When I re-watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Desolation of Smaug in preparation for seeing the third movie in the theater I decided that when the third film came out on extended edition I would try to cut it down to a single movie length. The main reason for this was that I realized that I would have to accept that Unexpected Journey was just WAY too long. I also wanted it to be more accessible to non-fans in a way that I think LOTR was, but these last 3 films haven't been...
Anyway, I didn't realize how many others had the same idea until I discovered The Tolkien Edit and read the comments section of it! Wow! What follows is a review of The Tolkien Edit.
Overall, I was very impressed by the professionalism of the edit, the way it flowed well and I would go minutes before realizing that a scene from the originals had been skipped. The editing work here is seamless.
The other point I wanted to mention is that this edit keeps focused on Bilbo and by cutting out all the other side stories, like the Dol Guldur Stuff, it produces a much tighter story. It's not rushed in the way I would have expected such an edit to feel.
SPOILERS AHEAD
In terms of the things that have been cut I agree with most of the decisions that were made, especially in the first part of the edit, but there are a few glaring things I would have done differently. For example, the chip the plates song didn't need to be deleted as it was fun, highlighted some of the characterizations and was really well done - it was also present in the original book! I could live with this edit, however, and I can accept the Tolkien Editor's reasoning for it.
What I couldn't accept was the complete erasure of the scene where the company gets chased up the trees by the goblins and wargs and then saved by the eagles. It was one of the major "save-points" if you will from the book and while I didn't like all the Azog stuff I still think it should have been kept in some form.
Similarly, I wouldn't have completely deleted the Dol Guldur stuff, because it does make sense to see what Gandalf was doing.
I was then very surprised to see that much of the ridiculous scene with the dwarves trying to fight the dragon and somehow not getting killed immediately was kept in there. This was something I would have definitely got rid of.
The final thing that irked me was the gold sickness scene where Thorin walks on the gold floor and starts hallucinating. It was completely unnecessary as we already saw, from his actions towards the others, that the sickness had taken hold of him, and we didn't need this hallucination scene to prove it or to help him recover from it either...
Other than that this was an AMAZING edit of the films and one that proves that fans wanted and would have sat patiently for a single Hobbit movie no matter how long it was. At 4 hours and 20 minutes it's about the same length as the LOTR movies and it works really well. If you're a fan of the hobbit - or even a non-fan who found them too long/tedious I would highly recommend watching the Tolkien Edit - if you can get your hands on a copy. I will, of course, be awaiting the Extended Edition of Battle of the Five Armies, and I will always want to go back and see the full 9-hour journey as PJ envisioned it, but I'll also have a place for watching the brief version and this does a great job of giving me that.
I may still try to do my own or at least post my thoughts on what should/shouldn't stay, but for now I'm glad for the Tolkien Editor!
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