It would have been better to make one film, and treat it like the fantasy it was (more geared towards children). Have a framing sequence where Bilbo is telling a very young Frodo about his adventure "there and back again." But alas, that's not the world we live in.

I assume you're aware, but just in case: https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/

Obviously doesn't fix tone issues, but does chop the runtime in half by eliminating much of the most-obviously-superfluous content.

This looks cool, I love fan edits. Kind of depressing it's DVD-quality, though.

I don't know how they compare but here's another edit that's 1080p and about 50gb: http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html

I was not. Thank you.

Also, I think a lot of it was having to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) look younger instead of 10 years older (like in real life).

It seemed to give a certain fakeness to all the faces.