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!

Though I thought the originals were padded and had overly goofy elements, I was still on board for the idea of 3 movies. I still really enjoy Kerr's take on the first two movies (haven't seen an edit of the BOTFA). I approached this 3 into 1 edit mostly out of curiosity. I was very surprised with how well it worked. Honestly, it came out to be a great single movie that's just as enjoyable as watching 3 edits. Since it's one movie and a lot of fluff is removed, it feels much more focused on Bilbo.

GOOD THINGS
- Got rid of Azog pursuing the dwarves. It works great and cuts out a ton of unnecessary filler for a 3 to 1 edit. Having Azog behind the scenes with Sauron, kind of like the shark in the water waiting to attack, was very cool and made him still a worthwhile character without having to see him constantly chasing the dwarves.
- Got rid of Tauriel. In the case of 3 separate edits, I wouldn't mind having a trimmed version of her. That is until her character didn't really pay off in BOTFA. I kinda feel bad for Evangeline Lilly because I think the character had potential. However, you really don't miss her at all in this edit.
- Removal of Bard's family. They are okay in 3 separate edits, but in this edit it worked really good to remove them. Bard's story in this edit is simpler but it works well.
- Removal of Orcs at Lake Town. Honestly this wasn't even missed in the DoS edit, so it's definitely not missed in this 3 into 1 edit.
- Removal of Dwarves taking on Smaug. I do like the idea of the Dwarves trying to kill Smaug using ingenuity (maybe just trying to drown him in gold instead of tricking him with a statue) but this edit works really well with Smaug getting pissed and immediately heading to Lake Town before the Dwarves interfere.
- Spence just generally knew what to keep and what to let go. Sure, there are a few cool things that ended up being cut. However, it's done skillfully enough that you don't miss it while you're watching it and the narrative still flows perfectly well without it. It'll just be an excuse to watch the individual movies/edits every once in a while. Kind of like the extended version vs the theatrical versions of the LotR trilogy.

NITPICKS

- there really are no major problems so these are just some minor nitpicks

- I kind of missed the flashback to Smaug taking Erebor before the events of the movie. Also, I'm familiar with the movie so it's not a huge deal for me, but newcomers might especially appreciate the flashbacks. I think over the course of the movies you can pick up all the details, but having them all in one place, with memorable imagery, is kind of nice.
- Gandalf leaving before the trolls came was kind of abrupt. They do mention that they don't know where he went. It's hard to say. It could have thrown me because I was expecting him to tell Thorin he was leaving like in the original. It may or may not confuse a newcomer though.
- Getting horses right before Mirkwood felt kind of sudden, but I don't know if there's really an alternative way to show a few second montage of them acquiring horses from Beorn.
- Though Radagast's entrance isn't bad, it would have been cool if you were able to salvage Gandalf talking about the other wizards on the way to Rivendell. (It was raining in that part so it's understandable if it's not possible to tease out the dialogue). Then the name Radagast would be a tiny bit more familiar. Plus we'd know he's a wizard. I can't remember that he does any magic in this edit. Not that it's a bad thing, but it might make more sense if we know that Gandalf sought the help of a wizard and not some random hobo. :)
- Kili's leg injury doesn't seem necessary and without a fight it's weird that he gets injured. Personally, I feel like Kili could have just accidentally tripped down the stairs in the Lake Town armory.
- There were a few parts where it felt a little too fast paced, like escaping the Mirkwood Elves in barrels straight to immediately meeting Bard. I wouldn't add the battle back in, but it did help to mentally separate the Mirkwood Elves event from meeting Bard. It's just a small downside of only being able to work with what was in the original movie.

OVERALL, this is a fantastic edit. I was really impressed with how seamlessly Spence made it into one movie, despite making some big changes (removing Azog pursuit/Tauriel/Legolas bits, etc). I would recommend it to anyone who wanted a *single* Hobbit movie or was curious what it might have looked like. I can't stress enough, this is NOT a compromised version for the sake of pursuing an ambitious concept. This is a legitimately excellent version of the Hobbit movies in its own right.

I like Hobbit 2, but Hobbit 1 (with the exception of the dwarfes entering Bilbo's home and the whole sequence with Gollum) and 3 I find to be completely uninteresting and nowhere nearly as good as the Lord of the rings movies.

So I was interested how Spence could improve the Hobbit-movies by forming them into a single movie. First and most important, does it work as a single movie? Yes! Sure it's a bit long with nearly 3,5 hours, but it works really well and just shows that it should have been a single movie from the get-go.

Is it now as good as the lord of the ring movies? Imho, no, they are still way better, but it's an improvement over the theatrical versions.

----------SPOILER-WARNING---------

What Spence did was to remove Azog as an instrument to create tension, imho that is a good decision. Sure it reduces a bit the tension now, but Azog and his orcs are so uninteresting that it hurts.

And he removed the love-triangle between Legolas, that elve-woman and one of the better looking dwarfes. In Hobbit 2 it added some sort of romanticism, and it created a story-strand where the elve woman leaves her kin to fulfill her true love, how she heals that dwarfe and how the dwarf gets killed in front of her in the end. That was actually something that enriched Hobbit 2 and 3. I like a little bit of romantic feelings in movies, the things about sacrificing things for love... but it should be credible and natural.
The problem was that it was unbelievable from the start and it involved only secondary characters, so I think overall it was a good decision to cut it all out. Sure some feeling is missing then, but either these things are done in the right and credible way or not at all.

The other big removement was the "prophecy"-story strand, the lake people believed in the prophecy that one day a dwarfe king would come to reclaim the mountain and its riches. This is removed (although Thorin actually uses the word prophecy in his speech, but that was probably not easy to remove), and many would probably welcome it. But for me, this was one of the things that actually worked well in Hobbit 2, namely that the Lake people living in poor conditions develop some hope that things could change for the better, because of the prophecy. In Hobbit 2 that was the main motivation that they would help the dwarfes, give them weapons and set them free again.

Here the main-motivation is only the hope for the gold in the mountain, but without the prophecy-belief, why would they believe that 13 dwarfes would succeed where whole armies failed before? Imho the prophecy-element was crucial to explain the hope of the Laketownpeople and imho it added that nice consequence that the belief in the prophecy brought them complete ruin by waking up the dragon who then destroyed their town. This is one change/removal that I felt was hurtful.

The other problem was Bard shooting down the dragon. This problem has nothing to do with Spence's edit, but with the theatrical shooting of the scene and lazy writing. All people from Lake-town know from experience that the dragons skin can't be hurt by mere arrows, and yet what does Bard do? He goes up with merely his normal bow and normal arrows and thinks he can do the impossible!

It would have been different if he went up with the clear thought and memory that the dragon lost some of his skin in the encounter with his ancestor, and so goes up with the clear will to try to shoot an arrow into that wound, and then tries, misses, tries, misses, but then succeeds.

But thank goodness, that the scene with the molten gold and the golden dragon was removed and the dwarfes triyng to fight the dragon...

The big battle at the end was nicely shortened, which for me was most welcome. The only problem was the appearance of the eagles and Bilbo saying "The eagles are coming"..., but he hasn't met any eagles in this edit, so why does he associate anything with them or knows anything about them?

The other, but forgiveable problem was in the first third of the movie, where the dwarfes have horses in one scene and then not, and then they have horses again...

---SPOILER-warning-END---
Verdict:
It works as a single movie, it's overall better than the theatrical version (though still not nearly as good as the lord-of-the rings movies, but that is the source's problem), and proves that the Hobbit-story should have been told in a single movie from the get-go.

Editing is mostly great and smooth. Great work, Spence!