Hobbit Fan Edits Trilogy Into Single 4-Hour Film

An industrious Middle Earth fan has edited Peter Jackson’s epic ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy from three films into one, cutting the overall run time in half.

The new edit titled ‘The Hobbit: The Tolkien Cut’ was created by a mysterious tinkerer named ‘TolkienEditor’ in order to “re-centre the story on Bilbo” and it trims down the three films’ near 8-hour running time to a more manageable 4 hours and 21 minutes.

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The wag explains in a blog post that they undertook the task in order to create a movie experience “that more closely resembled Tolkien’s original novel” as he felt the trilogy of films that were released suffered from an “interminable running time, un-engaging plot tangents and constant narrative filibustering.”

Jackson’s ‘Hobbit’ adaptation saw the project swell from one film based on JRR Tolkien’s ‘Lord Of The Ring’ prequel, into two films, then finally three, with the final film hitting cinemas at Christmas.

Through a series of cuts (“major and minor”) the fan edit loses many of the trilogy’s big set pieces including the investigation of Dol Guldur from ‘An Unexpected Journey’, the Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle from ‘Desolation Of Smaug’ and ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’, and the first film’s prelude featuring Elijah Wood and Ian Holm.

It also tightens up a number of acton sequences too, taking out many of the skirmishes with the pale orcs, and Orlando Bloom’s acrobatic presence as Legolas has been reduced to a fleeting cameo during the Mirkwood arrest. Evangeline Lilly’s she-elf Tauriel, who was created by Peter Jackson for the film in order to address the film’s gender imbalance, has been completely excised.

'The Hobbit' isn't the first trilogy to be decimated in fan edits. The 'Star Wars' prequels have had many fan revisions in the past, with actor Topher Grace famously re-editing George Lucas' three films into one 85-minute film known as ‘Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back’.

Expect this ‘Hobbit’ fan edit to be the first of many.

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Image credits: Warner Bros.