Hobbit: Into the Fire, The

This was my first experience with an edit of Desolation of Smaug. There were some great decisions made but other things didn't quite come together in execution. I'll break my review down into good elements and things that I was left with mixed feelings about:

The Good:

-Cutting most of the stuff with Bolg and Azog was a good move. It definitely helped to quicken the pace and shows how little the film needed these scenes.

-Cutting the Tauriel/Kili/Legolas love triangle. This was very effective. It felt largely shoehorned into the original film so nothing of value is lost here.

-Cutting the dwarves giving up and leaving. This was some pretty brilliant editing and a great change.

-The new intro: I liked it a lot. The original opening scene was hardly missed. That wide shot of the eagles makes for a great opening shot.

Mixed:

-Cutting the fight at Laketown: I always felt the Elves venturing to Laketown was largely unnecessary, but how its handled here is a bit of a mixed bag. The editing is mostly sound, but narratively it's a bit strange that some of the dwarves don't go to the mountain with no explanation given. This seemed like a large plot hole to me. We can clearly see that some of them are missing from the boat and later scenes at the mountain, but no explanation is given as to why they stay back. Also Kili's leg wound becomes a bit of a red herring.

- Bard stuff: I missed some of this. Particularly, the transition from Bard and the Dwarves to Stephen Fry up in his loft now feels rather abrupt as the connection of Alfrid is no longer there. In general, the Bard vs. Stephen Fry stuff feels like a vestige of the original film that you tried to minimize but couldn't completely cut, and ends up coming out as a half-baked non-sequitur.

-Gandalf's story: Moving the encounter with Sauron to earlier didn't work for me. It made this plotline seem even less connected to the rest of the film, and it felt like a false climax. The plotline was rendered an aside that begins and ends in the middle of the film. Frankly, since this is supposed to be a purist cut, I would have went all the way and cut this plotline entirely.

-Barrel Escape: I appreciate the desire to cut this down as it is an action scene that ultimately adds nothing to the plot, but the result is just a choppy and unengaging scene. I would have left this in rather than go with the cut you ended up with, which is essentially the Dwarves going down the waterfalls as the elves dispatch a couple of orcs in the background. The scale of the orc attack is not really felt and the edit doesn't feel smooth and seamless.

-No Golden Smaug: This is the main reason I choose to watch this edit over your "Fire of the Dragon" edit. This extended action sequence in the final act absolutely killed the pace of the movie for me. The editing is mostly handled well except for one thing: Silver Smaug. This essentially kills this aspect of the edit for me. I realize there aren't a lot of options here for an editor, but the change in color timing for the few shots of Smaug here is absolutely noticeable against the rest of the footage, and the change from gold to silver doesn't really make this scene suddenly make sense. This was a good idea that just didn't come together in execution.

Overall this edit was a mixed bag for me but I still appreciate the effort that went into it. You definitely have some editing talent so I'm looking forward to your future edits!

Not much to say that hasn't been already said. This is as close to perfection as a fanedit can get. The theatrical release made me sick to my stomach. This version, however, I loved. PLEASE do an edit of part 3 when it's released.

I would like to thank you for the time, effort, and motivation that you displayed in completing this edit. I do not see how, based upon the limitations of Peter Jackson's work, it would be possible for a better version of this movie to be put together.

I am an admitted Tolkien purist and while I find faults too numerable to list in Jackson's versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings you have accomplished something truly remarkable with this version of the film. Thank you for reducing Legolas' and Tauriel's roles, as well as Azog and Bolg, cutting the ridiculousness of the barrel chase, the absurdity of the Smaug chasing dwarves and being covered with gold, and most of all thank you for removing the asinine Kili/Tauriel love story. I almost exploded in the theater when I saw that.

Overall, your edit is infinitely better than anything produced by Jackson and will find its way onto my shelf as the only version of DoS that I will watch. You truly did some remarkable work. Keep up the good work.

What a fantastic edit! This is by far, to me, the best standalone edit of this film. The amount of bloat that exists in these films is absolutely shocking, and by trimming it to the breaking point you've exposed an exciting film that could have been.

Quality is great across the board, video and audio.

My only qualms with the edit would be:
- I'm not a fan of how you open the film, with the group on the eagles. It feels how Battle of the Five Armies feels: Like that scene should've been at the end of the previous film.
- Smaug breaking through the wall still just doesn't look right, even with the gold removed. It's definitely much better, and maybe knowing it's meant to be gold is making me feel this way, but I'd almost rather not see him break through the wall at all.

Other than those two things I loved every decision, especially the way you cut the barrel sequence.

This is a superior work, and definitely deserving of all of its rave reviews.

Another brilliant edit by RangerKris.
I was waiting for this one since I saw ranger's first edit (Fire of the Dragon) which I thought was excellent, but this is even better.
Technically the Audio / Video quality is excellent, the encoding is very good, color rendering and motion estimation and detection is very good, no blurring, no jerkiness or pixelation of any sort
Visual editing, you just would not know that this was an edit, seamless transitions that flow naturally. Same goes for for the audio.
I deducted one point from the audio editing and audio quality because I wish ranger would do a 5.1 surround sound. It makes watching on a big screen with a sound system a bit more enjoyable.

The narrative is excellent. fast and focused with no distraction or side tracks. If you showed this film to some one who has not seen the original theatrical cut, they would never now there was something missing, the only negative thing that can be said is the missing dwarves that were left in lake town; but this is not Ranger's fault, the material to fix that is simply not there; even that little drawback is mostly not noticeable, you have to be really pedantic and nitpicking and do a head count to notice it.
For diehard Tolkien fans this edit is god sent to save us from the excesses of PJ.
When it came to Enjoyment, I decide to watch all three versions back to back, the original, Fire of the Dragon and Into The Fire; I can tell you right now, the original fell down immediately, I just could not finish it, it was a 2 horse race and Into the Fire came ahead just by a nose ;)
I would recommend this edit to any Tolkien fan, and to any one who has even never heard of Tolkien or the Hobbit, it is just a very good and entertaining movie.
I hope that Ranger would tackle unexpected journey and produce a purist edit out of it, and when Battle of the Five Armies comes out, that he would take all three parts and produce one coherent smooth movie out of them.