Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi – The Spence Final Cut

Review by Menbailee — May 16, 2012 @ 10:28 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by Sunarep — March 31, 2011 @ 4:24 pm

I remember talking to Boon about the rating system for the greatest fanedits and the fact that star wars fanedits can join the greatest fanedits with a lower score than the minimum for non-star wars fanedits to enter the greatest fanedits.
At first glance this seems unfair – why should Star Wars get a special treatment and have it “easier” to enter the hall of fame?
Well watching the Spence Edit of Return of the Jedi made me realize why: Star Wars doesn’t have it easier, it is a lot harder and when it comes to star wars movies I guess most people can be very obsessed with details and critisize even the tiniest changes because it is not what THEY wanted it to be because everyone has THEIR OWN interpretation of what star Wars should be.

Having said this I really tried to let go of this attitude and watch this fabulous edit as if I had never seen Jedi, as if i had never listened to the entire soundtrack over and over again – making it very easy for me to spot the edits in the music

And I must say: this edit is great and bold. It is not my preferred version of Jedi (see above, everyone thinks to know more about star wars than the other fans) but it is a refreshing take.
The reason I downloaded is was primarily that I had always wanted to watch an edit starting with dagobah. The entire introduction is handled very well, though jabba might fall a bit short (then again I’m saying this having the original in mind). Boba Fett and the dance numbers as well as droid torture are thankfully gone and not missed. The ommission of the Rancor (again something I like about the original) is really well done and you might not notice that there has been a scene in between.

The Speeder-bike chase was fantastic, same goes for the ewoks – they are not annoying, sure they are still cutesy cutesy, but they don’t get thrown in your face and the removal of Leia meeting Wicket is also nice.
Like TMBTM I never minded the fact that the rebells destroyed the deathstar where the emperor was since it was about vader to me, but it still works. The transition from ewok stealing the bike to stardestroyer was a little abrupt and could use a little more smoothing, but i was amazed that it really worked (with the scenes from TESB to indicated that they are now on the executor)

The stardestroyer scene is another example of how little things can disturb you just because it is star wars. In no other fanedit of a non star wars movie would I have pondered about the geography, the location of the executor etc., here it just fell into my eyes because i just know star wars and it is another example of how freakin hard it can be for an editor to deliver a star wars edit

Seeing as I heard/noticed a lot of cuts (because of my familiarity to the source material not because of technical problems) in the first segment I thought I would feel the same about the battle of endor, but nope, here really everything fits and flows fantastically.

The duel between Luke and Vader is quick, but well done. I prefer the original but this is just personal and the way spence handle’s it flows very well.
Ending with the fire is awesome as well, especially considering that after the prequels lucas said that the story was about anakin skywalker so it makes sense to end at the fire with the celebration in the sky.

This review is based on an xvid rip, so I can’t comment on the DVD:

The editing is top notch, the ideas are great and intriguing
This is not a replacement dvd for me, but it is refreshing to watch some new ideas when it comes to Jedi

Originally I would have given 8/10, but seeing that most of my “problems” were due to the fact that I know too much about star wars it went to:

9/10

Really liked it. This is my go to edit of Return of the Jedi. Thank you. If I'm watching the OT, its gonna be Harmy's Despecialized Ep 4, Lucas' Ep 5, and this to cap it off. I always thought it was silly that Luke appeared to be skipping in and out of his Jedi Training. I was fairly ambivalent about moving the confrontation with Palpatine off the Death Star. It never bothered me before that this took place on the Death Star, and it doesn't really bother me to have it on a ship. I felt the parts where Luke is sensing the danger on Tatooine seemed a little jarring. The transitions between the two scenes felt too quick. I do believe this movie is better off with most of the Jabba and Tatooine nonsense cut out. Not my best review, sorry, but I did enjoy it.

The edit is not always seamless and *sometimes* I have to do a few logical jumps, but most of the time it's pretty sound. Spence crafted a very unique take on the film which is surely very influential in ROTJ edits, and many of his cuts here should honestly become standard for all ROTJ edits going forward. Not really my go-to but a worthy and very necessary step in ROTJ fan editing.

A truly revelatory edit. I watched this with the commentary on to enjoy Spence's opining about the rampant pacing and structural problems with the movie. As someone who has been trying for, well, my entire life and has had countless conversations with people about why this entry doesn't work as well as it should, this was an eye-opener. It's easy to just take ROTJ for granted and look at it uncritically if you grew up with them, but Spence picks out pacing, dialogue, scene-order problems, almost all of which are 100% on the money.

Not to say I completely agree with all of the choices, I think the excision of Boba Fett and the Rancor is more distracting than anything, for whatever gains are made in terms of pacing, the movie feels a bit smaller as a result and the resultant cuts feel inorganic. Also, with the deleted scenes readily available (nowadays, if not when the edit was originally made, not sure) some of the well-intentioned but clunky cuts of Luke sensing the dire situation on Tatooine from Dagobah could have been smoothed over a bit, as could have the post-rescue moments between the heroes.

Aside from those quibbles, the masterful tweaks, especially to the latter half of the movie, are extraordinary. The removal of force ghosts, the trimming of the Ewok scenes, the adding of stakes by moving Luke and Vader's confrontation to the Death Star are all tremendous. For the first time, the final scene of Luke staring up at the sky after redeeming his errant father's soul sent chills down my spine, something that watching Ewoks cavort around a bonfire never did. For the first time, Return of the Jedi felt like the powerful end of a truly epic saga.

While I've read that he has no intentions to do so, I would love to see Spence take another pass at this. It's already most certainly a shelf-replacer for me, but another version using all the available footage to smooth over a few other cracks would knock it out of the park, imho. After all, third time's the charm -- mostly.