Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Edits, The

The editing choices made for a very enjoyable viewing experience.
With the unnecessary bits removed (especially the more cartoonish action sequences), the story really did come alive.
Thoroughly enjoyed this edit, would view it again.

This edit takes advantage of the episodic nature of the story, allowing the narrative to unfold in a serial format that keeps the viewer engaged from start to finish. The technical work of the editing is superb, with seamless transitions that almost never feel out of place. One of the standout features of this edit is how it streamlines Bilbo's story while retaining all the important character beats and plot points. The pacing is really good, with every scene serving a clear purpose in advancing the story. It flows much more smoothly, without any of the pacing issues that were present in the original cut.
One minor critique is the amount of time still spent on Thorin's dragon sickness. While this is an important aspect of the character's journey in the original Peter Jackson's vision, the edit could have benefitted from cutting some of the first scenes to make this change less sudden at the beginning of episode 4. Additionally, I missed some foreshadowing of the arrival of the orc army at the end, which would have heightened the tension. Despite all the result is magnificent and one of the best fanedits of The Hobbit.

After doing a Lord of the Rings marathon, my wife and I were searching for a better way to watch the Hobbit (We'd seen the theatrical editions before and really didn't like them).

In short, this edit perfectly blended the good parts of the books with the good parts of the movies. It really kept the feeling of a small adventure for a Hobbit within this enormous world that Bilbo doesn't really know much of. Minus a couple of occasional strange audio cuts/transitions, the audiovisual editing was perfect, and even the "normal" quality edit looked great on our high-res screens. Breaking it down into 5 episodes was also a nice touch, as it was easy for us to find intermissions for snacks and such.

Would highly recommend this edit to anyone who wants a more streamlined, focused way to watch the Hobbit trilogy.

Episode 1:
This was very well done, I think the biggest problems with it are some jarring audio cuts, like the music changes won't flow naturally. This is a really simple fix by fading the previous scene's audio into the next scene and having that scene's audio fade in. It was only a cople times but it was still a minor complaint.

Overall very entertaining and fun.

I thought I would never watch these movies again. Whenever they’re on tv I’d watch a few minutes and couldn’t take much more. This was a great cut episodic and great pace