Synopsis:

I read "The Hobbit" back in 1937 when it---wait no that's not right. I watched The Hobbit trilogy before I read the book, and I thought they were okay. Then I read the book... that's when I thought to myself: "Yeah, the movies messed up." So I had the 100% original idea to learn editing in one week and cut the trilogy into one movie that captured the book as best I could. Along this journey, I found out a billion people had already done it... whoops! I finished the edit in October of 2020 and it was... well, it sucked. It was four hours long (I hated that), the quality was horrible, and it just didn't capture my vision. So after 2½ years and many revisions, re-edits, and re-releases, I have finally completed the edit to what I believe is my favorite Hobbit edit. And it is what I call, a Faithful Edit... eh? I would say this one is different from others that I've seen because of its ultra-fast-paced editing. I tried to make it breathe at times, but it is really quick to everything in order to get as much as it could in under 3 hours. I failed, but 3hrs 6min ain't bad. I also was trying to keep it as PG as I could. The book could have very easily been made into a PG film, and I feel that fits better, so I tried my best to make this PG, and not include the burbs and farts.

Intentions:

I decided to make this very original edit (hey it was original to me... and then my dreams were crushed when I found out I wasn't the only one)... wait what was I saying? Oh yeah, so I decided to make this edit because I wanted to capture the feeling of the book. I wanted it to be lighthearted, as PG as I could get it, as short as I could get it, and to be as faithful to the J.R.R. Tolkien's novel as I could make it. I also wanted to make this an enjoyable experience for those who had never seen the trilogy. I had a few people I tested this on, and they said it just felt like a movie... a good movie. I feel that I have succeeded.

Change List:

-Condensed and cut most of the original trilogy. -Quickened the pace. -Cut most of what you would expect: Gandalf's side quest, Azog's side quest, Radagast's side quest, and all the "He's Back" crap. -Pretty much every scene has a bit trimmed off of it. This is a ton of little things, like cutting down the 2 1/2 minutes to show Bilbo going to Kili and Fili, finding out ponies are gone, and then seeing a light to 20 seconds. More "Show don't tell," and "less is more." 20 seconds of Bilbo walking isn't needed. -Cut the prologue. -An Unexpected Party sequence is heavily trimmed, and the adventure begins at about the 20-minute mark. -Added a few extended scenes like the "It feels like magic" scene before they enter Rivendell, and the scene where Bofur thinks Bilbo is leaving from The Battle of the Five Armies. -Cut a significant amount of the action to keep it more faithful to the children's side of the "children's novel." Basically, I tried to keep it as PG as I could. -Made most long scenes and sequences to be more "get to the point" and fewer burps and farts in the middle. Not that extra fun bits aren't in there, they are, like any movie. -Cut the battle part of Battle of the Five Armies to a few minutes, making Bilbo get knocked out right after Thorin turns good again and starts battling. Bilbo wakes up, the eagles are there, Kili and Fili are dead, and Thorin is dying. No fight scene for Thorin... sorry. -Tried to keep the whole edit more light-hearted, with less pointless action, but enough to get the idea across. -Of course, Tauriel, Legolas, and the whole love triangle is cut. -Kept the movie as faithful to the novel as possible, and let a few things slide because it's an adaptation, not the book, and so I treated it as such. -Changed the coloring. In the movies it always looks like a sheet of green was added, I did my best to remove that. I also made the gold in the Smaug scene look more like the actual gold color. -No Prologue or flashbacks. Entirely (save Fire and Water and some BOTFA) from Bilbo's point of view.. -The songs in Bilbo's house are still there. -The troll battle is heavily trimmed, the focus is more on the outsmarting of the troll and quieter parts of the sequence. -No Radagast rabbit chase scene and those orcs. -No white council or any Sauron is back stuff. -The orcs on the wargs are never shown, save maybe the background sometimes. -I know it's in the books, but the extended introduction of the dwarves to Beorn is cut. -The spider action scene is there, but the elves don't fight in it, and Bilbo fighting a bug is cut. -In the barrel sequence, I cut the orc action scene, but I did keep the gate closing and Kili getting shot by an arrow. Only I made it look like Legolas shot Kili. -The dwarves in Laketown is heavily trimmed. Keeping only three scenes in Laketwon. In fact, Laketown is only there for the dwarves to go in, and is never shown again until Smaug attacks it. -Alfred is cut, with only two appearances and two lines in the movie. -The dwarves never give up at Erabor. The very long scene is trimmed slightly, but the dwarves never leave. Even in the book they stay the night. -Unlike most edits, I did keep a little Dwarf and Smaug action because some of it is pretty dang awesome. The quiet scenes before Smaug attacks and when you don't know where he is seems to be taken right out of the chapter "Not at Home," only this time Smaug is actually still in the mountain. The dwarves don't do anything goofy, and Smaug doesn't get doused in gold. The whole scene only lasts a few minutes. -Bard's son doesn't show up to help kill Smaug. -Thorin's dragon sickness does stay. It's hard to keep it, but it only makes sense to keep it and go all in. -The battle part of BOTFA is very heavily trimmed. Kili, Fili, and Thorin aren't shown their death battles. Thorin gets into battle, Bilbo gets knocked out, Bilbo wakes up and finds Thorin dying, Thorin dies. The funeral scene shows Fili and Kili dead. -The ending is like the rest of the movie, little things are trimmed out, but the meat is there.

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to Artisdead for fixing the poster I had for this film. It looks awesome, thank you! And I also thank Artisdead for helping me through this maze of a website, at least for newcomers.