Hobbit: The Spence Edit, The

Superb job =) very close to the book itself. Special thanks for removing:
- Much of "goblin town".
- Tuning down much of Legolas show off and screen time scenes.
- Tauriel/Kili romance bahhh, PJ must had been out of his mind or it was Fran and Phillipa's doing (chicks lol).
- Barrel "platform video game" scene (dreadful scene -.-).
- Lake town's boring scenes... (million thanks).
- Alfrid Lickspittle dreadful character (hope he has a terrible death in the extended edition MUAHAH).

MAGNIFICENT ENDING MUSIC WITH ACTORS VOICES =)

I pinpoint/suggest a few things should you "revisit" this edit again:
- "Warg attack" at the end and the eagles rescuing the company. I think you may have removed it because of Azog's scenes, but putting as much as the "Warg attack/eagle rescue" would be an excellent addition and faithful to the book.
- I would have liked to see the entire fight sequence of the White Council, i just love to see Saruman fully fighting the wraiths.
- I think the battle of the five armies was a bit shortened out, trying to increase it a bit wouldn't harm =).
- Beorn was missing in it's entirety. I think he should appear talking, in part, with the dwarves and lately in the battle, instead of jumping of the eagle's back, you could put him just in the middle of the fray, since he also appears in the books.
- Bolg should have been seen dying by the hand of Legolas, as Bolg is the other Orc commander from Gundabad. I think it will be more credible for the Orc army to retreat since they loose both their top commanders.

Many thanks Spence

Like many people, I'm a huge fan of LotR but I found The Hobbit movies a bit of a chore. The third movie, especially, wasn't much more than an exercise in not walking out. I'd re-watched An Unexpected Journey once on Blu Ray, just to check out fancy HD visuals, and the others were bought only for the Appendices. I could see that there was a lot of great stuff scattered throughout the three movies, but it would never be worth a 9/10-hour movie marathon filled with ridiculous action scenes, mind-numbing subplots and Jar Jar-level humour to see them again. This edit is exactly what I needed. The movie discs of my Hobbit Blu Rays can consider themselves retired.

The image and sound editing is of a professional standard. There were, I think, only two instances when dialogue was overshadowed by the music. (I can't remember exactly where, sorry.) Official Hollywood releases have more garbled dialogue than that (e.g. Batman movies), so that's brilliant for such a long movie. There weren't any plot holes formed from the cuts, beyond the sudden appearance of ponies after the goblin caves. No big deal, though, because it's a LotR movie and you have to put up with that even in official releases (that get filled out in Extended Editions).

Very pleased with Legolas's reduced role. He's just a fun cameo now, while still playing a minor role in the battle at the end. Delighted that the Tauriel romance has gone. Now she's just a striking-looking extra. I was happy to lose the council scene as well, and I think it makes the great Christopher Lee's later appearance all the more dramatic. The eagles in the battle are now a total surprise and not foreshadowed (or hinted at existing for people unfamiliar with LotR), but the fact that Radaghast leads them means that it's a great "Hey! Radaghast's here!" moment rather than a "WTF? Eagles?" moment. I don't know if I'm remembering wrong, but I thought in the original cuts Bard knew about Smaug's weak spot. There's no dialogue of it in this. I was expecting that to be a problem, but when Smaug flies over him it now just looks like Bard spots it and shoots it right away. That works well for me. I'm really happy that all of Bard's family has been cut and over the moon to be rid of the Laketown nonsense with the mayor and Alfrid (the single worst thing to happen to the trilogy). I didn't miss Beorn at all. At the end of the day, he gives them some ponies and then shows up for 5 seconds in the battle at the end. Not worth the ten minutes extra run-time. Great stuff getting rid of the Azog pursuits and the false defeat at the mountain door.

Overall, then, I couldn't be happier. Spence has done an astonishing job of rescuing this series. Three separate average-to-poor films have become one great one. The tone is just right. There are just enough scenes to tease for LotR without it getting tiresome (none of the crappy "Hey, Legolas! Go find Aragorn!" nonsense). Enough of the dwarf stuff has gone that it now is more about Bilbo. And the ending worked really well, giving Ian Holm a nice cameo to finish. Awesome stuff all round.

This is, by far, the best way to watch The Hobbit. I'm a huge fan of the LotR Extended Editions and this is the perfect companion to incorporate into a binge watch. I'm glad that the extra material was left in rather than a straight book cut which I don't think was the issue with the films. But all of the bloat was taken out making this a rip roaring film.

The only real issue in this edit is the battle of the five armies but, like previously mentioned by other reviewers, is an artifact of how messy the original cut of the battle was. I'm still surprised how cohesive this cut is and will probably never watch the originals ever again.

The Hobbit movies all had a very The Phantom Menace kind of feel to me; overly campy and childish acts of self-indulgence on the part of a director who clearly wasn't told "no" a single time during its entire production. Despite my dislike of the theatrical releases however, I still held out some hope that they all could be edited into a more sensible and appropriate film. Sadly, I found the few cuts I found too campy to watch. While they were shorter, they still felt too cartoonish, too dense, and too aimless for me to watch it past the first half hour or so. With that, I pretty much gave up hope of ever enjoying The Hobbit movies.

Then, on a whim, I decided to check out this version of the film. And to my great shock and surprise, this was it. This IS it. Spence does a tremendous job of cutting the film down to not just one feature, but realizing exactly what should and shouldn't be in a major motion picture and tailoring the story to those demands. It's tight, it's engaging, it's almost as serious as the original Lord of the Rings movies too. I was shocked by just how much he was able to cut - even down to the company of Dwarves getting far less exposure - yet never doing it at the cost of the plot or the story. In fact, for the first time, I actually felt a connection to these characters. I actually found myself caring about their journey, and I ended up watching 2 and a half hours of the movie without even noticing how much time had passed.

While I've seen a lot of fan edits, and a lot of good ones, this one is probably my favorite yet because it took a series of movies that I found downright unwatchable and crafted and refined them into something that I not only enjoyed, but could easily sit through multiple viewings of.

This is now my go-to-version of The Hobbit. So much more enjoyable than Peter Jackson's overly long version. Here we get Tolkien's single book in a single movie. Still long? Yes. Does it feel too long? No.
The flow of the story is seamless, as are the video and audio editing. The one audio problem is that the volume is very low, you have to jack it up to hear all the dialog. Subtitles would help. If anyone made those, please share. Otherwise I may make the srt file myself.