Hobbit: The Spence Edit, The

I don't think I've ever been as disappointed with a series of movies as I have been with the Hobbit. The official cuts are lifeless, characterless, shallow, and ultimately constipated in their ability to engage and entertain anyone who isn't looking for a fodder-fest. Thank you Spence for taking these, shacking them mercilessly and presenting something that actually feels like a hobbit movie, and a pretty decent one at that.

Audio/Video: 10
This is probably the best 7gb mp4 I've seen. Great video, great audio. Perfect 10

Visual Editing: 9
For the most part this is perfect editing. There are a few spots where cuts seem forced or fades occur that seem unnatural due to the fact that they never occur until the very end, but that's just being nit picky on my part.

Audio Editing: 9
Again near perfection. Just a few areas where the audio cuts seem rushed, but I would be hard pressed to approach the superb job done here.

Narrative: 7 (UJ 9/10, DoS 8/10, BotFA 6/10)
I love what is done with UJ. Wow! That was the movie I had hoped for in the first place. BUT, I do wish the warg chase/eagle rescue was still present in some form as it's one of my favorite moments from the story. I really enjoyed the almost complete omission of Legolas and what's her name from DoS and keeping the dwarfs out of the mountain. While Gandalf's special quest is intriguing and very insightful into the lead up to the Lord of The Rings, I felt it was a bit distracting albeit very neatly trimmed and well done. I'd love to see an edit with Azog completely removed as a major player. His character demands too much attention and steals the focus and attention on the true story at hand, in my opinion. Also, removing the intro of the arkenstone leaves the viewer scratching their head as to why everyone is so obsessed with something that we only first see (though we don't know what it is unless we've seen the movies before) an hour and a half or so into the edit. I wonder what the edit would feel like if we followed Bilbo predominantly during the battle and when he gets knocked out the next scenes we see are him seeing Thorin fall to the ground and rushing to his side. The fighting is just too over the top and ridiculous for me. That being said, the battle did seem like it was rushed, or rather, unexplained/resolved. The story inches along, then KA-POW! Orcs, Bats, Eagles and Mountain Goats. Perhaps a flipped scene of the dwarfs cresting the hill could be input to show the first coming of the orcs instead of the earth mover dune worms. The narrative is strong through the first two film cuts, but most likely due to terrible source content and not Spence's narrative abilities, the final film narrative is kind of flat. Would love to see what Spence can do with an extended source for BotFA for perhaps a version 2.0?

Enjoyment: 8
This edit has saved the hobbit films for me. And even though I may have some qualms with the narrative, this is my current go to version of what should have been a 3 hour adventure. Great job Spence!

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

Well done. You proved just how damn padded The Hobbit trilogy was. At times there were sections where I thought the editing was a bit rough (the abrupt prologue and Rivendell especially), and I wasn't a huge fan of how lightening fast the pace is with no letting up. I thought the first third or so lacked slightly in action, too. But spence has done a remarkable job getting 3 bloated films down into a single great movie. The way he restructured the plot makes perfect sense and leaves no major holes, and the way he executed it was even better, with not a single noticeable cut in my mind. I think this will be the edit every other Hobbit edit will be compared to. Fantastic job, spence!

This is how The Hobbit should have been! In terms of narrative structure, this is 100% spot-on in terms of an epic Hollywood Hobbit flick. I personally didn't shake my fists in anger that anything was removed, and if anything I felt it could have been cut down more.

There were a few edits that stood out to me, as others have pointed out, but overall this was a smooth ride through Middle Earth. Hats off to Spence for this!

I had the crazy idea to watch the Hobbit again. The 10-hour trilogy movies are completely un-re-watchable to me, so I searched for a fanedit. I tried watching the Maple Edit and the Bilbo Edition, both are 4-hour edits that try to stay close to the book. I dropped them both because in trying to keep true to book they keep too much silliness from Peter Jackson. There is a 2-Hour edit (!) that's actually very interesting but it's too rough and amateurish and it also tries to follow the book. Sadly, the way Peter Jackson made these movies, following only the book IMO produces bad results.

The Spence Edit doesn't try to be true to the book, it just tries to make a good movie out of this bloated mess, and what do you know, it succeeds! There's actually a decent 3-hour movie in there that can act as a fine prequel to LOTR. I really like how Azog was handled and generally the parts of the movie that nod to LOTR and weren't in the original book. Most of the silly antics are gone. Thank God the whole pine-cone-grenades and Eagles scene was completely removed. Those frustratingly long and boring combat scenes in the last part were also thankfully trimmed quite a bit. Frankly the only scene I missed was this great idea I saw in the 2-hour edit that added the whole Misty Mountains song with scenes from Erebor's demise as a flashback.

There's only one hiccup in the version I watched, the sound. The voices are just too low and especially in scenes where much is happening, they can become unintelligible. Something was probably lost with the transition from 5.1 to stereo. Aside from that this edit looks flawless. I can't say this is now truly a great movie, because I don't think P.Jackson's self-indulgent Hobbit trilogy can ever be a great movie, or movies, no matter how great the editing is. But this is the best take on the trilogy I've seen so far, a decent LOTR prequel and a fantastic fan-editing venture.