Review Detail
9.5 31 10
(Updated: July 03, 2015)
Overall rating
9.7
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Trimming excess from Jackson’s eight hour trilogy of The Hobbit sounds excellent to me. Anyone familiar with the audio adaptation from Nicol Williamson knows of at least one working model. Spence cut this down to around three hours, without sacrificing narrative integrity.
Video - Outstanding work here. Seamless editing.
Audio - Two channel, really? Dynamic - some would say too dynamic - sound design. Some of the sequences were way too loud, though a compression tweak is often considered sacrilege. I couldn’t always grasp what actors were saying. Minor quibble, actually. There was nothing jarring or chopped. Solid.
Narrative - Absolutely no question here. The plot stays coherent and works! Truncated or missing characters I did not, by and large, miss. Beorn was the only soul I regretted. If anything, more characters could have been tossed, meaning the bulk of the dwarves. Tolkien never elaborated on most of them and most could have been dispensed with. The final battle felt short, and also somehow felt “small” ...
Enjoyment - to be honest, though, near the end I was ready for the whole movie to come to an end. Certainly not the fault of Spence, who has done a magnificent job here. I disliked the films when I saw them. The DVDs seemed less overwhelming, but Spence’s edit is a whale of a lot better. Enjoyable example of superior story telling. Some movies might be unfixable, however, and I suspect The Hobbits are three.
Nevertheless, I recommend this highly.
Video - Outstanding work here. Seamless editing.
Audio - Two channel, really? Dynamic - some would say too dynamic - sound design. Some of the sequences were way too loud, though a compression tweak is often considered sacrilege. I couldn’t always grasp what actors were saying. Minor quibble, actually. There was nothing jarring or chopped. Solid.
Narrative - Absolutely no question here. The plot stays coherent and works! Truncated or missing characters I did not, by and large, miss. Beorn was the only soul I regretted. If anything, more characters could have been tossed, meaning the bulk of the dwarves. Tolkien never elaborated on most of them and most could have been dispensed with. The final battle felt short, and also somehow felt “small” ...
Enjoyment - to be honest, though, near the end I was ready for the whole movie to come to an end. Certainly not the fault of Spence, who has done a magnificent job here. I disliked the films when I saw them. The DVDs seemed less overwhelming, but Spence’s edit is a whale of a lot better. Enjoyable example of superior story telling. Some movies might be unfixable, however, and I suspect The Hobbits are three.
Nevertheless, I recommend this highly.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched
Digital
