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

Thank you smudger9. This is the only way I could really bring myself to watch through Star Wars: The Clone Wars so I have no real point of reference, only to say that it feels very well edited and paced. It feels like a family friendly Star Wars film with a lot of kiddy content left out which I'm really grateful for.

The story itself wasn't anything to write home about. The clones were all super cringe, but that's not at all the fault of the editor. The writing, art direction and voice acting just made me really dislike all the clones. Given what you had to work with, it's amazing you could salvage a watchable story about them at all.

It's a shame that you lost the working files of the 5 movies you had worked so hard on. I really hope that you or someone in this community is able to complete the saga one day. For now I will continue to enjoy and offer my thanks.

Great job on condensing some of the best parts of the first three seasons into one movie. This was a great introduction into the series, because it basically introduces all of the major players of the Clone Wars (besides the bounty hunters naturally) and sets up some of the basic themes of the series. The story is nothing special, it's classic fun Star Wars, which I appreciate. I like how the heart of the movie is with the clones of Domino Squad, which are some of my favorite episodes so far (I'm still in Season 3 as far as the series goes) and shows a little of the cost of war and the spirit and even humanity of soldiers (RIP, 99!). In this movie structure it feels a little more family-friendly rather than just 20-minute just kid-friendly episodes (not that anything is wrong with that, but Seasons 1 & 2, maybe even some of 3 were pretty rocky for Star Wars, and this is a better way to present them).

I do have some problems with this in that it could feel a little long and redundant with some of the episodes included, specifically with the Ahsoka and Koth/Grievous scenes that don't really build up to much (Ahsoka is introduced and is later told to stay at the Jedi temple before the climax). It's alright, they're just introductions to these long term characters, but 1) I feel like one movie should stand on its own and have every aspect of it to add to what the theme is about, and it just feels like they were pretty inconsequential, and 2) The film has quite a slow pace to it. I feel like there could have been a better way/place to introduce Ahsoka & Grievous without slowing down the pace and not adding much to the film, however I have to think about it long and hard to implement it in a better way than smudger did, because I also feel like he did the best he could to make this film as best as possible.

Finally there is one audio error with Yoda saying "Go with you she will to the temple, Kidnapped Master Koth has been" and Yoda's line is cut before he continues so it sounds like "Go with you she will to the tem- kidnapped, Master Koth has been..." which took me out.

Even with all the criticism I have, I think this is a very good and much better introduction to the Clone Wars series.

This edit is ambitious, and does a solid job of condensing several plot lines from the Clone Wars TV show (a great series, but one notorious for its filler) into a satisfying 2 hour viewing experience. Narrative elements are repurposed cleverly and it serves as a much better introduction to the series than the awful theatrical feature (which this edit extracts the worthwhile segments from).

However, as with most TV to Movie edits, I think the edit sometimes feels like several separate plot-lines strung along and Frankensteined into a feature. I think smudger9 does the best job he can with the material, but plotlines do resolve and new ones start up frequently, and much of the action gets repetitive. I wonder if trying to edit the series into 40-60min cable style episodes would make more sense.

All that said, I did enjoy the edit and am very much looking forward to watching smudger9's Episode II!

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.

This is a quite enjoyable and commendable edit. It doesn't quite work very well as a film - the structure's all off - but I suppose that's to be expected. This is built out of mainly episodic, 22 minute stories. Smudger9 tries his best to hide this by incorporating multiple episode arcs and having different storylines play at once, but the edit still, for the most part, ends up being made up of a number of small stories, each with their own climax. Some don't even seem necessary to the overall edit (the "Cat and Mouse" and "Grievous Intrigue" portions for example), though I understand why they were included. The issue is, once we get to the end and the real climax, it just doesn't feel as momentous as it should.

Still, if you take this edit as a shortened, rational compilation of episodes from the series, it works very well. I look forward to future installments by Smudger9.