Let me start by saying that I enjoy many aspects of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. Overall, however, I felt that the story was spoiled by an interminable running time, unengaging plot tangents and constant narrative filibustering. What especially saddened me was how Bilbo (the supposed protagonist of the story) was rendered absent for large portions of the final two films. Back in 2012, I had high hopes of adding The Hobbit to my annual Lord of the Rings marathon, but in its current bloated format, I simply cannot see that happening.
So, over the weekend, I decided to condense all three installments (An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies) into a single 4-hour feature that more closely resembled Tolkien’s original novel. Well, okay, it’s closer to 4.5 hours, but those are some long-ass credits! This new version was achieved through a series of major and minor cuts, detailed below:
The investigation of Dol Guldor has been completely excised, including the appearances of Radagast, Saruman and Galadriel. This was the most obvious cut, and the easiest to carry out (a testament to its irrelevance to the main narrative). Like the novel, Gandalf abruptly disappears on the borders of Mirkwood, and then reappears at the siege of the Lonely Mountain with tidings of an orc army.
The Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle has also been removed. Indeed, Tauriel is no longer a character in the film, and Legolas only gets a brief cameo during the Mirkwood arrest. This was the next clear candidate for elimination, given how little plot value and personality these two woodland sprites added to the story. Dwarves are way more fun to hang out with anyway. 😛
The Pale Orc subplot is vastly trimmed down. Azog is obviously still leading the attack on the Lonely Mountain at the end, but he does not appear in the film until after the company escapes the goblin tunnels (suggesting that the slaying of the Great Goblin is a factor in their vendetta, as it was in the novel).
Several of the Laketown scenes have been cut, such as Bard’s imprisonment and the superfluous orc raid. However, I’ve still left quite a bit of this story-thread intact, since I felt it succeeded in getting the audience to care about the down-beaten fisherfolk and the struggles of Bard to protect them.
The prelude with old Bilbo is gone. As with the novel, I find the film works better if the scope starts out small (in a cosy hobbit hole), and then grows organically as Bilbo ventures out into the big, scary world. It is far more elegant to first learn about Smaug from the dwarves’ haunting ballad (rather than a bombastic CGI sequence). The prelude also undermines the real-and-present stakes of the story by framing it as one big flashback.
Several of the orc skirmishes have been cut. I felt that the Battle of the Five Armies provided more than enough orc mayhem. If you pack in too much before then, they just become monotonous, and it lessons their menace in the audience’s mind. I was tempted to leave in the very first Azog confrontation (since it resembles a chapter from the novel), but decided to cut it for a variety of reasons. Specifically, I found it tonally jarring to jump from the emotional crescendo of Thorin being saved by Bilbo (and the sense of safety the company feels after being rescued by the eagles), straight back into another chase sequence. Plus, I think the film works better if Bilbo is still trying to earn Thorin’s respect the entire journey, as he was in the novel. Not to mention the absurdity of Bilbo suddenly turning into John McClane with a sword!
Several of the action scenes have been tightened up, such as the barrel-ride, the fight between Smaug and the dwarves (no molten gold in this version), and the Battle of the Five Armies. Though, it should be noted that Bilbo’s key scenes—the encounter with Gollum, the battle against the Mirkwood spiders, and the conversation with Smaug—have not been tampered with, since they proved to be excellent adaptions (in no small part due to Freeman’s performance), and serve to refocus the film on Bilbo’s arc.
A lot of filler scenes have been cut as well. These are usually harder to spot (and I’ve probably missed a couple), but once they’re gone, you’ll completely forget that they ever existed. For example, the 4-minute scene where Bard buys some fish and the dwarves gather up his pay.
I used 720×576 MP4s for the recut. The resolution is slightly reduced after a few exports, but it’s still comparable to DVD quality. Here are some time-stamped screenshots, if anyone wants a better impression:
My main goals in undertaking this edit were to re-centre the story on Bilbo, and to have the narrative move at a much brisker pace (though not so fast that the audience lost grasp of what was going on). Creating smooth transitions between scenes was of particular importance in this regard. I even reordered a few moments in the film to make it flow better. The toughest parts to edit were the barrel-ride and the fight on Ravenhill (since Legolas and Tauriel kept bursting in with their gymnastics routine). If you have any further questions over what was taken out and what was left in, please post them in the comment’s section.
If you would like to download the movie, then simply add this torrent to your BitTorrent client. This is the final version of the fanedit, and is 6GB. However, if you would prefer a smaller file-size, you can also download the lower-resolution 2GB version, by using this torrent. If you do not have a BitTorent client, I would recommend installing μTorrent.
This was a labour of love, so please share and seed. And feel free to reupload the video and post your own links wherever you want (including the comments section).
“May the hair on your toes never fall out.”
TolkienEditor 🙂
Update (22 Jan): Apologies for the delay, but I have uploaded the 6GB version of the fanedit. This version also has a few alterations, based on people’s requests, including trimming down the chase sequence through the goblin tunnels; colour correcting the transition from the Misty Mountains to Beorn’s house; taking out the Bombur “barrel bounce” (which is apparently the bane of some people’s existence); and tidying up the final fight on Ravenhill. I have no idea how to remove the gold-coating from Smaug, though. I tried a few variations, but none of them work very well. So, this is the final version, for good or ill. 😛
Now, I do want to temper people’s expectations for the 6GB version. Considering the difference in size, the quality isn’t dramatically better. Rather, it is somewhere between a DVD and Blu-ray. The screenshots above are a good indication. That said, the image is sharper, and the colours are a little more vibrant, so it’s probably preferable for people who would like to watch the fanedit on a big-screen TV. Either way, you can click the links above to access it. Thanks!!
Update (23 Jan): Check out this DVD cover that was created by George from the comments section. I am equal parts delighted and amazed. Thanks George! 😀
(click to enlarge)
Update (25 Jan): A big thanks to Vedder for putting together the first set of subtitles for The Tolkien Edit. If anyone else is gracious enough to create subtitles in their native language, please post them to the comments section, and I will add them to the site. Here is the list so far, along with the usernames of those responsible:
The site has been getting an absurd amount of traffic over the past week. The peak-day was Wednesday 21 January, when page-hits rose as high as 35,000 per hour. It’s simmered down considerably since then, presumably because most people have acquired a copy of The Tolkien Edit, or the novelty has simply worn off. 😉
Nevertheless, quite a few articles have been written about the fanedit (some positive, some negative), which I have rather enjoyed perusing. If anyone is interested, here are some of the more notable online publications who have spared a little virtual ink for “The Tolkien Edit”:
Kotaku — The first thing I thought after watching The Battle of Five Armies was “boy, that’s a movie that didn’t need to be made”. Now, thanks to the power of fans and the internet, we can pretend around half of Peter Jackson’s entire Hobbit trilogy never happened. A guy by the name of tolkieneditor has sat down with a copy… [Read More]
A.V. Club — Scarcely a month after the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, someone has recut the nearly eight-hour Hobbit trilogy into a single 4.5-hour film. The maverick behind this edition, known only as “tolkieneditor,” revealed the project (and provided a link for download) in a Wordpress blog… [Read More]
Nerdist — J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is about 300 pages long. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit isn’t part of a trilogy. That didn’t stop Peter Jackson from turning the single book into three long films that included plenty of extras not in the book. As a fan of most things Middle-earth, I was excited to see more… [Read More]
io9 — Well, this was inevitable. A Tolkien fan — less enthused by Peter Jackson’s expansive, three-movie adaptation of The Hobbit than others — has created his own edit of the trilogy, trimming the 9+ hour-long saga into a much trimmer four hours and 21 minutes. Check it out! Created by the quite succinctly named… [Read More]
The Telegraph — A discontented ‘Tolkien editor’ has created one film to rule them all. A Hobbit fan who felt that the trilogy’s length prevented it from being as good as it could be has taken matters into their own hands and come up with a shortened version. Going by the name “tolkieneditor,” the anonymous… [Read More]
The Guardian — Never underestimate the fury of amateur film-makers outraged that their heroes’ long-gestating artistic endeavour didn’t turn out quite the way they had hoped. The Jar Jar Binks-jettisoning Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Edit, which purported to deliver the version of George Lucas’s film everyone actually… [Read More]
Forbes — I admit it, I haven’t seen the Hobbit trilogy. I was a fan of the book as a child, and it was my first introduction to the amazing world of fantasy stories, but I swore I’d never step foot in a cinema to watch a Jackson telling of a Tolkien story after the travesty of The Return Of The King. The problem with that movie… [Read More]
Polygon — Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy adds many elements that weren’t in the original — and pleasantly slim — novel. The three movies have a few memorable scenes, but may be too long to provide an enjoyable interpretation of the original work. Too much content that tied this film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was… [Read More]
/Film — For some fans, interaction with films they love (or want to love) has become a full-on interactive thing. For various reasons — love, hate, curiosity, education — we see fans cutting their own versions of films more and more often. Even Steven Soderbergh is getting into the act of recutting favorite films. One obvious… [Read More]
The Escapist — If you thought Peter Jackson’s The Hobbittrilogy was entirely too long… you’re not alone. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy was great for Lord of The Rings fans who were hungry for more hobbit-on-orc action, but many felt it was a tad… long. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which was three books, The Hobbit… [Read More]
Barnes & Noble — We all knew it was coming: As much as we loved every moment spent in Peter Jackson’s incarnation of Middle Earth, there’s no denying that his expansive take on The Hobbit strays far and wide from the slim source material. But now, one fan has edited the nearly nine-hour trilogy into a slimmer, but… [Read More]
c|net — Want to watch The Hobbit trilogy but think Peter Jackson’s fanfic is way too long? This fan-edit cuts it down to a much more manageable four hours. We’ve got a real-life Edward Shire-hands on our hands here. A Tolkien fan going by the moniker TolkienEditor has taken Peter Jackson’s entire The Hobbit trilogy… [Read More]
Indiewire — We always figured somebody would do it, but we didn’t think it would be so soon. And who knows who long this will last online before the mighty powers of Warner Bros. come swooping down to squash this out with all the fury of Smaug, but an anonymous Middle Earth fan, going by the name of TolkienEditor, has… [Read More]
The Daily Dot — A decade ago, we could have never imagined wanting Jackson’s films to be shorter; the films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were at least three hours apiece, and the extended editions added another 30-40 minutes, which fans lapped up. But it’s 2015, and here we are with, as many keep pointing out, a 300-page… [Read More]
First Showing —“May the hair on your toes never fall out.” Hurry – before the angry legal goons in Hollywood put their foot down and stamp out this fire! In all truth and honesty, I fully expected this (someone would re-cut it into one movie) to happen sooner or later, and I’m glad it was sooner. A J.R.R. Tolkien super-fan who… [Read More]
Stuff.co.nz — An anonymous film buff has done what many would describe as a favour to The Hobbit trilogy, and shortened it. Known only as tolkieneditor, the fan enjoyed “many aspects” of Sir Peter Jackson’s trilogy, but felt it would be better if it was refocused and shortened. “Let me start by saying that I enjoy… [Read More]
Hypable — The inevitable has occurred only a month after The Hobbit finale hit theaters. Someone took all three films and condensed them into one. A person who only wishes to identify himself as TolkienEditor is hosting their 4 1/2-hour cut of The Hobbit, dubbed the “Tokien Edit,” on Archive.org and through… [Read More]
BGR — The story of The Hobbit didn’t need to be stretched out to fill three feature-length films, but that’s what the studio decided to do. Personally, I enjoyed all three movies, but I would love nothing more than to be able to travel back in time and tell Peter Jackson what needed to be cut to make for a well-paced… [Read More]
Blastr — When watched together, Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy lasts a DVT-inducing 7 hours and 54 minutes. That’s quite a long trilogy, considering it takes only four to six hours to read the lone book. So an unknown editor, going by the name Tolkien Editor, took it upon him/herself to recut the trilogy into a more… [Read More]
The Verge — A group of merry men bring along a naive hobbit and travel for long spans of time in a quest for treasure. Whether we’re speaking broadly about The Hobbit or cynically about Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film trilogy is intentionally open for interpretation. In either case, one superfan did the time-crunched… [Read More]
JoBlo — I love me a good fan edit. Whether it be the various revisions made to The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones to the reimagined take on Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel, fan edits are a democratic way for movie buffs to offer an alternative look at feature films they felt could have been… [Read More]
Geek.com — When The Hobbit film trilogy began, the big question hovering over the entire production was “Is it really a good idea to turn a short children’s book into three three-hour movies?” Now, as Peter Jackson’s second epic Middle-earth series comes to a close, it turns out the answer was a resounding “no,” but… [Read More]
Tor — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has been concluded for barely a month, but already one ambitious Tolkien fan has recut the bloated, eight-hour adaptation into a much more manageable affair clocking in at a little less than four and a half hours. How did the anonymous TolkienEditor do it? By cutting out… [Read More]
UPROXX — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is ridiculous folly – this is firmly established. There’s just no way a 300-page kids’ book needs to be a nine-hour epic. The most frustrating thing about it all is there are definitely one or two pretty good Hobbit movies hiding inside the trilogy, but they’ve been buried under hours of… [Read More]
Yahoo! Movies — An industrious Middle Earth fan has edited Peter Jackson’s epic The Hobbit trilogy from three films into one, cutting the overall run time in half. The new edit titled “The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit” was created by a mysterious tinkerer named ‘TolkienEditor’ in order to “re-centre the story on Bilbo” and… [Read More]
Flickchart — It was only a matter of time before someone out there took a knife to Peter Jackson‘s nine-hour-plus opus that is The Hobbit trilogy and re-cut it into a single film, more befitting the single book from which it was adapted. That time is now, as a user named “tolkieneditor” on WordPress has claimed… [Read More]
MoarGEEK — One particularly dedicated J.R.R. Tolkien fan took Peter Jackson’s bloated Hobbit trilogy into his own hands last week and edited it down into a much more manageable four hour long film. By cutting out several of the things that Jackson added in order to make the series span three films instead of… [Read More]
doddle — There are a lot of things that have irked me about the Lord of the Rings prequels that comprise The Hobbit. I’ll give some credit to director Peter Jackson in that when you watch the whole trilogy in one go, it’s far more satisfying, but you can feel where it’s been expanded. One of my hobbies is re-editing… [Read More]
Someecards — If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of watching Peter Jackson’s nine-hour adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 300-page novel, The Hobbit, you might be in luck. Sort of. One industrious fan decided to condense the entire trilogy into one four-hour movie that’s only twice as long as it needs… [Read More]
Moviepilot —For quite some time, fans have been expressing their grief over The Hobbit trilogy’s overall length: three films, fans say, is a little overkill. Several filler scenes were worked into the movies, leaving behind a fairly confusing storyline with more fluff than necessary. But now, much like several fans have… [Read More]
DesignTAXI — Following the release of the final Hobbit movie last December, a dedicated fan has created an awesome mash-up that condenses Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, giving you a single four-hour flick that hopes to be a close resemblance to J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novel. The anonymous fan, who… [Read More]
Nerd Approved — There has been much grumbling about The Hobbit being released as three films. So, it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to condense the trilogy. A diehard Tolkien fan, aptly named “TolkienEditor,” stepped up to the plate and created “The Tolkien Edit,” which runs… [Read More]
Tech Times — There’s a growing trend in Hollywood to take source material from one book and turn it into several films. In fact, the word “trilogy” has become so common that it’s surprising a studio hasn’t tried to copyright it yet. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is one such film. Originally a book by J.R.R. Tolkien with barely… [Read More]
Cultured Vultures — Early on in An Unexpected Journey, Gandalf tells Bilbo the story of his ancestor Bullroarer Took, who allegedly decapitated the goblin king with club, thus knocking the head 100 yards and into a rabbit hole, winning the battle and inventing golf in one fell swoop. It’s a passage that’s taken almost verbatim… [Read More]
Cyborg City — In my previous post, I wrote about the anticipation for fan edits of The Hobbittrilogy as a single film and I characterized them as “inevitable edits.” Last week I encountered TolkienEditor’s The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, which is the first of these recombinations to be publicly released. Culture bloggers… [Read More]
Sight On Sound — Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has been one of the most frustrating franchises in movie history. Many fans still love it, but Jackson’s need to overload the films with invented love triangles, back stories, needlessly long and laughable fight sequences, unnecessary winks to the original… [Read More]
Mordor ~ The Land of Shadow — Many fans have been waiting for the theatrical version of The Battle of the Five Armies to hit online, so they can begin to re-cut and edit what many feel is an oversized version of The Hobbit by Peter Jackson! One of the first of these edits is now available for viewing online. A fan of both… [Read More]
RantLifestyle — Are you one of the many disappointed fans of The Hobbit who cried for a shorter, less bloated adaptation of the beloved book? So am I! And so is anonymous internet person tolkieneditor, the dedicated soul who turned an unnecessary trilogy into one film. Here are 10 reasons why their edit is probably… [Read More]
Rolling Stone (Spain) — Cuando hablamos de las 13 cosas que necesitas saber sobre El hobbit, avisamos: las escenas de relleno y las tramas que no están en el libro cantan, y mucho. Dada la imposibilidad de montar tres películas con el contenido de una novela de apenas 250 páginas, Peter Jackson tuvo que tirar a… [Read More]
20 Minutos (Spain) — Un fan del universo Tolkien se ha atrevido a hacer lo que Peter Jackson no se atrevió a hacer: dejar el libro de El Hobbit en una sola película. Eso sí, se trata de una megapelícula de casi de cuatro horas y media. Imágenes 1 Foto El autor de esta obra se hace llamar ‘Tolkien Editor’ y ha… [Read More]
OrgoglioNerd (Italy) — Se siete amanti della trilogia completa de Lo Hobbit ma non avete sopportato le scene superflue del film potreste apprezzare l’opera di un fan, con nickname Tolkien Editor, che ha voluto condensare i tre film della trilogia in un unico film della durata di quattro ore e ventuno minuti… [Read More]
Jovem Nerd (Brazil) — Assim como pouca manteiga espalhada em muito pão, a maioria dos fãs concorda que três filmes para contar a história de O Hobbit foram demais. Independente se os filmes são, na opinião de cada um, bons ou ruins, o livro não tinha material suficiente para tantas horas de cenas… [Read More]
Süperkarga (Turkey) — Üç film olarak çekilen ve son halkası geçtiğimiz Aralık ayında vizyona giren The Hobbit serisi, birçok eleştirilere maruz kaldı. Bunların en önemlisi görsel efektlerin gerçekten kötü olması ve kısacık bir hikayenin uydurma elementlerle üç filmlik bir senaryoya dönüştürülmesiydi. Bu durumun… [Read More]
Oyungezer (Turkey) —The Hobbit, herhalde Peter Jackson’ın acımasızca katlettiği son Orta Dünya kitabı olacaktır. Her ne kadar filmi izlediğimde orada bulunan Orta Dünya’nın havasını solumaktan memnun olan, bu tür şeyleri çöldeki vaha gibi karşılamış birisi olsam da güzelim şiir ve şarkı… [Read More]
ITC (Russia) — Если вас тоже удивляет как по 200-страничной книге можно снять мини-сериал продолжительностью 8 часов, то у меня для вас есть хорошие новости. Один из фанатов Толкиена не поленился исократил фильм до 4 часов. Надругательство и не по канонам? А вот как раз\… [Read More]
Clubic Mag (France) —Le Hobbit : La Bataille des Cinq Armées est sorti début décembre 2014 dans les salles obscures, et a été un succès malgré des critiques mitigées : à force de diluer l’histoire, Peter Jackson a surtout fait du remplissage à grands coups d’effets spéciaux pour boucler sa nouvelle trilogie. Un constat qui… [Read More]
GameStar (Hungary) — Egy rajongó úgy döntött, hogy újravágja a filmeket, kihagyva több, sokak által kritizált részt. A cél nem feltétlenül a könyvhöz való hűség volt, de főleg a forgatókönyvírók által kitalált részeknek kellett menniük. Sokak szerint elhibázott döntés volt trilógiát készíteni a Hobbitból, és tény, hogy… [Read More]
Brainstorm 9 (Brazil) — Os fãs de Peter Jackson que me perdoem, mas transformar um livro de 300 páginas em uma trilogia de filmes que somam mais de 8 horas me pareceu um exagero. Por isso que achei sensacional a iniciativa do editor anônimoTolkieneditor. Ele usou todo o material da trilogia de… [Read More]
Gadżetomania (Polish) — Peter Jackson nie miał łatwego zadania – tworząc Hobbita musiał pogodzić sprzeczne interesy i oczekiwania. W końcu film tego formatu to przede wszystkim produkt, który przede wszystkim musi na siebie zarobić. Aby było to możliwe, trzeba przyciągnąć do kin możliwie liczną… [Read More]
HDRE (German) — Der Fan unter dem Pseudonym “tolkieneditor” erklärt in seinem Posting, dass er die HOBBIT-Verfilmungen von Peter Jackson grundsätzlich gemocht habe, sie ihm nur viel zu lang waren, wodurch der Genuss geschmälert worden sei. Außerdem habe ihn gestört, dass Bilbo Beutlin, der ja eigentlich der… [Read More]
Geekyapar! (Turkey) — Ben düşündüğümü biliyorum. Özellikle uzayıp giden ve hiçbir yere varmayan diyalogları, ana hikayeye hizmet etmeyen yan öykü örgülerini ve genişletilip kendi filmine çevrilen savaş sahnelerini görünce düşünmemek elde değildi çünkü. Biri bunları kırpıp, tüm bu şişman yerler atsa, filmi şöyle bir… [Read More]
Coming Soon (Italy) — Se siete tra coloro che apprezzano le versioni estese degli Hobbit di Peter Jackson, questa news non fa per voi. Un fan, nickname Tolkien Editor, ha realizzato The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, condensando in quasi quattro ore e mezza tutti e tre i lungometraggi della trilogia, il cui atto conclusivo è… [Read More]
index (Hungary) — Szerintem nincsen olyan ember a földön, aki azt mondaná, hogy jó ez a három Hobbit-film, sőt, a hossza is pont megfelelő, épp ellenkezőleg, Tolkien legrövidebb könyvéből sikerült egy puffasztott rizshez hasonló terméket gyártani, ami majdnem kilenc órán keresztük trollkodik minden néző… [Read More]
Complexo Geek (Brazil) — É de conhecimento de todos que muitos fãs de Tolkien não gostaram da decisão de Peter Jackson de fazer uma trilogia de mais de 9 horas, usando como base um livro de 200 páginas. A alegação é de que o resultado final se tornou uma história arrastada, com sub-tramas que pouco… [Read More]
VOS (Argentina) — De sde que se supo que El Hobbit de J.R.R. Tolkien sería llevado a la pantalla grande en tres películas, la alegría de los fanáticos se mezcló con la duda sobre la cantidad y duración de los filmes para adaptar… [Read More]
Videogiochi (Italy) —Lo Hobbit rientra sicuramente tra i kolossal di questi ultimi anni, ma non tutti i fan della celebre saga fantasy hanno apprezzato il lavoro svolto da Peter Jackson. La colpa è probabilmente da attribuirsi agli eccessivi “filler”, ovvero quelle scene che non sono di fatto presenti nel romanzo di Tolkien. Ecco… [Read More]
Reddit — [tolkienfans]User recuts the 3 Hobbit films into a single 4 hour film…[Read More]
If you stumble across any more articles, reviews or podcasts, feel free to post them in the comments.
Now that the torrent for the fanedit is bouncing along healthily, and comments are petering off, I’m going to be taking a break from the site. However, if people continue to submit subtitles for the film, I’ll happily keep adding them to the list.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I will be releasing a follow-up fanedit, focusing primarily on Gandalf’s story and the investigation of Dol Guldor. The editing for the first two films is completed (clocking in at a feature-length 80 minutes already); however, I will be waiting until the extended edition of The Battle of the Five Armies is released, before I add it to the site. I think you’ll be surprised by how well Gandalf’s story works as a movie unto itself, albeit a much darker, creepier, more psychologically daunting movie than Bilbo’s adventure romp.
You can follow @TolkienEditor on Twitter for any future updates.
Thanks so much for all of your lovely feedback, heartfelt support and creative contributions.
“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”
Let me start by saying that I enjoy many aspects of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. Overall, however, I felt that the story was spoiled by an interminable running time, unengaging plot tangents and constant narrative filibustering. What especially saddened me was how Bilbo (the supposed protagonist of the story) was rendered absent for large portions of the final two films. Back in 2012, I had high hopes of adding The Hobbit to my annual Lord of the Rings marathon, but in its current bloated format, I simply cannot see that happening.
(click to enlarge)
The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit 
