** Spoilers for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug below **
Apologies for reviving an old thread, but how is this doing? After the disaster that was DoS (in my opinion, just awful - shortening the original material and adding fan fiction, the Harry Potter-style Gandalf-Sauron duel - which works in HP's universe, but not in Middle Earth, puh-lease - and the idiotic barrel sequence and utter stupidity of the dwarves vs Dragon sequence really annoyed me greatly. Oh and where has "The hands of a King are the hands of a healer" gone to?), I need something to keep me going. I still can't understand why reviews of DoS are more positive than the infinitely better AUJ. It reminds me of how reviews at the time praised TTT as being superior to FotR (seriously?).
Anyway I have recently watched (and loved) Kerr's Red Book of Westmarch edit, although some events were too abrupt (why are Uruk-Hai suddenly surrounding Peregrin, Meriadoc, and Boromir?) - but on the whole I felt like I was actually watching the books, and it was great (in addition to being a testament to Kerr's incredible skill and dedication, it is a testament to PJ's talent to have been able to do that - if only PJ would quit bloating useless stuff). On thing I loved is how the Nazgul do not talk, except in RotK. This makes them incredibly more scary.
Similarly I am currently watching the Sharkey's Purist Edit 2.1, and this too is excellent, with many of the cuts identical to Kerr's version (sorry I am not sure which came earlier and thus which should take credit). It feels like PJ's LotR, improved for less ridiculousness and bloating, while keeping the same timing/narrative structure.
The direction that is being described for a new version of the Sharkey's edits is exactly what I would love to see as well... But is it simply that rather than doing the work multiple times, you are waiting for both DoS and TaBA EE to be released? It does seem that they may have some interesting footage to be used in a final general Hobbit-LotR quadrilogy (or more).
Now I am no longer looking forward to the last Hobbit movie, but I have to say that a version by Kerr and you integrating footage from all 6 movies to create a streamlined Hobbit-LotR quadrilogy is very exciting. Of course, some continuity issues will occur (cartoonish orcs in The Hobbit vs the more real-looking Orcs and Uruk-Hai of LotR) but then the same issues are in the books themselves.
Anyway, just to show that there is still interest in this!
Cheers