J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (Maple Films Edit)

An amazing edit.
Bonus points for the separate piece following the Dol Guldur plot.

I can't recommend this edit enough! Dustin Lee did a fantastic job cutting this bloated trilogy into a single excellent movie.

The visual and audio editing is top-notch and seamless. I also love how Lee recolored the film to look more like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That was a nice touch.

Lee did a perfect job chipping away the excess bloat and cringe-worthy moments, making this not only watchable, but a fantastic movie that's rewatch worthy (I've watched it about 4 times now in total). Not to sound like an infomercial, but it makes for a great start off point in anyone's Lord of the Rings marathon.

Like I said at the beginning, I can't recommend this edit enough!

10/10

The first Hobbit edit I ever saw, and one of what I consider to be the "Big Five" of the Hobbit edits. Not to mention, THE most popular edit on this entire site. Quite an achievement.

My only complaint here was leaving some shots of the dwarves fighting off Smaug inside the mountain. I understand and respect your reasons, however the scenes belittled Smaug a little to me, and I think you'd have been better off without them!

The Pros you ask? Well, to be frank, the entire rest of this edit is a pro. Your color corrected Smaug was genius, your use of the previously un-used score at the ending worked very well, your color re-grade was excellent, your digital removal of Radagast, your barrel sequence, Smaug sequence, the list goes on and on.

I recreated your barrel-chase sequence and it took me AGES to figure out how you cut out a shot of Tauriel, and eventually I realized that you just made a hard cut MID-SONG and you did it SO well, that it sounds like the song was meant to be that way! Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Even after I'd figured it out, it took me forever to replicate it.

I'd list more things I loved about this edit but anyone reading this might as well just read your change-log because everything on there is bloody marvelous. Great work Dustin, truly the pinnacle of Hobbit Edits, in my humble opinion.

A good way to watch these if you want to see the book adapted to film without committing to the 9 or so hours of the originals. Considering this doesn't flow perfectly anyway, I honestly think it could have been even shorter. I also get the sense that the original movies just weren't that good, meaning this did not add up to an amazing whole either. I may update this review removing my recommendation if I find a shorter edit that I prefer.

Overall I thought this edit was fairly good, I did think it was a bit overhyped. I found their color corrections to be a bit over the top and very noticeable in the shire specifically. Before watching this one I originally watched the Tolkien edit which has far lower quality video but I did find a few things about it that I personally proffered. I think that the Tolkien edit handled the overall story a bit better but I really enjoyed the maple edit for some of it's character development .