I think I speak for a lot of you when I say that Peter Jackson’s (unfortunately) epic adaptation of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien might have benefitted from some brevity. Ignoring the additions made by Jackson and his writers, the films are just too long, and the source material spread too thin (like butter over too much bread.) I eagerly await the day that one of the many talented hobbyist film editors cuts a version of The Hobbit that runs about four hours. What would that look like?
Well, film editor Joel Walden wondered just that and the result is a wonderful trailer for the single film adaptation that an alternate universe version of Peter Jackson may have directed somewhere in the multiverse.
“With Peter Jackson’s final chapter in the ‘Middle Earth Saga’, ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ hitting theatres worldwide next week, I thought it would be fun to create a trailer that promotes his cinematic retelling of ‘The Hobbit’ as a single epic piece,” Walden said on the trailer’s YouTube page.
Alas. What could have been.
Ah what could have been indeed if his “vision” had not been to transform one of the greatest literary achievements into just another comic book/video game/movie adaptation. Such an atrocious waste of opportunity as would come from the mind of Saruman….
For all the criticism Jackson gets for making the movies so bloated, I can’t help but find it ironic that the fan trailer for a condensed version of the movies is nearly four minutes long.
There’s actually a fan edit called THE HOBBIT DWARFED, which has turned the first two films into a 2-hour movie (and will add the third when it gets released). I haven’t seen it yet, but I know it removes the Bombur Barrel Bash, which one of my least favorite moments.