Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Edits, The

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Overall rating
 
9.8
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10.0
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10.0
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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.

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Overall rating
 
9.2
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10.0
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10.0
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10.0
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8.0
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8.0
Although the first movie offers the most material to work with (and two of the five episodes are thankfully dedicated to it), I’m still of a mind that there’s too much included here. I can do without the dish song for example. I’m biased as I believe the original movies don’t capture the tone of the Hobbit book but rather they feel more like the tone of a prequel to the LotR movies yet undermine that repeatedly with silliness and inconsistencies. As such, scenes like trolls, goblins, and dragons talking or spontaneously breaking into song while juggling dishes feels out of place in the movie. That said, if you can accept all that, the episodic nature of this edit works very well. Though Gandalf suddenly appearing out of nowhere to save the day near the climax of multiple episodes does stand out. And there’s things that I feel are narratively inconsistent. For example, I may be mistaken, but is there any reason given for the orc army to join the battle at the end? I watched this over two weeks and of course also have the prior knowledge of the movies, but I can’t recall that army being a significant part of the story at all up to this point.

Overall it works better than the movies for me, but it isn’t a home run. It’s somewhere between a LotR prequel and a book edit, though closer to the latter. I want my Hobbit edits to be closer to the former as I believe that is what the source material calls for. Though I admit it would be tough to make it totally consistent with LotR given the talking dragon, etc.

That said, it is clearly what many other Hobbit fans do want and it is flawlessly executed. I now really want a strong LotR prequel style edit that uses the same episodic nature. Though I still think four hours, max, is enough time.

This is a very strong edit, if not one that satisfies my issues with the source material.

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(Updated: June 21, 2022)
Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
As others have already said - this is probably the best way to watch Hobbit movies. It concentrates primarily on Bilbo and Dwarves and cuts out most of the other plotlines, from which the movies only benefits. As far as i can tell, visual/audio quality has been superb every second of it. Editing is very smooth and feels like it has been done by a real professional. The source material itself however is not even remotely in the same league as LotR trilogy, so naturally there are things that even the best of the fanedits cannot fix, but overall this is definitely deserves the praise.

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Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
This was an incredible improvement upon the original movies. The editing was near-flawless. It is a fanedit working within the limitations of the source materials so there are certainly moments here and there where that is apparent through pacing and the odd cut, but it never took me out of story and that is a triumph. The pace was fantastic and everything flowed quite logically despite the fact large portions are trimmed. I thought the episodic nature was a smart choice which certainly allowed for more breathing room as it can justify a slightly longer runtime then some of the edits that I see posted. I was very impressed and will likely watch it again in the near future...which I can't say about the original films.

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Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
After doing a Lord of the Rings marathon, my wife and I were searching for a better way to watch the Hobbit (We'd seen the theatrical editions before and really didn't like them).

In short, this edit perfectly blended the good parts of the books with the good parts of the movies. It really kept the feeling of a small adventure for a Hobbit within this enormous world that Bilbo doesn't really know much of. Minus a couple of occasional strange audio cuts/transitions, the audiovisual editing was perfect, and even the "normal" quality edit looked great on our high-res screens. Breaking it down into 5 episodes was also a nice touch, as it was easy for us to find intermissions for snacks and such.

Would highly recommend this edit to anyone who wants a more streamlined, focused way to watch the Hobbit trilogy.

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