkers "if I have to listen to him tell me about this part of his edit or that part of his edit anymore I'm gonna be sick. I don't know how you do it".

I had a LOT of fun at first hearing how he was gonna take out Radagast and get rid of showing Bilbo leaving the dwarfs to give Gandalf the Arkenstone. But when it got to the eagle scene taking the troop from the flaming trees to the mountain where they first see Erebor...I almost lost it.
We had to put in a rule, he wasn't allowed to talk about the Hobbit in the car or in the shower, especially the shower (yes we are gross and in love that we shower together daily). Yet in one of these breaks of my rule was the time when I got to do my part and suggest a way to make that eagle scene work!! HUZZAH! When all was said and done, (because in the middle of this he proposed and asked me to marry him after 4 years together on Hobbit day 2020) my wedding gift to him was renting out a theater where all his friends and family could see the masterpiece I knew he had created. Here we asked ALL of his friends to come and watch and to do so with a critical eye. He wanted any and all feed back; he wanted to know if anything felt wrong or jarring.... and that is where my dear readers......someone told him "I loved ALMOST all of it".
The ONE scene that I helped piece together...the one that made me feel like I was part of the team.... was the one small piece that didn't quite fit :( Out of nowhere he found a new edit with the perfect to pieces to Stromboli's problems. This guy M4 had digitally removed the scars from Thorins face after the eagle rescue, AND fixed the Smaug exit from the building where he was all gold (another major pain point that I just couldn't watch ONE MORE editors rendition cause they all felt the SAME!!!!) Thank god for those small but lifesaving changes that someone took the time to do. You have No IDEA how nice it was to stop hearing about those parts of the movie.

With this long winded story coming to a close, the man of my dreams has added what I'm sure may be just another drop in the bucket of hobbit edits. And while I don't wanna watch the Hobbit originals or any of the edits for a very Very long time, this edit was combed over to be the most digestible, most entertaining, and to show the upmost respect for all the creators and people who worked on the originals and edits. This IS the best edit for me. It has everything I want. The episodic format is easily shared with friends who don't have enough time in their day for extended editions (that I normally prefer). The pacing is done well and maintains the integrity of the story, improves it actually! The music is fun and whimsical as a movie about Dwarfs on an epic quest to kill a dragon should be and the transitions in the audio were done in such a way that I could never find them if I tried (and believe me, I have heard every single one so, SO many times). I am so incredibly proud of this man you have no idea. This is a very enjoyable experience and in my very biased opinion: a 9/10 (minus a point for my pain and suffering, because oh boy I do not wanna watch these again ANYTIME soon).
--Mrs. Stromboli Bones

When I saw The Hobbit movies in the theater, I couldn't help but think that there was a great version of the story inside Peter Jackson's movies, but just that it had been buried among a terminal amount of Flotsam and Jetsam. I've watched a few of the more well-regarded 3-in-1 edits (Maple Films, Bread & Butter, Dwarfed Edition), but there are points in each with awkward or jarring edits and some continuity errors. Battle of the Five Edits is far and away the best for it's attention to detail, in my opinion.

When Amazon announced their new Lord of the Rings prequel show, it got me thinking that the Hobbit would've been great as a limited-run miniseries, due to the episodic nature of the story. The trolls, the stone giants, Riddles in the Dark, Beorn's house, Mirkwood, etc. - these are all essentially stand-alone scenes that would work as episodes in a TV show and not suffer from needing to cut way too much cool stuff from the book in order to make it a single movie, or else making a single butt-numbing 4+ hour long movie.

It didn't occur to me that one could split Jackson's movies into episodes, but it is a stroke of genius that works incredibly well. I also love how excising most the cartoonish and videogamey action scenes that Jackson added to pad it out to a trilogy has the side effect of making the movies more appropriate for the same age range as the book, seeing as how most of the gratuitous violence was in the various Azog/Orc attack scenes that have been almost completely cut here. I have two kids, who are now about the age I was when I fell in love with the book - I wouldn't be comfortable showing them the theatrical or extended editions, with all their beheadings and squirting gore, but this version scales that back to an acceptable level, while splitting it into episodes makes it digestible for kids in the high single-digit age range, who would never have sat through a single 3.5+ hour movie in one sitting (let alone three).

In my dream version, the Ian Holm/Frodo prologue would've been excised, but I get why it was kept (in abbreviated form), since otherwise the movie starts very jarringly with no real introduction for Bilbo and Gandalf showing up in basically the first shot, as in a few of the other edits I've watched. Which speaks to the great job this edit does of threading that needle between following the book more closely and making the "best possible version of these movies" (as Stromboli Bones states as his thesis for this edit). One could expect that if this was the version of the prologue we got in the theatrical version, it would've felt a lot less egregious and felt less out-of-sync with the rest of the movies. The only other thing I would say is that the climactic battle could stand to be shorter still, with some of the more ridiculous CGI troll antics cut (peg leg trolls, battering ram trolls, etc).

The attention to detail that has been paid to not creating continuity errors or jarring cuts is far and away better than any of the others I have watched. A few nice nods to the further LoTR films have been kept (the shards of Narsil being glimpsed in Rivendell, etc.) while removing the egregious prequel-ish easter-eggs and heavy-handed foreshadowing that Jackson larded it up with.

The episodic structure allows keeping a lot of iconic stuff I love from the book (the songs, the eagles, Beorn, etc.) while not making everything feel either ploddingly overlong or way too rushed and confusing, like a lot of the 3-in-1 edits.

I love that Stromboli actually rented out a local theater to screen it for his friends and then incorporated feedback to fix any continuity errors or editing issues, which speaks to the amount of effort and attention to detail that went into making this the best edit available of these movies. This will be the canonical version for my family from now on!