M4's The Hobbit Book Edit

M4's The Hobbit is easily the best Hobbit edit around. Under the mountain of unnecessary subplots and physics-defying cgi, lies a legitimate adaption of Tolkien's book.
The end of the first movie was expertly edited and inserting the intermission here was a smart move. Using cgi to replace Bard's son with part of the tower was a great idea. The fight between Thorin and Azog is easier to watch without the "jumping out of the ice" fiasco and the battle is wrapped up before it overstays its welcome. I must also mention the cool cover designs and disc art M4 included that demand a spot on your media shelf.
Every choice made in this edit honored the source material and kept the story on Bilbo but didn't sacrifice any element of this epic journey for the sake of runtime. Consider this the definitive adaption of the Hobbit.

Finally getting in a review for this one. I saw it before joining this community and have been caught up watching (and acquireing) other enchancements to my collection. In fact, it was finding this via P2P that brought me into the FanEdit scene here. Definitely worthy of a torrent this one. Its got a brilliant INTERMISSION screen in the middle so the first half is 'There And...' and the second '... Back Again'. Splendid way to spend four hours!

Not sure what M4 meant for a while I began calling this 'Mithrandir's Form' and to that I think I will stick. It suits the fact Gandalf's sojourn to Dol Guldur remains a mystery in this showing, I think. I suppose 'Marvellous Four' too?

I love this. It's near flawless. The only 'problem' I had with it is that it is too book accurate. I think the war and ending could work better if you didn't stick to the book this much.

Video/Audio editing: 10/10. Flawless audio and visual transitions.

Story: Up to the point the war starts it's a solid 10/10. Everything works flawlessly untill the war starts. The war itself and the ending is a 6.5/10 to me, though. There is just some elements missing like Bilbo being on top of the mountain with no context given as to why. Overall I give it a 8/10 for that reason.

I'd be very interested in exactly this edit with a different approach to the ending. That would be perfect imo.

Absolutely accomplishes what it sets out to do, by reducing the bloated Hobbit trilogy to an enjoyable length by cutting out non-sourced sections, and does so with visual enhancements that bring the end product much closer to something worthy of sitting next to the best versions of the LOTR films -- the Red Book cuts, for my money. However, unlike those which are necessarily more episodic in nature, cutting down the Hobbit films to just novel beats has the effective of causing the pacing to be somewhat lopsided and anticlimatic as others have noted. Characters' relationships feel undeveloped one moment and then fully formed the next, with the actual growth missing, and sections of information missing but referred back to in a few places (mostly to do with the Elvish enclaves and their politicking).

A technical marvel, but there may be other versions of the Hobbit that provide a slightly more organic viewing experience. (I've got about a half-dozen to hand so my work is cut out for me...)

An excellent edit that removes the bloated indulgence of Peter Jackson's trilogy and brings it closer to the book. My only complaint is that since so much of Bard's family and Tauriel & Legolas was cut out, Smaug's defeat ended up happening so quickly it was jarring and felt anticlimactic.

Overall I highly, highly recommend.