Marked watched on 2025.11.01
We finally found some time with a friend to watch a fan-edit of Hollywood’s rendition of “The Hobbit” by Tolkien. The fan-edit has a runtime of around 4.5 hours, and it claims to cut out a lot of the unneccessary action, goof, and Hollywood modifications from the movies.
I remember watching The Hobbit movies in IMAX when they released c. 2012. From what I can remember, I considered them a pretty decent experience at the time. Then again, I hadn’t actually read the book back then, so maybe being blissfully unaware coloured my perception.
As a book ‘The Hobbit’ is much shorter than the Lord of the Rings trilogy (which is actually 6 books, two in each trilogy part). The Hobbit’s source material being only around a half of what is in one trilogy part means that Hollywood really stretched the source material when they made The Hobbit into three feature-length films. People have theorised that this is due to reasons around marketing, mismanagement, or various other things, and I’m sure there’s some truth to those perspectives; however, I’d also argue that The Hobbit being a slow burn lends itself to a significantly longer runtime than the length of the source material would suggest at face value.
The M4-edit actually felt, at times, far too fast-paced for my taste and recollection of the book. Naturally, there’s only so much a fan-edit can do to fix the issues in the actual release. Many problems in the films are inherent to the actual direction, pacing, and content. It’s not like an editor can add missing content to the release that was never filmed. Really the best they can do is prune away the junk, mask some of the flaws, and try to keep the story flowing naturally. That is exactly what the M4-edit has very successfully done. It’s commendable attention to detail in cleverly masking certain storylines, characters, and interactions entirely out of the movies make the movie(s) and the experience categorically more true to the story told in the book. So from an authenticity point of view, I would consider it a very successful project.
But I just can’t shake the feeling that the movie releases are “bad enough” that it’s frankly impossible to properly “fix them”. No matter how much you polish a turd, at the end of the day it’ll still be a turd. Now, the movies aren’t actually awful for what they are, but they’re definitely not true to the spirit of the author and the story he told and wanted to tell (from what I can interpret).
Ultimately I would say that the M4-edit is an enjoyable watch in its own right for a more true-to-book experience, but if I were to watch the movies again, I would simply prefer the official releases for their longer runtime. Completely accepting the fact that The Hobbit movie trilogy is entirely its own thing, and that it has a strong Hollywood tint on many of its components.
The book still wins, naturally, and there is no question about that. So I’d probably just recommend the audiobook to someone who wanted the story, but wasn’t in the mood to read.