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

Updated
 
8.2 (43)
7801 0 1 0 5

User reviews

43 reviews
 
37%
 
63%
5-7 stars
 
0%
3-5 stars
 
0%
1-3 stars
 
0%
Overall rating
 
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.7(17)
Audio Editing
 
7.7(17)
Visual Editing
 
8.4(17)
Narrative
 
8.2(17)
Enjoyment
 
8.2(43)
Back to Listing
43 results - showing 16 - 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Ordering
(Updated: March 10, 2021)
Overall rating
 
8.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
8.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
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.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
Overall rating
 
8.4
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
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 Also, with the deleted scenes readily available (nowadays, if not when the edit was originally made, not sure) some of the well-intentioned but clunky cuts of Luke sensing the dire situation on Tatooine from Dagobah could have been smoothed over a bit, as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.
R
Top 10 Reviewer 156 reviews
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
Overall rating
 
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
5.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
7.0
A/V Quality 10/10
No issues with the actual A/V quality. Clean picture, great DD5.1 sound.

Visual Editing 9/10
No issues, really. Sometimes it was pretty obvious when you were switching source material, but it worked fairly seamlessly. The colour correction was very well done.

Audio 5/10
Sorry, but this was the low point of the edit. It's a mixed bag of great ideas that were poorly executed. The speeder chase is great, but the volume is too low. The Duel of the Fates was great, but not mixed in very well. There's a slew of noticeable audio sync issues throughout the edit. And what the hell was with the music over the end credits? In the commentary you mentioned that you watched this edit 4 times - I'm surprised that at least a few of these issues weren't noticed and fixed before it was released, especially with all the time and energy you put into whole thing.

Narrative 10/10
Perfect. Improved the original by a huge margin. All the changes made were for the better. A couple of things were odd - Luke sensing the Leia was in danger was a neat idea, but it didn't work in practice and Luke and Leia hugging like they haven't seen each other in years on Tatooine - but did not really detract from the overall experience.

Enjoyment 7/10
I'd bump it up to 9/10 were it not for the audio issues. But what I really loved was the commentary track. I honestly only bothered to check this one out when I read that there was a faneditor commentary track included. I love edits with faneditor commentary and I really wish more editors out there would do them, especially for radical edits like this one. I love hearing what was changed, how it was changed and, most importantly, why it was changed, as it happens. The commentary track on this is a must-see and provides a lot of insight into the thought process and planning that went into this edit. It was very enjoyable, and perhaps, even more enjoyable than the edit itself. And your explanation as to why there's a giant bottomless pit on the star destroyer was gold.
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
(Updated: August 28, 2014)
Overall rating
 
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
7.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
I really like Return of the Jedi, but in terms of ending a saga, it's really disappointing. The story is flat and tensionless. The special editions added more nonsense to an already weak entry to the saga.

I presume the source for this edit was the 2004 Special Edition DVD + 2006 GOUT DVD (for replacing SE nonsense), so the quality isn't the best. Same goes for the editing. It's not bad, but in some places it feels choppy. Especially in Tatooine where Luke senses his friends. Still a minor problem though, it doesn't hurt the experience.

Spence has created a great narrative in this edit. He fixed the Tatooine plot perfectly, for example. In my opinion, the Dagobah scene should have been left as it is, Obi-Wan and all. Also the new ending is IMO too abrubpt. I wish that would have been left in. The biggest problem, though, is the Death Star/Star Destroyer swap. In the original movie, we find out that The Emperor is confident enough to see the final stages of the Death Star II, and so he is in it. The Rebels decide to end the war once and for all with this information and destroy the Death Star. There was tension there, but not enough. Here, though, he goes to the Star Destroyer, and the Rebels attack the Death Star. Huh? This plan makes no sense, why not destroy the Star Destroyer? Also the tension is gone here. And Luke ends the war. It's abrubpt again.

Finally, we end up with a fanedit that is just as good as the original, but I prefer the original because of the narrative making more sense. It's a good edit, though. Just not as good as I expected.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
(Updated: September 09, 2012)
Enjoyment
 
8.0
Review by Ripplin — March 21, 2011 @ 5:04 am

Loved the new crawl, certain restructuring choices, no Fett, old Sarlacc, etc… Didn’t love jumping out of my skin when the end credit music came on. Haha. Watching the alternate scenes/ideas, it’s a shame the idea of things going bad when Luke went into ‘berserker’ mode and getting better when he calmed down didn’t work out. I thought that was really cool. Anyway, I don’t have too much to say that others haven’t already. I enjoyed it and give it a solid 8/10.
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
43 results - showing 16 - 20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9