Review Detail
9.8 74 10Overall rating
10.0
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
10.0
Enjoyment
9.0
I'm not a hardcore fan of Tolkien's universe. As such, I discovered it with The Lord of the Rings movies. I enjoyed them a lot, but I enjoyed their extended versions a lot more, IMO they benefited from the added scenes.
The Hobbit however, even in its theatrical version, was far too long as a 10-hours long trilogy. You don't need to know the original story was only one book to notice the Hobbit trilogy is bloated with unnecessary stuff.
Battle of the Five Edits reduces The Hobbit to a 5-hour long story divided in 5 chapters. Only the essential is left, the story is streamlined and much more enjoyable this way.
Technically speaking, it is flawless. I didn't notice any abrupt cut, whether in the video or the audio.
There are, however a couple of "weirdness's"
One : because the editor removed Tauriel entirely but left Kili being wounded with a poisoned arrow, we see him feeling very weak and nearly dying to suddenly feeling better a few minutes later. The thing is, it was necessary to leave the poison arrow in the edit to explain while Kili noisily fell down the stairs which alerted the nearby guards. Removing the arrow would have made Kili's sudden weakness equally weird, so there was no way to avoid this without leaving Tauriel in.
Two : in the story Gandalf comes and goes between the dwarves and his investigations. In this edit we don't see his investigations (the story is supposed to be about Bilbo after all), and because of the removed scenes in the last chapter he simply "reappears" a bit out of nowhere in front of Erebor in the middle of Thranduil's army. This felt a bit weird as I watched it, however to be objective, it's no different than him coming back to rescue the dwarves from the trolls in the nick of time. I used to wonder why Bilbo tells Gandalf "you come and go as you please" in Fellowship, at least now I know :p
After proofreading I realize: I spent more time talking about the negative than the positive, but the truth is these little weirdness's are the only "negative" things I had to say, and I'm using the word loosely.
Overall, the positive outweighs the negative by a huge margin and the editor deserves praise for his work, especially given the source material they had to work with.
The Hobbit however, even in its theatrical version, was far too long as a 10-hours long trilogy. You don't need to know the original story was only one book to notice the Hobbit trilogy is bloated with unnecessary stuff.
Battle of the Five Edits reduces The Hobbit to a 5-hour long story divided in 5 chapters. Only the essential is left, the story is streamlined and much more enjoyable this way.
Technically speaking, it is flawless. I didn't notice any abrupt cut, whether in the video or the audio.
There are, however a couple of "weirdness's"
One : because the editor removed Tauriel entirely but left Kili being wounded with a poisoned arrow, we see him feeling very weak and nearly dying to suddenly feeling better a few minutes later. The thing is, it was necessary to leave the poison arrow in the edit to explain while Kili noisily fell down the stairs which alerted the nearby guards. Removing the arrow would have made Kili's sudden weakness equally weird, so there was no way to avoid this without leaving Tauriel in.
Two : in the story Gandalf comes and goes between the dwarves and his investigations. In this edit we don't see his investigations (the story is supposed to be about Bilbo after all), and because of the removed scenes in the last chapter he simply "reappears" a bit out of nowhere in front of Erebor in the middle of Thranduil's army. This felt a bit weird as I watched it, however to be objective, it's no different than him coming back to rescue the dwarves from the trolls in the nick of time. I used to wonder why Bilbo tells Gandalf "you come and go as you please" in Fellowship, at least now I know :p
After proofreading I realize: I spent more time talking about the negative than the positive, but the truth is these little weirdness's are the only "negative" things I had to say, and I'm using the word loosely.
Overall, the positive outweighs the negative by a huge margin and the editor deserves praise for his work, especially given the source material they had to work with.
User Review
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Yes
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Digital
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I'm glad you liked it :)