I’ve been continuing to work on this, and I’ve now added back in substantial shots from the original prologue over an extended “Misty Mountains” song. The new prologue, extended song and full opening titles, in fact, come to about 10 minutes between them. Despite all this, I’ve still managed to get Bilbo out his door in just over 22 minutes from the opening logos, which I’m pretty happy with. (eldusto84’s edit, which omits the original prologue but leaves the entire sequence from “Good morning” to Bilbo leaving pretty much intact, has him running out his door bang on the 30-minute mark, for comparison.)
The biggest concern was that the dwarves wouldn’t get enough characterisation, but apart from Bifur (who doesn’t have any lines in English to begin with, and whose axe-in-the-head schtick I don’t care for) and Nori (who wasn’t well established in the full cut either), I’ve kept at least one decent establishing moment for each one. Amazingly, despite cutting at least half of the running time of the Unexpected Party, it doesn’t feel rushed.
The troll scene works well. I can’t get rid of all the childishness, but I’ve toned it down considerably. I may yet be able to tighten the pacing a bit, but the smash cut gag from the triumphant charge to the spit-roast works perfectly; in fact, I’ve made it a match cut, with the downstroke of Thorin’s sword matching seamlessly with a troll throwing wood on the fire.
Rivendell is still a problem. I’m pretty much only cutting out the White Council scenes, and moving around a few other little bits and pieces, but it somehow manages to still feel rushed: they arrive, they have tea, Elrond reads the map, and they leave. I’m able to add in at least one extra day/night cycle with some careful rearrangement, but I’m far from satisfied with it yet.
Goblin Town is okay. I’m considering switching scenes around so Gandalf shows up and starts the dwarves running before the Riddles in the Dark sequence, rather than after. It does mean losing a lot of Barry Humphries’ admittedly excellent Great Goblin, but it hits the important beats.