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!

"Every good story deserves a little embellishment” – Gandalf to Bilbo.
Well unfortunately, Peter Jackson ran with this idea and did some very extensive embellishment with the Hobbit movie series. I believe that was a key focus of this edit (and most to be found here) - to remove that embellishment, the unnecessary (and generally silly, over-the-top) scenes, of which there are many. I know the movies quite well and noted countless cuts throughout, but the actual editing was seamless and would not be noticed by a first time watcher. I took some notes/thoughts throughout the viewing, which I will share here:
--Intro and dwarf visit – I didn’t miss the dinner scene and cleanup. All the good elements of character building and storyline kept intact.
--Excellent jump from trolls to Rivendell, I didn’t miss any of the wolf/sled chase scenes.
--Goblin cave scenes trimmed well. Happy to see that the Bilbo/Gollum scene was edited very little. It is one of the best scenes of the movie series.
--The council at Rivendell has always been a hot topic of debate. Spence took a good route here, removed the full council scene, but Gandalf still meets with Galadriel. I like that scene, and as much of a purist as I am, I don’t mind embellishments that involve female characters. Particularly if great actresses are playing them. Is it a little strange that she’s suddenly gone at the end of the scene – maybe, but Galadriel could be compared to a demi-goddess, ancient and full of magic, including one of the three elven rings of power. It’s not hard to imagine she has the power to project herself, or teleport. Gandalf has another one of the rings, so maybe they allow for teleportation between them.
--Best cut I’ve seen for dwarves reaching Erebor, jump right to Thorin putting key in the keyhole and opening the door. I didn’t miss any of the stupidness with dwarves pounding weapons on the rock, and walking away whining.
--The later scene with Galadriel/Elrond/Saruman taking on the Nine and Sauron is a keeper. Many don’t like it, and heck yeah it’s a major embellishment, but I like seeing the big dogs in action, particularly Galadriel. The movies need some feminine bad-assness.
--Battle of Five Armies trimmed nicely.

Further changes that I believe could improve this edit :
--A major peeve of mine is the troll scene: the trolls get a hold of Bilbo and threaten to pull his arms off, and the dwarves do it. How does this make any sense?! They basically give themselves all up to be eaten just to avoid seeing Bilbo get dismembered! I have seen only one edit (Menbailee) where this was changed - the scene jumps from the trolls chasing the dwarves and Bilbo around to them all captured. Unfortunately it was not accomplished very smoothly – but I’ve found I would rather have that than watch a stupid scene.
--Goblin caves: the slide down into the caves is too long. Also, the shot of Gandalf slicing through a goblin’s neck then tapping the head off body does not really fit with his character. This is the guy who lectures Bilbo about how serious it is to take a life.
--After they escape the goblin caves they suddenly have ponies again. Way too obvious. This is due to the complete removal of Beorn scenes, but this has to be explained somehow or changed. I’d like to see at least a brief Beorn visit, maybe just have Gandalf mention him then cut to him pouring them milk. Mix in the scene of him as a bear somewhere.
--Out of the frying pan completely removed – again it would be nice to have a little bit of this, particularly because the scene with them riding eagles is way cool in my book. Have eagles drop them off and then jump to them at Beorn’s place maybe?
--Bilbo suddenly having the keys to the jail cells was strange, might be worth keeping a bit of the lifting of keys off drunk elf.
--I have to admit I missed Tauriel. I’d like to see her retained in more scenes, maybe just enough to try to make her look like Legolas’ girlfriend.
--Suggest talking with Rangerkris about using his Sauron/Maia flash clip at Dol Guldor. It’s a very cool touch.
--Giant rock delving worms necessary? I say no.
Regardless of the suggestions above, this was an excellent and enjoyable edit. It was wonderful to watch the entire story straight through without changing a disc. The fat was trimmed, mainly scenes that my 10 & 12 year old always say was their favorite part. Without all the fluff and nonsense it becomes a movie about Bilbo, as it should be. Martin Freeman did such an outstanding acting job, and it shines through. There are many well written and moving scenes to be found, and Spence did a heck of a job assembling them.

Hugely enjoyable and a massive improvement on the bloated cinematic version. The only thing I missed was Beorn, although I did feel a bit bad for Tauriel - I'm sure that adding in one or two non-romance scenes for her might be possible without bogging down the pacing. I rather liked her role as the elf with a conscience in the movie; I just deplored that a romance had to be shoe-horned in on the back of that.

Fabulous that Legolas runs out of arrows in his one battle scene, although I agree if it is possible to show him slaying the other orc leader I would be happy for that to be included if it's possible to edit that without him going all Super Mario. I'm torn with the dragon-slaying scene because the close up of the arrow clearly shows it's not a normal arrow but I really don't miss his annoying children. I will probably get used to it the more I watch it.

A couple of scenes felt a tiny bit abrupt but overall it was amazing.

Trimming excess from Jackson’s eight hour trilogy of The Hobbit sounds excellent to me. Anyone familiar with the audio adaptation from Nicol Williamson knows of at least one working model. Spence cut this down to around three hours, without sacrificing narrative integrity.

Video - Outstanding work here. Seamless editing.

Audio - Two channel, really? Dynamic - some would say too dynamic - sound design. Some of the sequences were way too loud, though a compression tweak is often considered sacrilege. I couldn’t always grasp what actors were saying. Minor quibble, actually. There was nothing jarring or chopped. Solid.

Narrative - Absolutely no question here. The plot stays coherent and works! Truncated or missing characters I did not, by and large, miss. Beorn was the only soul I regretted. If anything, more characters could have been tossed, meaning the bulk of the dwarves. Tolkien never elaborated on most of them and most could have been dispensed with. The final battle felt short, and also somehow felt “small” ...

Enjoyment - to be honest, though, near the end I was ready for the whole movie to come to an end. Certainly not the fault of Spence, who has done a magnificent job here. I disliked the films when I saw them. The DVDs seemed less overwhelming, but Spence’s edit is a whale of a lot better. Enjoyable example of superior story telling. Some movies might be unfixable, however, and I suspect The Hobbits are three.

Nevertheless, I recommend this highly.