The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Nerwen]

Lord Phillock, your Part 2 & 3 appear to link to the same page. Just letting you know.

[LordPhillock]

Zigûr, wow thanks so much for that! I'm just proud someone of your strong opinion (your blog is so fun to read!) actually is willing to take the time to listen to us talk on our podcast.

I'm still trying to finish our commentary on "Five Armies" on video, but I'll post that somewhere else. I'm just flattered someone is marginally interested!

Also thanks for telling me, Nerwen. I have fixed it

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by LordPhillock

Zigûr, wow thanks so much for that! I'm just proud someone of your strong opinion (your blog is so fun to read!) actually is willing to take the time to listen to us talk on our podcast.

Thanks Phil. I'll be lining up your podcast to listen to ASAP. I meant to listen last night in fact but got a bit distracted.

On another note just now I made the mistake of visiting a large, popular "Tolkien forum" that shall go unnamed and one thing struck me in particular: the recurring sentiment of "wait for the Extended Edition."

At the end of the day, isn't the Extended Edition just the Theatrical Edition with a bit more padding shoved in? At least, that's what the EEs of "The Lord of the Rings" felt like to me - points of interest that hadn't made it to the cinema, but ultimately nothing terribly significant. Everything I know about the Extended Edition of the first two "Hobbit" films has seemed to be the same (Dwarves inexplicably washing in the fountain at Rivendell and other pointless vulgarisms).

I think if the "The Battle of THE Five Armies" Extended Edition ends up having tonnes of additional concluding content like Thorin's funeral, the restoration of Dale, the coronation of Dáin, etc, etc, it doesn't make the Extended Edition a more "valid" version of the film, it'll just make the Theatrical Cut seem even more wishy washy and incomplete, and the entire project (in my view) come across as more badly compromised.

I realise something like Blade Runner is an example generally speaking of a situation in which the "Director's Cut" is considered to improve upon the original, but it seems to me that that derived from drastically overhauling the manner in which the narrative was presented, rather than just jamming in a bunch of extra footage which the faceless men at Warner Bros. didn't think was necessary to make back their dough in the winter holiday market last year.

[Aiwendil]

Yeah, the last thing Jackson's Hobbit films need is Extended Editions. If anything, they should come out with Contracted Editions.

[Michael Murry]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Yeah, the last thing Jackson's Hobbit films need is Extended Editions. If anything, they should come out with Contracted Editions.

I'll go somewhat further and suggest that Peter Jackson's Hobbit films could have used an editor, and not just an AVID film-editing technician like Jabez Olssen. Obviously and unfortunately, Peter Jackson thought he could serve as his own "editor," which meant that the films had no editor at all. The awful bloated results could indeed use a drastic cutting down to something like a single, two-and-a-half hour movie, focused on the character Bilbo Baggins ... you know ... The Hobbit.

Anybody know of a good film editor who might have a few days to spare cleaning up this mess?

[Zigûr]

I think I read a few months ago about someone putting together their own 'Fan Edit' of PJ's "Hobbit" which went for about four hours. I think it used handycam footage recorded in a cinema of the final film (at least before the home video release). I won't link to it because it's got its own link to a naughty torrenting service but it calls itself "The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit" and cuts Dol Guldur, Tauriel, the love story, almost all of Legolas, most of Azog, lots of the action, the 'Old Bilbo' sequences etc apparently.

Then again apparently it also cuts the "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" song from the beginning which is a shame, not much of a 'Tolkien edit' decision there! I would have had more songs if I'd had my way.

What a shame about these films. What a wasted opportunity.

[Kuruharan]

Last night my family watched TBoFA again.

We speculated on how much shorter (and bearable) the film would be if all the scenes where people moodily stare at each other had at least several seconds shaved from them or were all eliminated altogether.

We also noted that even the opening credits dragged on and on in this movie.

My Mom also found it hilarious that The Battle of Five Armies title card did not appear until after Smaug was killed...further emphasizing the point that his death should have been in the second movie.

The film was just as ghastly as I remembered. I'm going to watch Red Cliff tonight to wash the bad taste out of my mouth with a proper epic war film.