Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Edits, The

This is a very well-done edit. Cutting nearly half the runtime from this bloated trilogy was insane. I really loved how well the "episodes" played out, especially the titles! "A Warm Welcome" worked on three different levels for that episode, it was really amazing. I loved how each episode was 1 hour but never felt cut-off too quickly.

The only things I had a question about (and maybe I just missed it) were the armies arriving at the end: how did the orcs know about the treasure; how did the humans and the elves know each other; how did the dwarves hear about the battle if Thorin&Co locked themselves away with no messengers?
If someone can answer these for me, I'll amend my review to a 10 for Narrative.
Fantastic work!

I absolutely loved it! There are some very clever cuts that totally eliminate the pain points for me in the original films. Several scenes with Smaug are handled very well. The barrel-riding scene is much improved. Azog is handled more appropriately in this edit. The pace of everything is just right, and I think the five-part format works incredibly well. The endings and lead-ins of each episode are nicely done. I highly recommend this edit!

By recently watching the extended editions this fan edit fixes a lot of issues and makes the whole Hobbit trilogy much more enjoyable. I strongly recommend this to everybody, amazing job ^_^.

It’s tough to find anything to say about The Battle of the Five Edits that hasn’t already been said, but I’ll try anyway!

If you’re looking for an edit of the Hobbit that puts Enjoyment over all else (even book-accuracy), then your search thats taken years and countless dollars is at an end. As is the case with all edits, Stromboli left in some things that some people could do without, and removed some things that some people loved. He circumvented this a bit by including “Alternate Versions” of most episodes regarding the biggest bits of criticism, which then let him have his own version + a “fan” version. None of that really applied to me though, as this edit was perfect for me, too!(MAYBE with the exception of Del Toro’s)
I’ve seen a handful of the edits that Stromboli cited in his own (M4 book-cut and J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit), and while borrowing from other edits isn’t an idea that is original to this edit, I think the “will to culminate all Five” was a great idea due to the crazy amount of Hobbit edits that are out there, each with their own really cool ways of handling different things. It was really cool to read the Changes tab and forum post after watching and see how feedback directly influenced certain changes, even after release! The timing of the Eagles rescue is one he seems really stoked with, and I think it worked really well, although I gotta say I’m probably gonna to have to rewatch the unedited movies once again to fully understand what all was changed.

Basically, if you haven’t seen this edit yet and you love the Hobbit, you should give it a go.

Writing this after a re-watch, and man is this real gold. The dark lord SB has indeed fashioned the one true hobbit edit to rule them all. I hope I will keep coming back for more, and also show it to my children when I have them, since this is the only way to watch the Hobbit stuff...