The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Arkenstone Edition

[MovieMaven]

A very tidily done edit. The seams hardly showed at all - in many places I didn't even notice. (I did miss Radagast's hedgehog - it's such a tender little set-piece and shows his real dedication to the birds, beasts and living things generally.)

Had a little trouble getting the file to download in the first place - it took at least two tries - and then it wouldn't play back properly under Windows Media Player (no sound). So I downloaded and installed VLC: end of that problem.

 

[releasedtruth]

I've now shown Arkenstone to several people, all to rave reviews. Fire of the Dragon is a great DoS edit, but would certainly like to see a continuation of the Arkenstone fit and flavour.

 

[DS-61-5-]

I've now shown Arkenstone to several people, all to rave reviews. Fire of the Dragon is a great DoS edit, but would certainly like to see a continuation of the Arkenstone fit and flavour.

Ditto. As I said in the review I just posted, I've shown this edit to several folks, all of whom hated the theatrical and LOVE this version. Probably half of my posts in the last year on NeoGAF, one of the biggest gaming forums on the Internet, have been singing the praises of Arkenstone. See, for example,

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=123872690&postcount=318
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=99917849&postcount=1830
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=94649806&postcount=1785 [and subsequent posts].

So I’m doing my part to get this terrific, terrific edit out there.

Kerr, if you're reading this, I'd love to see you do a similar prudent, but not book purist, edit, combining material from the DoS and BOFA extended editions, as a first pass before you release your 2015 purist one. [It seems like everyone wants to do a very compressed book one, so I’d like to see one that isn’t shooting for that]. I very much liked RangerKris’s Into the Fire, but thought it was a bit too draconian in parts—but it showed a 1:30ish run time for DOS would be appropriate, and I think that same runtime is about what will be worth saving from BOFA EE, so a combined film slightly under 3 hrs.

If I, as one without much technical skill, could be so bold as to make proposals that I think are in line with your spirit, something like

Reveal message

Obviously you’d knock some of the same stuff out in either, which other faneditors lose or will lose--the barrels, the non dialogue Smaug bits/molten gold/Star Wars droid factory, everything from the master except maybe Bilbo defending Thorin from Bard, Alfrid, Gandalf and the final ring warning, worms, Strider, Alfrid, floating Legolas/most of the Bolg duel, gold sickness as a spell instead of a metaphor, Alfrid, Alfrid, etc…. Maybe knock out the final Thorin-Azog duel--have Bilbo wake up to a mortally wounded Thorin. Sure, it's somewhat inexplicable, but no less than Azog leaping through ice, or piercing Thorin's lungs without seeming consequence...

But unlike the minimalist purist version, you’d leave some other things

Like you did with judicious use of the AUJ Rivendell material, add a very few slices from the DOS EE [the Beorn exposition scene but not the introduction scene, Thrain without the Wilhelm or the scurrying]

Keep the White Council and a severely compressed Dol Guldur; lose Azog and the dragonball style magic duel there in DoS

Keep the Thorin repentance scene, but just have the shot of him looking pensive and hearing the audio [but no gold avalanche]

And maybe, controversially, keep a trimmed down Tauriel-Kili arc (as much as I hated DoS, it was the closest thing to character development and human emotions in it, plus that Howard Shore theme&#8230 but one that loses a lot of the groaner dialogue with Thranduil from BOFA and some or all of Laketown in DOS.

Anyway, as a trial run/first step to your promised book purist version, I’d ask you to please consider doing an Arkenstone II: DOS and BOFA that uses your good judgement again.

 

[Morgolking]

Every time this thread is bumped I get my hopes up that news of the DoS Arkenstone release is contained therein.

 

[MovieMaven]

Patience, grasshopper....

The AUJ Arkenstone version comes very close to what I would have chosen to do, if I knew how to do it. But there are a few things I would have done differently.

I would have liked to see a "cold open" with the words, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit", etc., leading into the "Good Morning" scene between Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Gandalf. (Don't cut a frame of that, it's perfect.) Save the intro/flashback material for the post-dinner planning, when Bilbo finds out what he's really gotten himself into. One thing this does is eliminate the first layer of flashbacks (since the story with framing sequence is one long flashback, and there are several flashbacks within it). It also allows the naive viewer to be introduced gradually to what's going on, instead of hitting them over the head with ten minutes of exposition.

I like Bilbo missing his pocket-handkerchief, but not Bofur tossing him a nasty rag ripped from his shirt.

Would have liked a bit more of Radagast, especially the healing of the hedgehog - it shows not only how sweet he is, but gives some indication of his real power. (But cut the name "Sebastian" - it doesn't fit.)

Like Menbailee's suggestion of editing the troll scene so that there is a jump cut from the dwarves charging into the fight to having them trussed and bagged - three smarter-than-average trolls, which these are, should be more than a match for thirteen dwarves. (Have not been able to obtain that fanedit, so don't know exactly how Menbailee did it.)

I'm really bothered by all the beeswax about the Witch-King and the rest of the Nine being "summoned Dead" - they never died, they just stretched themselves so thin they lost almost all contact with the physical world. Maybe cut all that to the absolute minimum to imply the Nine were sealed away (not buried) after Sauron's (not "Angmar's") downfall. Or maybe just show and identify the Morgul sword, without all the specifics as to whose it was and so forth.

The concluding dwarves vs. orcs/Wargs fight could probably be trimmed still further, and may have to be in order to fit three movies into two (I don't think they can be cut into one and still retain enough coherence).

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My preference would be to see the first film cut moderately, and the two following cut severely - there's definitely a lot of bloat in Desolation, and I suspect there is as much or more in Five Armies.

Ranger613's "Into the Fire" cut is (again) almost right, but I didn't care for the opening with the eagles (a repeat from the previous film). I would let Beorn, face to face, clue Gandalf in that there is something Not Right about the "Necromancer", rather than the long-distance telepathy bit with Galadriel (was that just to give Cate Blanchett a cameo in this film too?) And I WOULD cut the scene where Bilbo loses the Ring during the spider fight and goes Ax Crazy on the crab-thing. It's Over The Top.

Also, a much harder cut on the whole High Fells subplot - I'm not sure it's needed at all, and unless those bunnies can fly at supersonic speeds, it seriously screws with time and distance. Is it possible to splice the High Fells/Dol Guldur scenes in such a way as to imply that the Nine were imprisoned at/near Dol Guldur rather than all the way back across the Misty Mountains? (This would make more sense of the Witch-King attacking Radagast when he started poking around Dol Guldur.)

Not having seen the third film yet - and I'll probably have to wait for the DVD release - I'm not sure how hard it would have to be cut to keep coherence with this, or whether some of the unwanted stuff would have to be added back to Part Two.

 

[Hardbackyoyo]

Does anyone know if Kerr is doing an edit for The Desolation of Smaug?

 

[Morgolking]

He said he is but that was about 2 years ago. We're all anxiously waiting for word from him.

 

[Randy1012]

It's possible that he's been waiting for The Battle of the Five Armies to release on home video, assuming he intends to add Smaug's attack on Lake-town to the end of his Desolation edit. Maybe now that it's out, we might hear some news in the near future.

 

[johntis]

I love this edit and have watched it multiple times! Any new on cuts of the other two films? :heart:

 

[octoroxx]

Ditto. Unfortunately it seems that Kerr has been MIA for a little while now though. I'm sure life has just gotten in the way.

 

[Neglify]

Either that or he was incredibly disappointed with Hobbit Deux and Tres and went into exile.

 

[el_silloneb]

Aww, saw this thread active again and jumped on it only to find that Kerr, whose Red Book edits of LotR were better than could be imagined by mere mortals, is still not back.