Hobbit: The Spence Edit, The

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.

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!

This edit is fantastic. It is what I have been waiting for since the first Hobbit movie. It's really gripping from start to finish. The cuts were pretty much invisible, technically very well-executed. The score was very loud for me at three different points (22, 33.5 and 1hr50 minutes) but this is a very minor quibble in what was overall a great experience. Very well done.

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

I just want to say that this film was excellent. I really enjoyed it. Spence did a fantastic job of bringing the three Hobbit films down to the one film that it should have been. And as he stated, the film felt far more epic than the original three, with almost all of the corny stuff cut out.

Great work!