Hobbit: The Spence Edit, The

Simply amazing! I was planning on doing an edit of the 3 Hobbit movies into 1 but I have no reason to now. The Spence Edit is nearly perfect. I had my arms raised for most of the movie while saying "YES!".

There are only a few spots were the plot moves ahead leaving something to be desired from the story (Beorn/ponies, reclaiming treasure/giving Bilbo mail, Thorin coming to his senses) but those edits made the pace stronger...and keep the runtime down so I'm not complaining.

I'll be putting this version on at any future Hobbit/LotR marathons I attend.

As a simple guy that likes movies I really enjoyed this. The story works so much better and feels much more in the spirit of lord of the rings as one great lean adventure film as opposed to 3 bloated movies. The pacing was great. There were only a few spots I could really tell it was edited namely the dragon raid and legolas showing up out of nowhere at the end. There were a couple others too but they slip my mind now. Considering the shear volume of stuff removed it's amazing there were so few easily noticeable instances. Great edit as always Spence!

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!

Wow, I had been hoping someone would do this well and this version has knocked it out of the park. I hadn't read the changes in advance on purpose and as I was watching it I never felt like it had skipped anything of importance. Editing is amazing, quality is perfect, now I wish there was a way to see this edit in a cinema.

And with all the editing there are still plenty of scenes that are allowed to breath and take there time such as Bilbo's conversations with Gollom and Smaug, which could have been tempting to trim much more. Another key strengths of this edit is that it finally makes Thorin an interesting character for once because we can see his simple arc in a single sitting, rather than over 9 hours. My one small criticism is that I think Thorin fighting Azog could potentially have been trimmed a little more given that the film is over 3 hours at that point.

Brilliant job, my favourite fan edit of all time.

I consider this edit to be one of the "Big Five," and is actually the first of the group!

Basically my only complaint about this edit was when Smaug gets hit by the regular arrow (genius idea) he sort of just teleports up into the air. I understand this was done to cut out shots of Bard and Bain, but it jarred me out of the experience a little. This was also done because, as stated, you wanted to cut out as much as physically possible whilst retaining a functional movie. You succeeded in this goal, no question.

The counterpoints to my one complaint are:

Legolas throwing orcrist back to Thorin after running out of arrows was a 200 IQ move on your part and I've seen it re-used be a few editors out there just due to how ingenius it was.

You also replaced the theme of Thorin & Co. busting out of Erebor with the Misty Mountains Theme, and I've only ever seen that in your version, and one other (Wraith's) who did it as a shoutout to your own! Another stroke of genius here brother.

Anyone who wants to watch a version of the Hobbit that has absolutely no fat on it, this is the one you want. Absolutely bare-bones version here, and executed to perfection. Not to mention the inspiration this edit has had on many many others. Nice work Spence!