A nice 2 1/2 hour cut of The Hobbit(2012-14)

The idea here a standalone version of the Hobbit that has more in common with a traditional film than a glorified miniseries on the screen. There are a lot of good Hobbit films out there than wisely cut out bloat and try to be closer in spirit to the book, etc. But many of these IMHO are still TOO long and feel like a Star Wars prequel of sorts to Jackson's LOTR series.

+++But first... a rant (skip to the end if you don't wanna hear it)+++

I lead with Peter Jackson in the subject title here, because his Hobbit really was his own spin on it, as opposed to what J.R.R. Tolkien had in mind. And that's fine, and all. But the rub for me is that the joy of the original LOTR moment is gone, so trying to get lightning to strike twice made for a very self-conscious Hobbit series, that I think did more damage to Jackson's brand than anything. Not that I'm a superfan of the LOTR movies. In many ways, as films goes, they are hack Spielberg. And for a film snob like me, I feel like the original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back accomplished what LOTR originally hoped to, as far as art goes. But they grow on you. And once the movie had its extended releases, they make for a great binge watching experience. A very expensive fantasy miniseries that I think plays better at home than it did in theaters.

Even so, that LOTR still connected with audiences is note worthy. You can argue that the original three films are giant film acts for a much larger film too big for one sitting. It was a movie that, along with "Kill Bill Vol.1 &2", was this regression of sorts of cinema (and the blockbuster artform that Lucas and Spielberg invented) into this form of corporate television that happily turned the movie house into a public livingroom. The likes of which paved the way for the Marvel comic serialized movies. So for all of us that enjoyed these films, it was a cinematic experience that lifted us downwards.

I mention that gripe, because I remember thinking at the time that Jackson should do a Hobbit film at some point, but as a reunion film. I thought doing a cinema encore of sorts, but without the heavy handedness, could be a fun way of taking a victory lap. But instead, Jackson seemingly caved to the corporate beancounters who wanted to juice the very simply Hobbit story into a LOTR prequel series too derivative of Lucas' Star Wars prequels. So we were left with what felt like a bad cashgrab, and an insecure Peter Jackson stil stung by the failure of his King Kong remake, trying too hard to see if the audience still liked him.

+++So... what did I bring to the table???+++

So, as I mentioned above, my Hobbit is a 'what-if' movie if Jackson would have had enough sense to quit while he was ahead, and made a different kind of movie. One that was more disciplined, and was more of a movie in the late 70s high art early George Lucas/Gary Kurtz spirit than the Howard Hawk pulp cinema approach that seems to define most fantasy movies these days IMAO. To achieve this, this fan edit closely followed the approach taken by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass when they directed the Hobbit, using their narrative style as a guide. I say Ralph Bakshi in the subject heading, as the famous row between the Hobbit television release and the stillborn LOTR cartoon at the time was the Tolkein adaptation that many of us remember BEFORE Jackson wonderfully adopted those stories as his own. That troubled production history seemed to have an interesting flair and drama that I think should've informed how to approach the Hobbit prequel here. Since it mirrored Tolkien's own quixotic ambitions to create a new mythology. Also, with this ruthless re-edit, the fan film now presents a clash of many styles, trademark of Bakshi's film (especially his take on LOTR). So, the fan edit here acknowledges as much with more style and flair and genre styles, in how this interpretation introduces and closes out the stories, and in both the opening credits and ongoing exposition. The ring in this edit is just "something handy to have around", like the book presents it, and not overly foreshadowed the way the Hobbit prequels did. No Legolas. No cringey Dwarf/Elf lovestories. And so on and so forth...

To be transparent, this is an older edit from many moons ago. But I feel like it went too hard in the other direction. It's not that this movie shouldn't connect with Jackson's LOTR films. Just not in the paint by numbers way that doomed George Lucas's own fantasy series.

So the big change I made here that I really like was finding a creative way to bridge this Hobbit encore film with the original LOTR movies. I did this by taking the Ian Holm's Bilbo scenes that started "An Unexpected Journey" and MOVING THEM to the end of the film. I used as much footage as I could (especially from the extended versions) to give this film a nice coda. It plays like this fun Hobbit epilogue LOTR shortfilm now. Showing us how Bilbo aged gracefully after his adventure, and with the Elijah Wood Frodo cameo just feels right. A nice way of saying good bye now to these characters, and the world we originally fell in love with before it came down with a bad case of prequelitis.

+++FINAL THOUGHTS+++

'Saying goodbye' was my focus here, and I leave in a touch of pathos for Bilbo, with a quiet nod to the dark nature of 'the ring' as an artifact and theme, rather than allowing these movies to be too on the nose about it. Some movies we fall in love with precisely because we can't go home, like any beautiful dream we awaken from wishing we could go back to. So 'saying goodbye' and this idea of 'not being able to go home' is now the narrative drive of this Hobbit cut.

As with all my work, just look closely at my avatar picture, or visit my reddit profile page if you can, for information that will lead you to my homepage where you can find and enjoy my content.

ENTER THEATER!