The Hobbit: Into the FireOriginal Title: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)Faneditor: Ranger613Franchise: Lord of the Rings
Fanedit Type: FanFix
Fanedit Release Date: 1st September 2014
Fanedit Runtime: 98
Synopsis: No barrel gymnastics. No molten gold. The Desolation of Smaug is Peter Jackson's adaptation of the middle third of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. Despite some incredible visuals and fine performances, it was too long and encumbered by many scenes that not only slowed the film, but also were completely invented for the film and deviated from the novel significantly. "Fire of the Dragon" is an earlier edit of this film, where I cut out all the extra made-up-for-the movie padding that stretched a perfectly good 2 hour movie into almost three. 'Dragon' was a version that didn't drag and had good pacing, and is what I feel the Theatrical cut should have been--I emphasize that because a lot of the material I liked from the actual movie and I felt made it entertaining (namely, the barrel fight and the dragon showdown in the end) are left intact in Dragon-- I just felt those made the movie more fun and gave it the feel of adventure it needed. However, I strongly agree with a lot of the criticism of both the original film and my first cut, in that these things (1) were a little over-the-top at times, and (2) still never happened in the book. So I decided to go ahead and make further changes to produce a "purist cut" of the movie. Instead of just being a watered down version of "Dragon", I trimmed more, reordered certain scenes, and made a new opening for it, as well as a new title. This is as close as Desolation comes to being a 'book' cut of Tolkien's the Hobbit.