The Hobbit - The Spence Edit

UPDATE: Since this got moved to In-the-Works, I am putting some more information in this post. It's at the bottom.

I know that everyone and their mom is going to do a Hobbit edit, but I also intend to do one. All 3 movies, 3 hours to 3 1/2 hours. Unexpected Journey will take up about 1 hour 15 minutes, Desolation will be about another hour, and Five Armies will be 45 minutes to an hour.

The trickiest part of editing this will obviously be the over indulgence of the action scenes. As it's now one movie, not every action moment can be a huge epic show stopper, as that'll just get tiresome. Removing Azog from the first two films, and his chasing of the Hobbits, will remove a lot of that. But in removing that we now lose the scene of the dwarves hiding in the trees, which does happen in the book. So in order to make this into a good movie that flows correctly, it cannot be 100% slavish to the books. I'm taking the films on their own merits and not worrying too much about book accuracy.

My goal is not to make the film more like Lord of the Rings in tone, but in spirit. The gag-filled action scenes that Peter Jackson has become fond of are minimized, except when appropriate. It feels more epic. The pacing is quicker. It feels more in line with those films, while also becoming even more different from them.

I will say that I did read the book again before starting this edit to get some ideas, which did inform many of my decisions.

A lot of the dwarves will get their screen time shaved, and I think this is for the best. With this many characters, you really have to dial in on just a few of them and let the rest just be there. Thorin, Balin, and Dwalin are really the only ones with much screen time.

Cutlist:
- Older Bilbo is cut from the opening of the film, as is the opening prologue. It begins with Gandalf approaching Bilbo.
- Much of the Dwarves antics at the dinner is gone.
- Some superfluous dialogue removed when Gandalf is explaining the mission.
- The "pocket handkerchief" dialogue is removed. Once Bilbo gets on the pony, it goes straight to the traveling montage.
- Gandalf and Thorin no longer argue over the elves. Gandalf, as he is want to do, leaves the party briefly without explanation.
- Trims and cuts to the Troll sequence for pacing and to remove childish gags/toilet humor.
- Thorin is no longer shitty about Bilbo after the Troll encounter.
- Trims to the troll cave sequence for pacing.
- Radaghast and his necromancer subplot is entirely removed from the film.
- The Orcs chasing the party is removed from the story completely. They do not encounter orcs at all until the final battle.
- Rivendell trimmed for mention of orcs, and for some silliness.
- Rivendell scenes are cut so that Bilbo is walking around enjoying Rivendell while the Dwarves are eating. Majority of that dinner scene is removed. When Elrond asks Bilbo about not being with his friends, it's because they are at dinner. I'm very happy with the way Rivendell turned out in this edit.
- White council and Necromancer subplot is removed, though Galadriel is introduced. Her conversation with Gandalf about Bilbo remains and the lurking evil subplot is intact.
- Stone giants removed.
- Tumbling into the goblin caves trimmed.
- Goblin songs removed.
- Mention of Azog and the orcs chasing the party is removed.
- No trims to Riddles in the Dark, as it is awesome.
- Majority of the goblin caves fight is removed, save the very beginning.
- The Hobbits are not chased by Orcs after they escape the tunnels, nor do they visit Beorn.
- Many trims to Mirkwood.
- Removed Bilbo freaking out about losing the ring. It never quite felt right to me in this movie. Too dark.
- Tauriel is now just another random elf, nothing special about her. Legolas is still there, and is indeed Legolas, but his role has been trimmed to more of a cameo.
- Because of our lack of Orcs, the barrels scene had to be very heavily trimmed. There is now no more running battle and the party is not pursued.
- Much of the conversation with Bard is removed.
- The process of getting into the fish barrels is removed, they just arrive in them already.
- Alfrid does not stop Bard on his way in. If Alfrid could be removed in any way, believe me, he was. He appears very briefly throughout.
- Kili still gets injured, which causes him to fall over when stealing the weapons. It's presented in a way that it looks like he was injured in the rapids while in a barrel.
- The suspicion of Bard, and most of the Master's scenes, have been removed.
- Bard's family is removed entirely from the film.
- None of the dwarves stay behind in Lake-Town. There is no celebration for them leaving
- Gandalf's Dol Goldur scenes received many rearrangements and trims.
- Trims to Bilbo looking for the Arkenstone before Smaug awakens.
- Mention of "dragon sickness" has been removed.
- The entire fight with Smaug within the mountain has been removed.
- To flow into the next film better, Bilbo's "What have we done?" line has been removed.
- Bard never gets sent to jail, so he bursts into action immediately.
- A black arrow is no longer fired by Bard, he shoots Smaug with a real arrow, finding the spot where a black arrow knocked his scale loose.
- The people of Lake-Town go straight to Dale after the city is destroyed.
- All of Legolas and Tauriel's subplots will be cut. I will only keep the scene in the battle where Legolas informs Gandalf about the Orcs marching on Ravenhill, and a bit of him shooting Orcs to help Thorin.
- "Dragon Sickness" is no longer a thing. Thorin just becomes a bit of a greedy jerk, then later has a change of heart.
- HUGE trims to the battle. From start to finish it's about 20 minutes of battle.
- Alfrid and Bard's family is removed throughout the battle.
- Fili and Kili still die. Kili is killed almost immediately as he charges for Azog.
- Trimmed down the Azog fight. Because he hasn't been a main antagonist throughout the series, I dont' think he needs quite as epic and lengthy of a fight. Still cool though.
- Beorn removed from the Eagles charging in.
- Azog popping up through the ice happens faster. It feels silly how long Thorin spends staring at him.
- Bilbo sitting next to Gandalf at the end of the battle is removed. I don't care for that scene for some reason, the bit where Gandalf cleans out his pipe.
- Shots of the Dwarves surrounding Thorin's body will be during the scene where Dale plays Thorin's horn theme.
- New ending: Once Bilbo reaches his house in Bag End at the finale of the film, we go to Old Bilbo looking at picture of his younger self. I then used some footage from Fellowship to make the last scene Bilbo beginning to write "There and Back Again". I feel like this flows nicely into the trilogy but is also a fitting cap to the end of this story.

There are many, many more cuts than this. It's a huge edit and a crazy amount of movie has been removed, recut, or reshuffled in some way.

I moved this to ITW since you've been working on the first two movies. It will just end up there in another month or two anyway.

What have you done with Tauriel?

I imagined that in the voice of Legolas, shouting at an Orc.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH TAURIEL!!!

Saruman, Radaghast, and Tauriel will all now be playing the role of "Sir Not In This Film"

My godness, now everyone wants to make a 4 hours/3 hours fan edit of the trilogy. I feel it's begining to become a fashion

I don't think that's a new desire. Its what should have happened in the first place

Yeah, again, I know there will be a lot of these. It's going to be like the Star Wars prequels. But I think it'll be fun to edit, and if you like my style and sensibilities, it'll probably be worth a look. What I have so far is pretty strong.

Sorry for the double post, but I just updated the first post with a cut-list, since this is in the IN-THE-WORKS Forum now.

spence said:

Legolas is still there, and is indeed Legolas, but his role has been trimmed to more of a cameo.

Click to expand...

Ah, but wilt thou roto-correct his eyeballs?



(Hint: the correct answer is "Verily, yes!") :wink:

Sounds strong to me. Sort of follows some of the excellent purist edits of the first two movies, though I know a purist cut is not your goal. Please find a way to remove the dwarves laying down their weapons when the trolls threaten to pull Bilbo apart - I hate that part! Why would they do that?

I'm not really sure how I could change that, except for possibly removing the action beat. However it does come at a point where an action beat is necessary, so it might have to stay. I'll definitely tinker with it. That always bothered me too.

I think you're going to have trouble eliminating Bain (Bard's son), the way Jackson set up the faux-William-Tell method of killing Smaug. I have no idea why he did that, except maybe for "Epicness".

MovieMaven said:

I think you're going to have trouble eliminating Bain (Bard's son), the way Jackson set up the faux-William-Tell method of killing Smaug. I have no idea why he did that, except maybe for "Epicness".

Click to expand...

I think I might be able to make it work. We could just never see what the arrow is balancing on. Or I could maybe composite a beam in there. Or maybe I'll just have Smaug die of overexertion.

It would have been nice if Peter Jackson had Bard the Bowman use a Bow to kill Smaug, as a Bowman with Bows would. I'd probably have brought a secondary Bowman's Bow. But that's neither here nor there nor back again.

EDIT: OOOH new idea. What if I just cut the whole black arrow thing entirely, and have an actual arrow hit Smaug in the weak spot? That could totally maybe hopefully please dear god work!

spence said:

I'm not really sure how I could change that, except for possibly removing the action beat. However it does come at a point where an action beat is necessary, so it might have to stay. I'll definitely tinker with it. That always bothered me too.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what an action beat is. But maybe cut straight from when a troll mentions there may be others around to the dwarves in bags and roasting.

I just mean the scene happens at a point where the film needs an action scene for pacing reasons. It might actually do more harm than good to cut it.

Gaith said:

Ah, but wilt thou roto-correct his eyeballs?

(Hint: the correct answer is "Verily, yes!") :wink:

Click to expand...

But his eyes were blue in LOTR too...?

^ Mostly, I guess - according to teh internets, Bloom sometimes forgot to wear his contacts. In any case, his eyes mostly looked real-ish, and not CG'ed into unnaturally Children of the Corn blue. /end thread hijack :wink:

spence said:

I just mean the scene happens at a point where the film needs an action scene for pacing reasons. It might actually do more harm than good to cut it.

Click to expand...

[MENTION=11329]Menbailee[/MENTION] 's cut of AUJ had the dwarves running in and then immediately cutting to them in the bags. Obviously having not seen your cut I'm not sure how that would work for pacing, but it was a good change and added a bit of humor to the happenings.

It could work. I'm just curious if it matters to me that much. Like I said, I need the action scene there.