Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Arkenstone Edition, The

Straight from the forum:

After having read through the thread and watching the edit, I don't have much to add but my own thanks for such a fantastic rework of the film. The pacing is far better than the original, the themes more consistent and less heavy-handed, the score fluid and engaging. There was perhaps one awkward cut during the White Council meeting, but if I hadn't known it was an edited version of the film, I likely wouldn't have noticed. Perhaps it's my audio setup, but I didn't have any issues with dialog volumes. I really appreciate your take on the overuse of CGI (i.e. best to be left on the cutting room floor), as it's becoming a worse and worse part of the series. I'm already looking forward to your take on DoS, if only to have that damn barrel scene fixed.

It's still The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I personally enjoyed the theatrical cut, approaching the film as the light-hearted adventure it's supposed to be and I appreciated all the content, but I was aware that there's simply too much of it and very little of it justifies the extended running time. Even with this edit, AUJ remains relatively exposition-heavy - which is understandable since it's the first entry in this trilogy - with fairly shallow characterization and a simple plot to boot. But Kerr managed to just tighten everything up overall whilst having little to no impact on the original, light-hearted adventure vision for the film.

The opening section where Bilbo is convinced to join the company feels just about right now in
terms of length. Azog becomes a more ominous, dangerous villain by reducing his dialogue and
screen time. Radagast's shorter, quicker introduction works well, although it's a little abrupt IMO. The trimmed troll and Warg chase sequences remove absolutely nothing of consequence based on the fact I noticed 0% of the changes whilst they remained fully fleshed-out sections of action. Their pit-stop in Rivendell drags down the pacing a little less, and the closing goblin cave segment is much less indulgent. Kerr has simply made AUJ a better film on every level, although I personally don't agree with cutting the stone giants (more so because the company's climb along the stormy mountain now feels a little on the short side rather than actually missing the giants, no matter how grand or entertaining they are), trimming the goblin caves to the extent that there's barely any fighting and you don't even see the goblin king killed, or cutting the shot of the dwarves falling into the goblin cave in dramatic fashion. Nonetheless, it's a huge pacing improvement on the original film, and while it's still not a masterpiece this will certainly be my go-to version of AUJ from now on.

Video and sound quality is excellent for the MP4 release and the editing is flawless, with only a
handful of slightly noticable transitions throughout the 140 minute run time. Video editing is pretty much unnoticeable and the sound work is similarly excellent, save for some times where the music seems a bit over-loud compared to the dialogue or when the sound recreation falls a bit flat in the reworked climax. My hats off to Kerr nonetheless for making such a smoothly extensive edit that remains true to the original intentions of The Hobbit, and I'm looking forward to seeing if he does the same with The Desolation of Smaug and There and Back Again.

I don't think I can say much more than has already been said, so I'll just throw my hat in the "this edit was awesome" ring. Here's a quick rundown:

A/V quality:
Superb. One of my recent edits is roughly the same length, and fitting a movie this long on a BD-25 is like fitting a movie of similar length on a DVD-5: doable, but difficult to maintain a high quality. Kerr nailed it. I do wonder though: was this 1080 or 720? 720 is impressive enough, but if this disc was mastered in 1080, Kerr is something of a marvel.

Visual editing:
I have exactly nothing to mention on this front.

Audio editing:
Kerr's score replacement was ambitious, especially because it required a lot of sound effect reconstruction too. By and large it was incredibly well done, and I didn't notice any of the newly added effects. I took off two points because there were a few instances where the score was simply too loud. There was really only one or two instances of the dialogue being difficult to hear, but the majority of the time it just seemed a bit too overpowering. I understand that this is to help mask residue from the original score on the center channel, but it still took me out of it a bit here and there.

Narrative:
There were only a few bits that were taken out that I noticed, and really only one or two things that I actually missed: the "blunt the knives" song and some of the extra dwarf antics in Rivendell, but on the whole, I found this to be much better paced than the theatrical cut, and obviously moreso than the extended cut. I really enjoyed how the Goblin town segment was trimmed - the characters have a long journey ahead of them, and throwing them into something like this too early in the long arc of the narrative makes the remainder of the story a bit tiring if it's one encounter after the other.

Having also watched Menbailee's edit, there was one thing I wish that Kerr had done here that Menbailee did: removing the dwarfs storming the troll camp. I thought it was a brilliant cut to show them charging into the camp then cutting to them on the fire.

Enjoyment:
This will certainly be my go-to version of the film (at least until Kerr does he book cut in 2015). A few minor quibbles aside, this was exceptionally well done. Good work Kerr, keep it up!

I remember being very impressed by Kerr's LOTR fanedits, so when I heard he was working on an edit of AUJ, I was thrilled. So, I downloaded the AVCHD version and sat down to get in the mood to watch DOS at the cinema next week.

For me, AUJ was a bloated missed opportunity which had me feeling that Jackson was trying far too hard to "have his cake and eat it", by making The Hobbit a film which acts far too much as a direct prequel to the LOTR. This may please many, but that coupled with the fact that 3 films of 3 hours each, is something which I feel will lessen the effectiveness of this particular trilogy.

Reading Kerr's intention with this edit, I was pretty excited that he was going to try and redress the balance of the story to really be about Bilbo's journey and acceptance into this "company". The excellent new prologue, the cutting of the Frodo scene, the trimming of the festivities at Bilbo's house, all set in motion the tone of where Kerr's going, and I was immediately hooked. Even losing the entertaining introduction to Radagast works here, as the way Kerr now introduces this most entertaining of wizards is even better. The word is pacing... and boy is this fanedit paced to almost perfection.

All of Jackson's worst excesses have gone, most noticeably an excellent piece of editing with the trimming of the Troll scene, and then the ridiculous CGI-fest chase when the company escape the Goblin hordes, which now feels just about right.

I can't emphasize how impressive this edit is. Visually, the editing is absolutely perfect, with nothing feeling out of place or forced. To me, it's as if this is always the way the movie should have been. The same would go for some absolutely brilliant audio editing. The rebuilding of sound during various sequences is hugely impressive and to be honest, to notice a difference you really do need to be listening for it.

So, my hat off to you Kerr. This is as good as The Hobbit:An Unexpected Journey can be. You have truly created a masterful fanedit which truly shows just what can be rescued with this most wonderful and under appreciated of artforms. If you're in any doubt about visiting middle earth again... then doubt no more. Anybody interested in fanediting needs to see this.

This was a jolly good fanedit. The pacing is much much better. A worthy alternative to the Theatrical and Extended cuts. I look forward to the eventual kerr fanedit complete set(s).

A/V quality: 10
Editing: 10 visual, 9 audio
Narrative: 9
Enjoyment: 9 (original 8)

Recommended drink: Grass Hopper