I have taken the time to tally up the most-requested changes to the fanedit, and will list them below for your convenience. They are sorted in order of most requested to least. If you have other suggestions or would like to chime in on the ones I've listed, please leave a comment below!
- Re-insertion of the Eagle rescue sequence. Wow, I couldn't believe how many of you mentioned this one. I was very pleased with how I transitioned from the end of AUJ to the beginning of DOS, but you guys really want to see those darn eagles, don't you? Lol. So I am going to re-edit that sequence with the eagles, upload it here and see what you all think. If you like it, I'll put it in the final version of the fanedit. If not, it stays out!
- Northern orc army warning. A lot of viewers found it confusing that the second orc army shows up out of nowhere in BOFA. I am hoping there's a bit more to work with in the Extended Edition, but at the very least I can insert Legolas' warning to Gandalf about the northern army. No problem.
- More Azog. This also surprised me considering the lukewarm reception that Azog received from Hobbit fans. But like it or not, he is the main villain of the films and many of you felt he didn't get enough screentime in my fanedit. This could be partially solved by the re-insertion of the eagle rescue, so that's two birds with one stone!
- Remove the gold statue bit completely. Even though I cut the silly action scene in the forges, along with Thorin surfing on liquid gold, many viewers have asked for the entire gold statue scene to be cut. This will be tricky to do because the ONLY shot of Smaug breaking out of Erebor, shows him covered in gold. So I'm going to do this the hard way and try to manually remove the gold coating from that shot. Wish me luck.
- More battle footage (BOFA). Many people would like to see more of the actual Battle of Five Armies. This may be easier to address once the Extended Edition is released, since we know for a fact that some battle scenes were cut from the theatrical version.
- Insert Mirkwood EE scenes. Specifically the enchanted river bit with Bombur. I know this was close to the book, but I felt that this extra scene slowed the pace of the film down too much. So I don't think I'm going to consider inserting it until after I've gone through the BOFA EE scenes.
- Add more shots of the dwarves originally left behind in Laketown. Since my fanedit removes the subplot of Kili/Fili/Oin/Bofur remaining in Laketown, I'm banking on the illusion of there being more dwarves in the company than there really are when they arrive at Erebor. Even though I digitally added the four dwarves in a wide shot, several of you would like to see more of them. This is easier said than done, but I'll see what I can do!
- Insert the Beorn EE Intro. Here's another book-faithful scene that I just felt didn't work on screen. However, many of you disagree! Lucky for you though, if I'm able to re-insert the eagle sequence then Beorn's EE intro may in fact be inserted too! I've seen a few other fanedits that transitioned between these two scenes and it worked well. So we'll see how it looks for this version!