Review Detail

I'll be honest, I only made it through two of the Hobbit movies - and the second I didn't even bother to see in theaters. The third one is just sort of sitting gathering dust on a DVD shelf. The magic of the Lord of the Rings trilogy appeared to be lost in the process of making The Hobbit, well, another trilogy. But everyone's had these complaints - on with the review!

Spence's edit is phenomenal. What you get here is one solid movie that tells a compelling story from start to finish. I didn't even realize certain cuts of major scenes from the two movies I had seen had even happened until several minutes (or more) after they would have normally occurred. As for The Battle of the Five Armies... other than knowing Tauriel and Legolas were supposed to have bigger roles I honestly didn't notice that there could have been anything missing. It was a genuinely solid final act to the movie.

What I loved in particular about this edit is that it didn't feel like a mashup of three films. It had the right action beats and slower character moments that a single movie would traditionally have.

My only issue was that there were a few moments where dialogue was a little quiet and I had to lean forward a bit to keep up with what was going on. But that seemed to be fixed by the final hour and a half of the movie.

To wrap up, I can safely say that this is the version of The Hobbit I will watch in the future. The layer of dust on the original three films will just have to keep building up!