You jest but I know someone made a copy of all “The Hobbit” films spliced together, but removed all the made up portions. And removed all the Legolas bits, since he wasn’t even in the book. I think the total run time was something like 4 hours 15 minutes.
The icing on the cake was how popular this edition was.
When it was first announced that Peter Jackson's film of The Hobbit was going to be split into two parts, I thought "Yeah, that makes sense. There's a LOT of material in that short book, because of how sparse Tolkien was being with description. Makes sense that Jackson would have trouble fitting it into a single 2.5-hour movie."
When I heard, later, that the film was going to be a three parter instead, I thought "Uh oh. There's plenty of material for two films, but three? Filler City, here we come."
My wife and I saw the movies in the cinema, and while we enjoyed them overall, I found that I was right about the filler. I was particularly annoyed by the barrels-down-the-river scene, where the film turned what should have been a moment of quiet drama into a sort of rails shooter on the screen. That scene threw me out of my immersion; the whole time, I was thinking "The only reason for this scene to exist is to be made into a video-game level." As a video game level, it would kind of work: you're in the barrels floating downstream, and you have to shoot enough orcs with the bow you somehow have (or flatten them with your barrel that has been inexplicably launched out of the water) to stop them from killing your friends. (Or perhaps the video game level would make more sense if you play as the elf on the shore, killing the orc archers before they can shoot the fish^H^H^H^H dwarves in a barrel).
Regardless of how that scene would work as a video game, the problem with it is that while watching it, I was laughing at how ridiculous it was, instead of on the edge of my seat with excitement. That is NOT what the audience should be experiencing, and it means that someone — director, producer, screenwriter, editor, who knows — made some very poor choices in putting that scene on-screen.
So yes, I'm not at all surprised that a fan edit of The Hobbit which removed all the filler would be wildly popular. In my case, I would rather buy a 4.5 hour version of the film than the officially-released version. If only that version was for sale legally.
P.S. Not all the filler material in the Hobbit film trilogy was bad. Some of the scenes that weren't technically in the original book, such as Gandalf and Galadriel discussing the threat of The Necromancer, were a positive addition and helped link the Hobbit film to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If Jackson had stopped there it would have been fine. I have never watched the fan-made "Tolkien Edit" recut version of the Hobbit film(s) so I don't know if that scene was included or not — but in my opinion, that one would fit into a "Tolkien Edit" even if it wasn't technically part of the original book.
Having played the video game, yeah that's how the level went, and it kinda sucked.[1] It's a looping circular river (physics be damned), and I recall having to do many loops before I got 100%, since moving targets are hard to hit with a gamepad.
It's pretty funny how both movie->game and game->movie adaptions alre almost universally bad, much more so than book->movie or book->game adaptions.
That does sound like an improvement over the actual Hobbit movies. I'm not even joking about Oppenheimer, would do it if I were really bored. Might be a great movie if it were simply in order.
I highly suspect someone has already made a fan edit of Oppenheimer like you've described. I searched for a few moments and found 3 already and one already describes re-cutting it in chronological order, among many other changes. Always surprises me how much effort and passion people put into fan edits. It's a facinating scene in itself with how many edits exist out there.
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
I've thought about making an Oppenheimer except all scenes are in chronological order and the cringe ones are gone Edition
SamuelAdams · · focus · HN ↗
The icing on the cake was how popular this edition was.
dfxm12 · · focus · HN ↗
jtokoph · · focus · HN ↗
rmunn · · focus · HN ↗
When I heard, later, that the film was going to be a three parter instead, I thought "Uh oh. There's plenty of material for two films, but three? Filler City, here we come."
My wife and I saw the movies in the cinema, and while we enjoyed them overall, I found that I was right about the filler. I was particularly annoyed by the barrels-down-the-river scene, where the film turned what should have been a moment of quiet drama into a sort of rails shooter on the screen. That scene threw me out of my immersion; the whole time, I was thinking "The only reason for this scene to exist is to be made into a video-game level." As a video game level, it would kind of work: you're in the barrels floating downstream, and you have to shoot enough orcs with the bow you somehow have (or flatten them with your barrel that has been inexplicably launched out of the water) to stop them from killing your friends. (Or perhaps the video game level would make more sense if you play as the elf on the shore, killing the orc archers before they can shoot the fish^H^H^H^H dwarves in a barrel).
Regardless of how that scene would work as a video game, the problem with it is that while watching it, I was laughing at how ridiculous it was, instead of on the edge of my seat with excitement. That is NOT what the audience should be experiencing, and it means that someone — director, producer, screenwriter, editor, who knows — made some very poor choices in putting that scene on-screen.
So yes, I'm not at all surprised that a fan edit of The Hobbit which removed all the filler would be wildly popular. In my case, I would rather buy a 4.5 hour version of the film than the officially-released version. If only that version was for sale legally.
P.S. Not all the filler material in the Hobbit film trilogy was bad. Some of the scenes that weren't technically in the original book, such as Gandalf and Galadriel discussing the threat of The Necromancer, were a positive addition and helped link the Hobbit film to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If Jackson had stopped there it would have been fine. I have never watched the fan-made "Tolkien Edit" recut version of the Hobbit film(s) so I don't know if that scene was included or not — but in my opinion, that one would fit into a "Tolkien Edit" even if it wasn't technically part of the original book.
YoshiRulz · · focus · HN ↗
[1]: <a href="https://youtu.be/HLReeDFGA7E?t=975s" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/HLReeDFGA7E?t=975s
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
circularfoyers · · focus · HN ↗
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
BLKNSLVR · · focus · HN ↗
hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗