Hobbit: Into the Fire, The

"Bilbo...his name is Bilbo."
Peter Jackson seems to have had the same problem as Thorin - forgot who the main character is. Into the Fire takes us back to Bilbo Baggins and his story, it's that simple.

RangerKris, I thank you again for your undertaking. It has given me a Hobbit movie that satisfies my need for a true to Tolkien experience. I appreciate how open you were to suggestions on the discussion board during the editing process, allowing everyone to chime in on what a purist version would be. The visual and audio editing was excellent as usual. I will be watching the final Hobbit installment with much more ease, knowing that however packed full of over the top, extraneous material, I will have hope for a purely Tolkien ending.

P.S. Maia Sauron was pulled off masterfully!

This was pretty damn fantastic! To me, it proves that action/adventure spectacles can still be great, even if it's "just a 90-minute movie". The story moves at a fast pace and we don't get slogged down with people we don't care about. The Smaug finale is excellent, I loved it as a single flowing scene, and great visual editing there!

Highly recommended for anybody let down by The Hobbit Part B.

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.

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!