The Hobbit was somehow filmed as a trilogy (aka The Hobbit: The Bloating Of The Five Pages). In retrospect, stretching the tiny book (and some supplementary pages) that thin may have been helped along with winging it and cocaine. Well, maybe not cocaine (except for Beorn). But if you thought they could have told the story in one film, you weren’t alone.
Jobilt has been working on three fan-edit versions of trilogy, coming up with her preferred edition (2 hours and 42 minutes), an extended edition (3 hours and 45 minutes), and a short version (2 hours and 10 minutes). And you can subtract an additional 13 minutes from each of those if you don’t watch the end credits, making the shortest version clock in at under two hours.
She explains how she pared it down:
- Focusing on Bilbo’s story, neither slavish to the book nor indulgent of Jackson’s additions.
- Cutting the goofiness, gore and dread for a consistent tone balancing the book’s exuberance and the sequel films’ grit.
- Unifying the narrative with fewer flashbacks, cross-cuts, establishing and reaction shots.
- Closing dozens of plot holes, inconsistencies, implausibilities and redundancies.
- Mining all three Extended Editions for character moments and visual storytelling.
You can find out more about her edits over at Jobilt. And if you aren’t interested in dedicating even two hours to her briskest edit of the trilogy, here’s an even shorter edit of what would happen if Bilbo Baggins were a bit more like Martin Freeman, the actor playing him:
(Via Jobilt, Boing Boing, and Robot In Disguise)
