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Hobbit: The Original Two-Film Structure, The:

MCP

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Hobbit: The Original Two-Film Structure, The:


I have seen a great deal of Hobbit fan edits over the past 2-3 years...so many that it has been hard to keep track of them all! Some have been excellent (Spence's Edit), some have been astoundingly poor (The Tolkien Edit which got a lot of press for being the first Hobbit edit, yet was released using a bootlegged DVD copy of Battle of Five Armies). This two-part edit falls somewhere in the middle for me and I will explain why.

First off, the title of this edit (The Original Two-Film Structure) is a bit misleading. Peter Jackson and his team have said that when the Hobbit was still two films, they intended to end the first film with the company meeting Bard at the river. This edit splits the story at a completely different point.

The audio/visual quality is truly excellent. Just as clean and crisp as the actual Bluray releases. I loved the custom Bluray menus as well; very beautifully done. There are hardly any visual edit issues save for a noticeable color correction issue that happens during the transition from An Unexpected Journey to the Desolation of Smaug. The edit intends to merge two scenes together that are lit and colored completely differently. Some simple correction to the latter's footage would have solved this. The audio editing is mostly solid, but I did notice certain audio dissolves and transitions that were uneven.

Most Hobbit edits floating around the Internet (and on this site) have landed somewhere between 3 and 4 hours long. This (to me at least) indicates that there is a minimum baseline of garbage to be removed from the Hobbit trilogy by faneditors. I've even seen a daring cut that was only two hours long! However out of all the edits currently listed on IFDB, this edit is by far the longest at over 6.5 hours. It is an interesting choice by the editor to keep so much content in the edit, but unfortunately it is also what detracts from its enjoyment and overall quality. These films were lambasted for their narrative excess for a reason, and I feel this edit unsuccessfully splits the difference between the original films and the much leaner and cleaner versions out there.

Several editing decisions jumped out at me during the viewing of this edit. Why does Frodo show up at all here? He is completely cut save for one awkward shot of him walking in Bag End. No explanation is given. Why remove Blunt the Knives yet include the dwarves' song in Rivendell (which wasn't even in the theatrical release)? I've seen some edits that include Radagast, but do we really need the cross-eyed pothead humor? Why are Alfrid and Legolas still so visible, and at the expense of actual scenes from the book like the eagle rescue? Why are the were-worms still here, with even less foreshadowing than the original films? Other faneditors have easily removed these things without ruining the narrative flow of their edits.

I admire the reworking of nearly all the Orcish/Black Speech subtitles, even if they do venture into hokey fan-fiction on occasion. I really liked how the first part of the edit ends with the Sauron reveal cliffhanger, and picks back up on Part Two with the Bree flashback leading into Laketown. Some inspired bits of editing and re-working of scenes are evident here, but ultimately it is just not enough. There is still too much bloat and excess, which becomes more evident as the edit gets into the Battle of Five Armies. While still trimmed from its original length, the battle carries on for far too long.

Even though the editor claims to want this edit to feel closer in tone to the LOTR trilogy, we are still treated to plenty of ridiculous CGI buffoonery (Legolas tap-dancing on the dwarves, flying on a bat, generally outrageous and impossible stunts, silly troll antics, etc). Moments like this are what made The Hobbit films compare poorly to the more grounded LOTR trilogy, and other editors have worked around many of these issues with success. Despite its high technical quality, "The Original Two-Film Structure" doesn't remove enough from the original films to make it a true standout amongst the ever-growing pantheon of Hobbit fan edits.


https://ifdb.fanedit.org/hobbit-the-original-two-film-structure-the/discussions/9962/
 
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