“I’m going on a more reasonably lengthed adventure!”
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is ridiculous folly – this is firmly established. There’s just no way a 300-page kids’ book needs to be a nine-hour epic. The most frustrating thing about it all is there are definitely one or two pretty good Hobbit movies hiding inside the trilogy, but they’ve been buried under hours of singing, superfluous romance and action scenes that are at least three times too long.
Well, a fan who goes by Tolkieneditor has gone and cut The Hobbit down to a single, four-hour movie he’s dubbed The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, with the original book as his guide. How did he cut five hours of fat?
– Gandalf’s whole side-adventure in Dol Guldor has been chopped. That means Galadriel, Saruman and ol’ bird poop face Radagast are completely gone from the movie. Just like in the book, Gandalf goes off on an urgent, secret mission before the party enters the Milkwood, then returns at the siege of the Lonely Mountain.
– The excruciating Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle is gone. Ain’t no room for mushy stuff in Tolkien.
– Azog (the hook-handed orc trailing them throughout the trilogy) is still in the movie but he only appears after the confrontation with the Goblins and Gollum.
– The prelude with Bilbo and Frodo is gone.
– A lot of the action scenes have been tightened up, and a ton of pointless dwarf comedy has been cut. To give you an idea of what I mean by “tightened up,” here’s the barrel escape scene, which was an endless, tiresome video game level in Jackson’s movie, but a nice, short three-minute action scene in the Tolkien Cut.
I’ll admit, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the final Jackson Hobbit movie, but I might be able to tolerate it in Tolkien Edit form. If you’d like to watch The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit, well, I’m not going to tell you exactly how to get it, but it’s out there for you tricksy hobbitses to find.