Hobbit: Into the Fire, The

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.

An outstanding edit which reveals some brilliant film-making by Jackson et al.

I think this edit can be summed up by wife, who has not seen the original DOS "But this film is really excellent! Why the criticism?"

The editing is seamless. The characters such as Beorn, Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf, and Bard are given razor sharp focus, with great character moments. The editing of Smaug is just superb. And the pace of the film. Wow. This is a rollicking 90 minute adventure.
What is cut? Mostly orc battles (extras fighting), video game sequences (bouncing river raft and the Smaug Boss Battle vs. dwarves), and focus on secondary characters (Legolas, Kili?, and lady elf). Hurra!

Sound is disappointingly stereo AAC, which I had to fiddle with to sound decent through my surround sound system. (I docked 2 points from A/V quality for that)
Visual fidelity a-ok.

There was one music cue which sounded off to me - as they leave lake town, there's a brief view on the boat with an off musical cue before the shot of Thorin. I would recommend cutting straight to Thorin and the music there.
(And a little repeat on Bilbo's running sound when the great flag falls on him? I noticed it second time round).

An amazing 63 minutes has been cut from this - and it isn't noticeable at all. Class editing (and shows how much filler was in the original release!)
Oh, and great little flash of Sauron in his "Angel of Light" form. Loved it!

I watched this edit two nights back to back and thoroughly enjoyed it both times. Kudos ranger, this is masterful editing.

(PS: For a first time viewer the silver Smaug works fine - my wife thought it was dragon scales glittering in the moonlight.)

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.

First, my apologies for the tardiness of this review. It's been a busy summer moving my family halfway across the country. I was a screener for the first incarnation of this edit, Fire of the Dragon (http://www.fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-listings/fanfix/1033-hobbit-fire-of-the-dragon-the), and while I thought it was a vast improvement, I (and others) still felt like a more seriious take on the film would be preferable. Ranger613 decided to take this on and this edit is the result. And, for me, it is indeed preferable to the Fire of the Dragon edit. Ranger calls this a "book purists" cut and while that may be true, it isn't the reason I enjoy it more. I never read The Hobbit. But I did feel like Jackson was trying to straddle a line with these movies that just doesn't work. He's trying to keep them in line with the original LotR trilogy, while also trying to make them lighter fare more in keeping with the source material. It just hasn't worked for me and I prefer edits that aim to remove the silliness and video game like action to reveal something much closer to LotR. For the first chapter, I now go to kerr's Arkenstone Edition. And now, for the chapter two, I will go to this. A word of warning though, this definitely does not play as a standalone film, not that the original did either. While we all have yet to see the third and final chapter, it feel entirely possible to me that the best edit will be a four-ish hour film (or two two hour films). One final note, there has been much discussion of the final scene of Smaug shaking off the molten gold (recolored here). I provided feedback during the editing process on this and, to me, it is still not right in my mind. But I have to say that my wife, who had never seen the original movie, didn't even notice. In fact, I didn't tell her this was a fan edit. She simply said it was much better than she expected after the first one (which we saw together in the theatre). To me, that's high praise! Good work, ranger613!

A much more streamlined version of Peter Jackson's overbloated Desolation of Smaug, this fanedit eschews much of the superfluous dalliances found within the theatrical cut, such as the romance between Tauriel and Kili, Kili's wounds, and both the ridiculous barrel sequence and Erebor forge sequence. Definitely a better experience than the original, and it cuts straight to the narrative heart of the film. I personally might have tried to include more of Tauriel and Thranduil, but I'm not a Tolkien purist, I just enjoy seeing those sides of Middle-Earth.

I'm planning on crafting my own fanedit once the Extended Editions of all three films are available, but this film makes many improvements I had already envisioned, while creating several news ones that I hadn't even thought of. It's definitely worth a watch.