Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Episode I: Army Of The Republic

An absolutely excellent edit. For the most part the edits were seamless and flowed well together. Smudger did a great job of interlinking unrelated episodes into one overarching plot through clever use of clips and dialogue from other episodes. A few dialogue replacements were obvious but overall very well integrated. I highly recommend this edit.

A lot has been said about this, pretty much all of it good and with good reason. This is a very well-executed edit. This pretty much works as a film. There's a touch of jumpiness which is inherent in almost all TV-to-movie edits but Smudger has done a great job plotting a narrative throughline. The visual editing was topnotch, nothing stood out or threw me off. The musical additions (only watched the show once so I don't think I picked them all up) that I noticed were really great. All of the battles sounded and felt great. I read after that there was a lot of sound replacement. You did a great job because nothing sounded thin or was noticeable. My only real criticism (and it's minor) is a couple audio transitions. The one after Heavy, Fives and Echo meet Captain Rex and Cody stood out, and at 1:48:45 there's an odd transition where the music transitions with the video and swells up but then cuts off kind of abruptly. Just as a preference, I would have preferred cutting the joke about how "Heavy really did hate that place" - it took away from the emotion of the moment in my opinion. Overall, the editing on both fronts is fantastic. This is absolutely my preferred way to revisit the series. Smudger has taken pretty much all of the annoying stuff out (both plots and jokes) which gives it a more serious tone. Still light and Star Wars-y but much better. If you hated the show, you probably won't like this. But if you enjoyed the show but were annoyed by some elements of it then this will take it from good to great. Nice work.

When I first discovered the whole idea of fan editing, an attempt to turn episodes of Clone Wars into feature length movies was something that I actually wanted to do. I love the show, but the idea of having a series of movies that show the development of the key characters over the course of the conflict to bring it in line with the main Star Wars movies seemed to make so much sense. I even went as far as putting together several and came to the conclusion that it just wasn't possible, especially with the early seasons which were a lot more episodic than those that came later. After watching Smudger9's Army of the Republic I've learned two things: (1) it's absolutely possible, and (2) I think I'm going to leave this to the expert!

The decision to focus on two plots - that of the clones as well as Anakin and Obi-Wan - really worked, especially considering the Battle of Kamino at the end actually brought the two strands together effectively, even if the Jedi never directly interact with the Clone Troopers we've been following. The fact that these two plots connected gave it a solid narrative through-line that felt satisfying.

The use of dialogue from other episodes to connect the strands was done effectively. I'd tried to do it in my attempted edit and the results were poor. While I could tell where these inserts took place, my wife (who has only seen the episodes through once and was therefore not as familiar as I am with where the episodes fall chronologically) couldn't tell at all.

Transitions between scenes looked great and it really felt like a theatrical release throughout.

I suppose my only quibble plot-wise may be Ventress's introduction. Because she'd already appeared in the 2003 Clone Wars cartoon, Obi-Wan and Anakin's familiarity with her was in place right from the start of this series. However, could it have been possible to add some lines to make it seem like this was their first encounter? Perhaps make her a mysterious assassin that we find more about as the series of movies continue? It feels like this movie takes place early in the Clone Wars so to have had so much happen already seems more in media res than Star Wars sometimes is. Mind you, having attempted to play with the plot using lines from other episodes I know how challenging it would be, especially if no so such dialogue existed that worked.

That said, that was really my only issue. From the opening "A long time ago..." until the closing credits this felt like the Clone Wars movie that should have been on the big screen! I can't wait for Episode II - and beyond!

The Clone Wars series in my opinion was way easier to watch than the prequels, but the childish robot humor and other silly bits really killed it for me in parts. This edit pretty much got rid of everything that annoyed me about the show/movie.Visually everything worked. I noticed the shift in starfield after the opening crawl and there was one wipe I thought was a little hasty but not enough to take me out of the movie. Audio wise very solid, I did notice a couple of quick musical cues but that was on my second viewing and I think I only noticed them because I had headphones on, so again not very distracting. The story is very layered and I like how it moves from one storyline to the next and keeps things interesting. Characters are well fleshed out, especially with the Clone troopers arc. Pretty much wall to wall action. This genuinely felt like I was watching a war movie!
Overall very fun and Exciting! I will definitely watch this again (and again and again) and I can't wait to see what you do with Episode 2. Spot on job!

What an amazing fanedit! Considering this is my first ever fan edit I've watched I was very amused. The story was very well done, mainly taking the main story arc of the film mixing it very well with the first few episodes of the series into a singular film. I actually liked this more than theatrical film. And if future films are like this one I'll continue being a fan!

Guess if there is a con it's the transitions, some of it felt like it jumped quickly to the next scene, but most of it was very small and almost nonexistent, can easily be overlooked.

I really can't wait for the 2nd installment.