The Hobbit trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, stirred up plenty of controversy from the moment it was announced—whether it was adapting Tolkien's work into three films or adding characters that never appeared in the book. Now, a devoted fan has taken the three movies and, after painstaking work, accomplished his goal: trimming Jackson's trilogy down to a single movie.
The trilogy caused a great deal of discussion, from adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's book into three films totaling over nine hours to including invented characters and other elements that frustrated many fans. So this fan sat down with a copy of the book, decent versions of the three films (The Battle of the Five Armies has already leaked), and the desire to do deep, heavy work: trimming Peter Jackson's adaptation into a single movie.
The result is The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, which cuts all the extra scenes and characters from the trilogy—comprising An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies—into a single movie of four hours (four hours and twenty-one minutes, to be exact) that stays much closer to Tolkien's original work. According to the user tolkieneditor, who is behind the project, some of the biggest cuts include the investigation of Dol Guldur (including appearances by Radagast, Saruman, and Galadriel), the love triangle between Legolas, Tauriel, and Kili (thankfully), and the prelude with old Bilbo...
...as well as several action scenes (especially in the last film) and filler footage that have also been trimmed. The movie can be downloaded for free from the Tolkien Edit website, where the user states that the main goal was to refocus the story on Bilbo, setting aside the invented plots, and achieve a much more energetic pace like the book. In short, The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit is a much shorter story that does a better job of bringing Tolkien's original tale to the big screen, thanks to the efforts of a great fan. Let it be a lesson to you, Jackson!
The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit
