Before The Dark Times

This is an ambitious edit for sure. It employs neck breaking visual editing and extensive audio replacement to move the story along at incredible speed. Narratives are told simultaneously in a long form montage approach with voice over work throughout. It's one of the more unique edits I've seen, but it doesn't exactly feel like a movie do to it's unique approach. This is more an artistic reinterpretation of the Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.

AVQ 8
The audio and video have some issues here and there, but for the size (2gb) it's very impressive.

Audio editing 6
There are some abrupt transitions throughout and some of the music replacement clashes with the levels of the audio and dialogue of scenes. If this was a straight up movie approach, it would be more impactful, but with the artistic approach of a montage you already know you are watching an edit so it's not as jarring as it would have been otherwise. There is an incredible amount of audio work in this edit, and while some transitions feel abrupt, it is impressive what the editor was able to achieve. This feels like art.

Visual editing 6
I feel like the montage approach removes the jarring impact of some of the visual editing choices in this edit, but I do have to agree that the decisions made here do mirror the approach well. There's just a lack of visual continuity throughout so it's hard to give some of the visuals the investment that they would in a more traditionally driven visual narrative. The visuals here are backdrops to the voice overs and music.

Narrative 6
The narrative works, but it just feels disjointed due to the montage approach of the story. That's not saying this is bad, but it is certainly noticeable as a fanedit.

Enjoyment 7
I did enjoy the fresh approach to this edit. It gave me a lot of new ideas about the prequels, and I wonder if they are best served in this manner. This felt like art in a way that I haven't experienced here at fanedit.org. That may be due to the fact that this doesn't necessarily feel like a fanedit film, but rather a long form fanedited tribute to the source material. That isn't meant as a knock at all, it just is in it's own unique space here. This feels like Star Wars in the style of Phantasia. My enjoyment score is most impacted by the audio editing and the lack of visual continuity that made it hard to invest a full viewing length of attention to. With some more focus on audio transitions, I believe my enjoyment would go up at least a point. That being said, I'd highly recommend this edit as it challenges the idea of what a fanedit is and how one can approach the prequels in a new way in a sea of familiarity.

In watching this I tried to pretend I didn't know much about the movies, but of course that's mostly impossible. I think this movie can only be enjoyed by someone who basically knows The Prequels and A New Hope, which isn't a bad thing! It was fun to watch the best of the best, kind of like a one hour highlight reel.

Using some dialogue from the original trilogy as a voice over narration was genius! It really lead the story down the path and actually surprised me with how well they managed to follow the beats of New Hope's monologue.

"Chapter V: Greed" got a little chunky at the beginning, lots of fast exposition compared to the previous four chapters. I think just an extra minute here would go a long way, especially around the pregnancy and the visions of her death. Similarly, not showing Padme die makes the babies at the end a little confusing, but you covered it a bit with the voiceover.

Some other reviews mention the editing itself, but the efforts made here are very impressive, and overall the work here is really incredible. Taking hours and hours of material and boiling it down to the bare bones AND still keeping it interesting was clearly a work of love by a true Star Wars fan. Excellent!

An ambitious project very well realised, nothing to fault visually and very little audio-wise, pretty much a "good bits" condensation of the source films with none of the original cringeworthy content.

On balance I think that I would favour the more traditional edits of the prequels in most circumstances, as there are quite a few parts I have a fondness for that are missing here. There is also the possibility that viewers new to the story might occasionally struggle to follow. In the former case though, anything other than this laser-focused approach would defeat the purpose of the edit, and in the latter it is unlikely that a non-fan would be watching!

In summary, Lieutenant Dan has shown what can be done with the technical capability and a spaceship-load of imagination, many thanks for all the effort!

Such a well produced edit of the prequel trilogy! All in a single hour too! Takes all the best bits and makes such a well flowing plot structure and packs such a punch. Highly recommend, can't stress that enough to anyone

This is a bold, unique retelling of the prequels, utilizing the voice of Alec Guinness' Obi Wan to provide a structural narrative of his failure to properly guide Anakin in the ways of the Jedi.

I HIGHLY recommend everyone see this as it feels more successful in tying the prequels to the Original Trilogy than what we saw in theaters. I recognize something like this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I applaud the vision and magnitude of this fanedit as it truly feels epic.