J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit: A Fanedit by Dustin Lee

anything to do with Ori generally makes me cringe. he really is the most unsympathetic character.

Mrs Figg wrote:anything to do with Ori generally makes me cringe. he really is the most unsympathetic character.

I wouldn't call him a character, more of a cliche.

'Oh look it's a camp mummy's boy with a slingshot!' How hillarious!'

Mrs Figg wrote:anything to do with Ori generally makes me cringe. he really is the most unsympathetic character.

Honestly I blame the actor behind the character of Ori. He was too green and not up to the chore of a major motion picture IMHO. Actors like Ken Stott and some of the other dwarf actors did well overall with the crap dialogue they were given to work with. But Adam Brown IMO failed to deliver a single line believably, It was either over acted or without conviction and dry. That could also be blamed on Peter Jackson for letting those performances slide through. Overall I enjoyed the cast and thought most of them were spot on even Alfrid although I really think they went overboard with his character. The actor at least delivered a decent performance even if it was OTT.

There is something called cinematic pacing which is difficult to measure- it is the narrative beat to which a film marches to. Many fanedits get too carried away and destroy this pace because they remove too much.- Goldeneye

I agree entirely- but I am firmly of the belief from my own experiments that restoring Tolkien's structure to Bilbo's arc is by far the best way to do so.
PJ was making it up as he went along, Bilbo has little structured arc across the three films and what there is, is at complete odds with the books. Trust in Tolkien is my advice- he is the better story teller.

Petty: "Billy Connolly turns up swearing riding on a pig playing Billy Connolly swearing riding on a pig. "

Perversely, it's these kinds of mental images that may make me break my self-imposed ban on watching Movie 3...

Gandalf mentioning Radagast is in the book, Petty?

Gandalf name checks him to Beorn yup

“Perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast”

'cousin' is interesting.

On the subject of Radagast I read a theory that it is him who first appears in Fangorn the night before Gandalf returns.
In the book a figure appears in a pointy hat (Not a hood, something Aragorn notes the next day as Saruman is hooded) and at first they think this person has driven off the horses, but then Legolas later says he thought the horses were more like greeting an old friend than afraid.
When they ask Gandalf if it was him he tells them it wasn't and that he guesses it must have been Saruman.
But Saruman doesn't seem to make sense here- why appear to them? Why wear a hat instead of his usual hood for going about it? Why does Tolkien use Aragorn to draw the readers attention to this fact? Why were the horses seemingly pleased to see whoever it was?
Intriguing stuff.

It must have been Gandalf

Why would Gandalf lie to Aragorn about it when asked?

I complained about this in my initial review, but I'm still trying to figure out who thought ti was a good idea to have the guy named Dain Ironfoot be the only person in his army to ride into battle.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Gandalf name checks him to Beorn yup

“Perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast”

Damn damn damn... you're right.... I do rememeber now... damn damn damn damn.....

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Why would Gandalf lie to Aragorn about it when asked?

because he is still goofed up about becoming Gandalf the White

I have a new clip to share from my fanedit! I decided to insert Howard Shore's "Dreaming of Bag End" into the scene where Bilbo and Gandalf say their goodbyes. I didn't like how the original score during this scene was somewhat ominous, and it turns out "Dreaming of Bag End" fit perfectly.

https://vimeo.com/124325102

That music fit perfectly.  Kinda makes me want to go back and give The Hobbit OST another chance, listening to it on its own.  I think having less ominous music makes sense for Gandalf being concerned about the Ring but not having an inkling of its true nature for another 60 years, too.

Edit: Freeman was really good in both parts of this scene too. I hope the EE gives more concluding scenes, because it could be a real highlight and wash out some of the bad taste from the rest of the trilogy.

It's been quite a while since I last watched this scene, so it somehow still sounds abit ominous. I guess this version is only subtly so, whereas the theatrical release spelled it out in black and white letters 10 feet tall.

I can't say I enjoy watching it though. It's still not very good.
I mean the soundtrack is a good improvement, but the "none of your Dwarvish knock-offs here!" sours the scene for me.

I was okay with the dwarvish knock-offs, but not with the physical implausibility of carrying around what I must assume to be a chest of gold casually tucked under one arm. I conservatively estimate that to weigh 60 kilos, and he's a hobbit. Can't believe I missed that the first time around!

Ooh. Have to admit I liked your original cut better. It was brief but I liked the simple parting between Bilbo and Gandalf. Now it turns into another Gandalf lecture - bleh. Much preferred your initial plan of playing down the ring.

And I thought the shire scene was perfect as was. Bilbo sees his stuff coming down the hill and is confused and befuddled before he get indignant, hears that he's dead and then you show the auctioneer. Seemed nice and smooth to me. Now it's the auctioneer right at the beginning so you aren't suprised with Bilbo at what's going on and you cut Bilbo's confusion bit out and jump straight to him being angry.

And I liked the original music, didn't find it ominous at all. The new music is ok but don't care for the drum beats softly in the background. That feels out of place to me and not calming - makes me think it's going to get louder and then turn into Queens' flash gordon theme. Boom boom boom Bilbooo Ahh Ahh Saviour of the Universe!

I really liked your original ending is all this amounts to I guess.

dak wrote:
And I liked the original music, didn't find it ominous at all. The new music is ok but don't care for the drum beats softly in the background. That feels out of place to me and not calming - makes me think it's going to get louder and then turn into Queens' flash gordon theme. Boom boom boom  Bilbooo Ahh Ahh Saviour of the Universe!

I found another fan edit by Fiona van Dahl. It's only available in 480p currently, but she hopes to put out a 720p version after the BotFA extended version comes out. It's only two hours long apparently, which struck me as severe. Might be interesting to compare I figured.

Goldeneye wrote:I have a new clip to share from my fanedit! I decided to insert Howard Shore's "Dreaming of Bag End" into the scene where Bilbo and Gandalf say their goodbyes. I didn't like how the original score during this scene was somewhat ominous, and it turns out "Dreaming of Bag End" fit perfectly.

https://vimeo.com/124325102

I feel like the scene would have been perfected if there was a reaction shot of Bilbo returning home saying something like "Well I'm back"

Otherwise the music is used perfectly

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
On the subject of Radagast I read a theory that it is him who first appears in Fangorn the night before Gandalf returns.
In the book a figure appears in a pointy hat (Not a hood, something Aragorn notes the next day as Saruman is hooded) and at first they think this person has driven off the horses, but then Legolas later says he thought the horses were more like greeting an old friend than afraid.
When they ask Gandalf if it was him he tells them it wasn't and that he guesses it must have been Saruman.
But Saruman doesn't seem to make sense here- why appear to them? Why wear a hat instead of his usual hood for going about it? Why does Tolkien use Aragorn to draw the readers attention to this fact? Why were the horses seemingly pleased to see whoever it was?
Intriguing stuff.

I like it.  In fact this incident had always bothered me as both not making sense and not having much of a purpose.  This theory at least solves the first part.

For anyone that's interested, I've now started a Facebook page for my Hobbit fan edit! You can check it out via the link below. The page is a bit sparse right now but will gradually fill up with content the closer we get to the final release date in December!
https://www.facebook.com/hobbitfanedit

I checked out your page - I thought your videos were alright

And when I say that, I mean I was still bored to death by them, but all the jarringly bad stuff was cut out, so I guess that's a win-lose. But that's gonna come with making fan edits- somethings are going to work when cut, and some things are still going to leave a bad taste in your mouth, simply because of the directorial and editing style done to that scene. Here's an example of this: there was no need to make the goblin tunnel scene a chase scene (and not to mention making the goblins made out of paper ) and no matter how much you cut it, or make it feel realistic, it's always going to have that rushed, video game aspect to it. Maybe, just maybe that scene can be repaired if we went into the raw footage of that scene.

However I was really impressed by your alternate prologue of AUJ, it really smoothed it out about a bit, though maybe it could be a tad longer, maybe you could add the bit where Ian Holm was smoking his pipe on the front doorstep

Nice avatar, Goldeneye

davidjoneshoward wrote:I checked out your page - I thought your videos were alright

Thank you David! There is only so much that I can do with the material I have to work with...I'm sure you understand that. And we will never see the raw footage from the films so that option is right out. The way the goblin tunnels were written by Tolkien, I felt that it would be ripe for a good chase scene in the film. Of course like most things they went way overboard, but as an editor I still have to keep certain things in place to maintain continuity and a good narrative pace.

Really though, how many films can you cut by more than 50% and STILL maintain the core story? Just shows how much filler material there was in the Hobbit trilogy.

Here are a few ideas for your videos:

-Redistribute the prologue into the movie - Insert the flashback scene from the prologue into the rest of the movie, but not in one piece, but bits and pieces scattered (no voice-over!!! that never fits in ME films). This must be done delicately, make sure it's done naturally, and discretely, so that rather than diminishing Bilbo's story it lays nice beside it.

-Remove as much as the silly, childish aspects of An Unexpected Party as possible - instead of making the scene have an unnecessary balance (or unbalance) make the movie exemplify the fact that dwarves were supposed to be talking about mature things, not going out of their to be rude to Bilbo and be annoying.

-Try and not have Thorin be a hero, please - Book Thorin was supposed to be arrogant not an action war hero. If you can take any scenes which shed Thorin in this light that would improve it I think. He's not supposed to be Aragorn jr.

-Change the structure of Beorn's intro - Instead of having Beorn's introduction be a chase scene, you can instead take some scenes of the group walking (across a field in day time, mind you) and then show a shot of them walking through Beorn's home into his garden. Consequently, the dwarves have breakfast with Beorn (with no rubbish foreshadowing ) and THEN they stay the night there. It's basically a rearrangement of scenes, and making it have a better flow.

-Perhaps not even have Beorn in the story at all - Although I liked Beorn's addition to the original story it's obviously that PJ had very little use of him. There was no thematic presence to him, it was almost all filler (unlike the Lothlorien refugee scene, which structurally is it's counterpart). Which leads me to wonder whether if the lack of his presence would help the flow (especially in only 1 film). This is purely experimental for me. These types of scenes, no matter how well they're done, add to the wonders of ME, and the addition of a refuge for the characters is always interesting.

-Take out all Dol Guldur scenes - Instead you could get right to the part where Gandalf tells Radagast his plans to go there, and leave the rest to implication. Maybe when the BOFA EE comes out, there will be a scene during Bilbo's return journey where they go to Rivendell and Gandalf talks about the Necromancer (though not in a stilted way like the White Council scene, but a small reference, like in the book) The Dol Guldur scene had the same problems the Paths of the Dead scene, it ruined what the audience should be focusing on, and it was cheesy. If your already planned to cut the Gandalf subplot altogether then don't even listen to me.

-Make an implication that wearing the one ring creates an otherworldly occurrence - I'm aware that Gollum probably wears the one ring enough for the world to be used to it's disruption, but it still could add something that ties to LOTR subtly. Perhaps when it falls on Bilbo's finger for the first time there could be a cut scene to Galadriel waking up from a nap (not that I can really picture her sleeping), a rumbling in Dol Guldor, and Saruman seeing the clouds in the distance turn a grayish color.

-Digitally take some of the dwarves out - Honestly I know how hard this can be, I've tried it myself on Photoshop, so I don't expect to you do this, but it still would be nice to have only the essential dwarves, or the ones that are referenced later on, in the movies. That would be Balin, Dwalin, Bofur, Fili, Kili, and maybe Gloin. Maybe even Bifur because I like his dwarvish character design. I also know Bombur is referenced later on in the chapter 'Many Meetings', but literally the shot where I liked his presence was when he was blowing the giant Erebor horn in BOFA.

-I'm really looking forward to seeing your new intro of the 2nd film of TH (you are doing 2 films, right? Or 1?) Anyhow I would still be interested how Esgaroth would be treated as an intro to the film. There would probably be more of an emphasis on their culture because there would be more screen time to develop them (rather than just be introduced 1/2 way in the story, when the general audience wouldn't give a shit.

Anyhow, enough of me rambling. I hope you like my ideas, not that they're easy enough to use.