Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Edits, The

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Well let it be known, I will not be taking a deep dive like the other reviewers did because I feel that is not my place. I have seen fan-edits before, specifically for The Hobbit but I have never made one.
Let me be clear, if there was “1 edit to rule them all” I’m sure it is this one.
StromboliBones has talent not before seen with making the Lore of the Hobbit as perfect as it should have been on the big screen. The way he turned it into different parts like a series is unbelievable.
I hope that anyone else who is really into Edits or The Hobbit watches this because it is phenomenal. For not having a movie budget and just using pure determination, skill, and love of the Hobbit I am very impressed with what we have here.

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M
1 reviews
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(Updated: October 26, 2023)
Overall rating
 
8.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
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8.0
Narrative
 
8.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
Here we have a HOBBIT FANEDIT - MASH-up of HOBBIT FANEDITS!

I am actually surprised it has not happened before, so here we are with Stromboli Bones (SB) first time edit. And it is a doozy folks!

BUT FIRST...
DISCLAIMER: I approved this First Time Editor Edit as an Approving Faneditor.
Does that conflict me...NOPE!
If it met all the srequirement standards and was bad...I would certainly be telling you all for sure HOWEVER, I am please to report this is a very well put together piece of work (light years better than my first submission).

Watching, let alone reviewing any HOBBIT edit is not easy for me having spent 4 years crafting mine, but over the past few months I have plucked up th e resolve, and dipped my hairy toe (they are hairy), into this pool of creativity, again.

It is a brave person who openly announced on the IN-THE-WORKS threads that he intends to mine over half a dozen other fanedits to create a "greatest hits" of Hobbit Edits.

"THIEF", I hear some cry....
##Get a life, I say to the naysayers. This site is build on repurposing, re-imaging and applying in many case extremely creative and complex new elements to existing filmakers material.

Ahh, but the naysayers might persist..."he just bolted bits together that he did not make"

HORSE FEATHERS! (look it up)

What is an EXTENDED EDITION, if not just bolting on some more bits...(and some are actually very hard to pull off if you are going to complete the deleted scenes etc)....BUT BACK to this MIDDLE EARTH Smorgasbord.

What SB has done here is spent COUNTLESS hours watching variations upon variations of scene after scene of material, over, and over. Judging what suits his vision, merits inclusion, is the best option, most agreeable (and some MUST GO regardless moments) to create a pot-pourri "one-stop-shop" HOBBIT!

So does it work?

I'm please to say it does, and drawing from such diverse visions, it works very well indeed.
And that betrays an important point; SB has also made many many changes to this from his own tastes and preferences. Sometimes switching mid-scene to another source edit, sometimes making his own changes from scratch. That, in my opinion, starts to really make this, another fanedit (albeit, others have put in their effort before...but that's the same as using The Theatrical Versions vs. The Extended Versions).

I go into all this so that I can reason that the score that follow are based on this edit as a whole, no differently than if a new version of Blade Runner had been created from 5 versions of Blade Runner (Theatrical, International, Director's Cut, WorkPrint & Final Cut)....

Philosophically, my view is we are in the same camp.

Audio/Video Quality - 10
I did not detect any issues viewing this on a 55 Inch TV on either.

Visual Editing - 10
Flawless execution throughout, paying particular attention to SB's de novo work

Audio Editing - 10
Although earlier verions of this had some VERY minor issues, they would not have changed this score since in % terms they were "stylistic" in nature and not flaws or errors (and a tad subjective in some instances)

Narrative - 9
It is EXTRAORDINARILY hard to pretend that one has not seen these when viewing them, and to that extent when minor narrative assumptions have to be made the real question has to be, what would someone who has not seen these (but is watching with a person that DOES own the source and who obtained the edit)...what will that newbie viewer make of it?

SB goes to great lengths in his write-up to explain certain choices. A couple that come to mind is the reveal that Bilbo did not hand over The Arkenstone, The Flash of Sauron's eye when Bilbo removes the ring in his encounter with Smaug, the absence of Gandalf's parley with The Elves, and a couple more. These changes are very well reasoned, but for me their presence (or not) do create questions and could be a distraction or confusion for some. That alone would drop a half point, and I believe in rounding up; the other half point drop comes from "Blunt the Knieves". My dislike of this scene notwithsatnding, is that it's presence creates an unnecessary delay to propel the narrative forward at a crucial time. This is especially true in a structure which is episodic. Further, if you are someone who dislikes these songs, you might think there are more to come, but thankfully there are no more. I believe that a disciplined approach, given that all other musicality is removed, would conclude removing this as well. in regards to Sauron's eye; I believe it would have worked better with Gandalf in Mirkwood so it's relocation is a gamble. It will for sure get newbies wondering.

Having said that, this narrative, at 9 / 10 is TOP NOTCH, and skillfully and crtitically judges very well the components to use, modify, removed and add...and SB adds MANY flourishes of his own throughout.

Enjoyment
Now we are in subjective territory; I did enjoy this, tremendously so. Given that I also scored Don Kamillo's (DK's)Anti-Cringe edit a 9 here as well, I feel compelled to allocate the same score for the same reasons, and NOT because DK's forms an important scaffolding for this edit. The reason is MY enjoyment...The only things that detracted from it were a hadfull of Cringe movements and modern idiom which REALLY pulls me out of the movie. This, coupled with a few minor such things mean's, at least 9/10.


But please be assured, this is a HUGELY enjoyable romp:

OVERALL:
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
I wish my first submission was half as good, and I would encourage you to view this with an open mind and embrace it for SBs superb work and the homage that he has paid to the editors whose material inspired him, no, COMPELLED HIM to go where few editors have gone before. I for one am flattered that a few moments from mine, crept in.

Thank you for your trust, engagement and hard work.

BRAVO!
Owner's reply November 14, 2021

Wraith, I can't thank you enough man. You were integral to this process, and I'm flattered that you enjoyed my edit, especially considering you have your own!

I'll defend Blunt the Knives until the day I die because I love it! But I understand your critique of it haha.

As for the ring foreshadowing, I see what you mean, and I do think putting it in for Gandalf at Mirkwood instead of Bilbo with Smaug. The only reason I didn't was that it was a jarring transition to have the scene with Bilbo without it. Maybe I'll tinker with it some more in the future so I can earn that full 10 from ya ;)

You're right about it being hard to pretend we haven't seen them, too. I'll find some more Guinea pigs and see how they feel about the absence of those scenes. Maybe my parents will watch it.......

Anyway, thanks again homie. You're the MVP!

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10.0
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10.0
Outstanding achievement. As someone who typically doesn't like to sit through long movies, I really appreciated and enjoyed the 5 episode structure. It is a literal best of the best edit -- Stromboli took the best things about different edits and combined them into one pleasurable view experience. We will be following your career with great interest.

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Owner's reply November 14, 2021

Thanks for the kind words Jasper, your artwork was essential to bringing this project together! Hopefully one day you'll join me here on the IFDB!

J
2 reviews
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(Updated: December 06, 2021)
Overall rating
 
8.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
8.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
EDIT: I may not be quite as active on FE in the coming days so I wanted to revisit this review. After speaking with the editor, I know he will address the quality issues, so I have adjusted the rating to where I know it will be once those changes are accomplished. Thanks Stromboli Bones.

The Battle of 5 Edits takes many different ideas from the best edits of the Hobbit trilogy and combines them into a new storyline. I like the idea of this: building one edit to rule them all. Here's what I liked most about this edit: it did a good job of splitting up the story into a more easily digested series. The re-scoring effort took a lot of love and it shows. Also not seeing Gandalf for quite a while and then all of a sudden he steps forward to save Bilbo from Thorin throwing him from the ledge-- that was a superb dramatic moment!

As a personal preference, I enjoy little to no expository especially of the type where characters explain the storyline itself. Much of that was left intact in this edit. Overall, this is a good effort, but I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't distracted by the audio fidelity and many not quite seamless audio transitions-- and glitches.

The audio is in surround format so high praise for that alone, but it sounded rather compressed throughout all episodes. The lower audio bitrate of 384 kbps (for 6 channels) resulted in an overall slight muddiness of the voices, and during orchestral parts, a noticeable swirling sound of higher frequency compression artifacts. The rendered audio differs greatly from the original source in terms of fidelity.

The audio fidelity ranges from fair (6) to below average (4) depending on content, average rating of 5.

The video fidelity of the series ranges from good (8) to below average (4), depending on content, average rating of 7. So I gave the average of the audio and video which is a 6. The great disparity on video fidelity (ranging from good to below average) is due in part to editing the renders from other editors rather than ripping the original source and recreating what the other editors made. Also the final bitrate or encoder used for this edit appeared not to handle dark scenes well.

The visual editing I rated at good with a rating of 8, rather than excellent (9) or best in class/perfect (10) because of one flash frame and some jittery slo-mo, which are easily corrected (detailed below).

The audio editing I rated a 4 because of non-seamless audio transitions and various glitches. When watching an edit of a film, I don't want to know I'm watching an edit of a film, so audio anomalies really stand out to me. Audio is the most important part of fan editing really. More details given below.

Video artifacts below, listing just some examples to support the video quality rating given:
Ep 1 26:44 banding artifacts noticeable artifacts on chair
Ep 1 31m 29s major banding artifacts in background during song
Ep 1 31m 49s extreme banding artifacts in the night sky
Ep 2 8m 37s significant banding night sky
Ep 2 14m 39s background night sky blockiness and banding
Ep2 31:02 significant moving blocks on Gollum's arm
Ep 2 50m 45 much blockiness during bird rescue with night sky
Ep 3 5m transformation from bear to man - moderately blocky
Ep3 50m 9 extreme banding/blocking on Thorin's and Bilbo's clothing, night scene
Note Ep4 overall appeared to have mostly good perceptual quality
Ep 4 39m 28s extreme blocking/pixelation in out of focus foreground
Ep 5 20m 31s moderate blocking on close shot of Thorin
Ep 5 24m 48s blocking/banding in background when Thorin expresses a change of heart

And below are detailed comments for each episode:

Ep 1
Nice job on the opening titles The Hobbit Battle of the Five Edits for all the episodes.
4m 14s the tail end of some of Bilbo's cut dialogue is audible for a split second.
I like how we don't see Gandalf give Thorin the key, makes it seem later like they have a backstory together
30m 7s Thorin is still shaking the key but no longer talking
53m 42s audio abruptly goes out in right channels for a moment
55m 24s audio fade out at end stops abruptly

Ep 2
16m 33s disharmonious audio transition, notes here do not blend well because the pieces blended were in different keys.
48m 53s example of high frequency sound artifacts during music
50m 50s jarring audio transition. Sounds like maybe reverb was used to help blend it but the reverb effect abruptly stops???
52m 23s audio transition problem in quick shot from Thorin back to mountain. Sudden jump in EQ or content on a channel with no audio blending.
52m 51s as Bilbo peers over the rocks, very choppy slow-mo. I suggest optical blending mode.
Really nice ending on part 2 with the bear and the music!! Creates a sense of danger.

Ep 3
2m 5s audio skips for a split second just before Gandalf says, "there is a house."
Cool how the A Warm Welcome text disappears with the axe hit. I like things like that.
10m 9s audio sync is off for a few seconds, as Beorn speaks
10m 14s odd audio fade in happens mid-scene as Beorn continues to speak
13m 51s flash frame split second shot of Gandalf at a different angle
Audio fade out for end titles jarring/has an error. It starts to fade but shifts suddenly to port noises then immediately goes silent.

Ep 4
6m 34s music transition from Bilbo being surprised to Thorin ready to open the lock is a bit abrupt and could probably be smoothed out some
39m 16s as Thorin fortifies the mountain, ambient noise suddenly cuts out mid scene. Possibly center channel muted.
Overall Ep4 has the best video quality and fewest audio transition issues

Ep 5 (Note: much improved music choices for the end credits!)
18s audio glitches a little before the WB logo
6m 11s audio skips while the wind whistles around
38m 35s in the audio transition from battle to the flying creatures, can't tell if this is a clunky audio transition or just audio artifacts from low bitrate.
41m 26s un-smooth music change
1h 1m 7s disharmonious audio transition during end credits
End credits music ends long before credits end

Overall, I did appreciate this edit and will enjoy it more once it gets a little more refined. Thank you Stromboli Bones!

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Owner's reply November 28, 2021

Sorry you found so many technical issues! I'll definitely look into these ASAP and get them polished up!

I do have some less compressed files, I'll start including them as options for people who don't care that much about big downloads and have a more refined palette!

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Overall rating
 
9.8
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10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
Highly enjoyable edit. Nothing felt out of place and nothing felt missing from the original cuts.

It all flowed nicely and gave the professional feeling throughout. Definitely worth a watch.

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