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

Probably the highest quality editing I've seen yet from a fan edit, A/V quality was superb and I didnt notice a single cut that stood out (hold the Smaug covered in gold).

Reducing the run time to less than a half of the original and maintaining a (not just functional but IMO better) story is no small feat but was absolutely accomplished here.

Coming in a little over 4 hours this is still slightly long considering its source material, however it is (in spite of this) An Unexpected and Enjoyable Journey

My biggest thought after watching this edit was, "I thought this was supposed to be JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit?" I don't really feel that it's fair to title this edit in such a way when it's nowhere near a book cut. I still had to watch the Elven/Goblin fight during the barrel sequence, the dwarves still ran around with Smaug inside the mountain, Bard still shot the arrow off of his son's shoulder, and we watched the whole finale unfold between Thorin and Azog. It'd be one thing if there were just no good way to cut these things out, but they have all been skillfully taken care of in various other edits. This is absolutely a better film than the theatrical trilogy, but it falls short as a book cut, which is what I expected given the title.

Finally, I thought it was odd the massive amount of effort that went into all of the formats and subtitles available for this edit, yet they lazily copied and pasted the credits from The Battle of the Five Armies? Not only are there names of actors and characters who never appear in the film, there are drawings of them! I've heard time and again that the goal with fanedits is for them to feel like theatrical releases. When the end credits started rolling and a bunch of faces popped up that weren't in the film, it definitely screamed fanedit to me.

I apologize for the harsh review, but I have to disagree with the general consensus here--they put a lot of effort into this one, to be sure, but it fell short in a lot of ways for me, unfortunately.

I have a vague memory of seeing any of the The Hobbit films in the theater, because I passed out for large chunks of it, and my distaste led me to avoid the others. But I grew up on the Hobbit before I even knew about LOTR or understood who Tolkien was, so I've always wanted to give it a chance. I bought the DVDs and never even opened them, so this was a new experience for me. The "Trilogy" was well-known as a studio cash grab chopping up a relatively short book into three films (this is a fascinating breakdown of it: http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/601909-stretching-hobbit-trilogy-numbers). The article explains how they spent 2m30s of screentime to cover a single sentence (ultimately averaging 2 mins per page), and it really felt like it.

I was glad I came across this fan-edit. It no longer feels like a bloated, dragging yarn designed to steal money from your pockets while it puts you to sleep. It is now an David Lean-style epic (complete with a stylish "Intermission"), adhering faithfully to Tolkien's book. The edits were so flawless, I literally had to jump online to find where the first movie ended because I knew I was in 'Smaug.' It moved at a brisk pace but still felt expansive and awe-inspiring. So much so, I felt forced to watch the LOTR films afterward.

This was clearly a labor of love, with amazing attention to detail. There is a plethora of formats available for download, and richly designed custom covers for every format and in multiple (!) colors. The originals will stay sealed and collect dust, as this is now my official version of the film.

When I left the theater after seeing the first of the Hobbit "trilogy," I didn't enjoy the movie on the whole, but appreciated elements of it. My end game was always going to be a 3-in-1 edit of the whole trilogy into a proper precursor to the LOTR trilogy. After the second two films, I felt very cynical about the whole endeavor and did not bother to check out any fan work in that department... until now.

Once enough time had passed, and my distaste was not so close at hand, I decided to check out and watch whichever 3-in-1 seems to have been most well received, preferably one that claims to be faithful to the book, and does not try to retain the White Council stuff. I think I made the right decision in picking this one.

I sat down and watched it in one sitting, punctuated with a few pauses. I had an open mind, intentionally not being in a critical mindset, but instead imagining that I had just time travelled from early 2012 and was skipping straight into THIS being my only experience with Peter Jackson's Hobbit project. And, with that mindset in place, I was enthralled. As someone who fusses with perfectionism when editing, I didn't notice many issues at all. There are a few spots where the audio transitions aren't fully seamless, but I was more than willing to go along with these and take them in stride; I doubt they could be made very much better. Only after watching this one did I download a few other Hobbit edits to compare and contrast, and this one appeared more sound (no pun intended) in this regard than the portions of the others I spot-checked.

This cut removes much, and does so with fluidity. A fair bit is retained that I would have liked to see gone, but I understand why they are there. Orcs still attack the company as they flee in barrels, but I understand that it would have been very abrupt to remove completely, and jarring with the music. The editor does, however, tie this sequence into the story later with a reworked scene in which Bolg and Azog meet up and march on the Lonely Mountain. It's a little unfortunate that Kili gets injured and appears to be in pain, but we don't follow up with him again.

For the time being at least, this is my go-to version of the film, and I look forward to having friends and family over to watch it as part one of four in a LOTR quadrilogy.

I do have a few suggestions, however, should the editor decide to revise this work. These are minor, and the edit has great integrity as it is. Nevertheless, being fidgety, I went ahead and did my own little fan edit of this fan edit, with the following changes:

[Redacted; I feel bad for listing such minor things which don't amount to much. The edit doesn't need any tweaking, even if I did a smidge just for myself.]

All of these tweaks are very minor, which is a testament to a very well-done fan edit. I heartily recommend this as "The Hobbit" movie for any audience.

I've seen a number of Hobbit fan edits since An Unexpected Journey was first released, and this is by far one of the best. Dustin Lee (as he credits himself in the edit) has done an excellent job condensing the trilogy down into a single film just a bit longer than the extended version of Return of the King. Though I did watch it over two nights, the edit really flies by. The large sections that were cut, such as the Dol Goldur subplot, the White Council, some of the battle at the end, were done so seamlessly. I know lots of other trims were also done, and while I did notice a few things missing, there was probably much and more I didn't notice.

The audio was great, though there were a handful of audio transitions where the music faded out a bit suddenly into silence, but those were soon forgotten. There were no visual glitches or stray frames, though as daxtreme pointed out, Bilbo slipping off the cliffs before they get captured by the goblins was kind of odd. Lee did a good job on the recoloring of Smaug leaving the mountain and spinning off the gold. You really need this shot, and it's not hard to imagine that after spending years laying on a pile of gold that he'd have a bunch in his scales.

There were a few narrative issues. I wasn't a huge fan of how Azog was handled. We get that he's hunting the dwarf party and that there's some bad blood there, but it's never really explored. Because of that, the final fight betweem Azog and Thorin doesn't have much weight (but good job cutting Thorin getting stabbed through the foot!) It also wouldn't have hurt to show Legolas returning Orcrist to Thorin (Spence did it wonderfully) to show the growing unity between the dwarves and elves and explain how Thorin got his old sword back. I understand wanting to create a version more like the book, but as with any adaptation, concessions must be made.

Video quality was great, but given that the edit made use of two BD-50 discs (25.5 GB and 36.5 respectively) a little more space could have been used for the video. The quality was great, but it could have been excellent. The video quality on the menus suffered a bit, but again, this could have been taken care of by using more of the available space. If you're going to utilize the BD-50 format, why not take more advantage of it?

Overall, I enjoyed this edit, but I'm torn between this and Spence's version being my preferred version. If you're a purist and want something close to the novel, watch this version. If you didn't mind things like the Dol Goldur subplot, Spence's version is still great too.