Fall of the Jedi: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

This review is for V1 of this edit, which has Lord Sideous.

I’ve watched a bunch of episode 1 edits (L8wrtr, Yads, Jasonn, Seciors, Hal9000, Magnoliafan, and Q2 v2) and I have to say Q2’s v1 is my absolute favorite.

What’s different about it from the others?

• It has the emperor/Sideous! A couple episode 1 edits have removed him (Seciors, Q2 v2), which may add to the suspense factor in the later movies, but I think it really hurts episode 1 to not have him present. There is just no driving force for the movie without him pulling the strings. Also, cutting Sideous cuts too much Darth Maul, making his appearance a wtf.
• Jar jar and Anakin are at a bare minimum (in my view hal9000 left too much Jar Jar, Seciors left too much Anakin).
• The underwater Gungan city is preserved, in a very abbreviated fashion. (hal9000 removed completely). Without this, the end battle with the Gungan army is not set up properly.
• No god-awful “are you an angel?” line. Q2 is the only editor which removed that, afaik.
• No horrible scene with young Greedo making his cameo (L8wrtr, Yads, Seciors all kept this)
• No C3p0! It always bothered me having him be built by Anakin, now it doesn’t have too! (hal9000, l8wrtr, seciors all keep 3p0).
• Q2 kept in Padme’s line “Well, I don’t approve!”, which is possibly her best line in the movie. (Seciors cut it)
• Mercifully short pod race
• No necklace (L8wrtr, seciors keep it)
• No ascension guns (yads keeps)
• No Disney parade (hal9000 and seciors both keep some parade)

Of course what really makes this film shine is the editing. Q2 is a master at trimming the fat, while keeping the good stuff.

In my view, the only things that would make this edit better would be to dub Jar Jar, as Magnoliafan has done, and maybe tighten up the Anakin farewell as L8wrtr did.

Bravo, Q2!

Wow, what an improvement. Clearly far better than the painful original. As it stands, if I had a kid, this'd be the version I'd show them.

Great work on the scrolling wording.

Well done on getting Anakin out of space in the final act. Reviewers have questioned it, but you are spot on - a comedy accidental destruction of a big boss (droid control ship) by a child ? Why didn't Lucas have Darth Maul die after being distracted by a puppy?
Personally I'd like to lose from this version of the control ship scene the lines that suggest that the rest of the squadron didn't know why the ship was blowing up (otherwise what was their plan?!). So I'd take out "What's that?", "We didn't hit it." and "It's one of ours", but keep "It's blowing up from the inside."

Glad 3PO's gone too. I wouldn't have minded R2 kicking around, but not bothered.

Which brings us to JarJar. Frankly any appearance is too much, and it's great there's so little of him. The problem is now, because he can't be entirely removed, that he seems to be stalking the principal characters! From the dialogue, once he's taken them to the underwater city his role is over. But there he is in Theed. Oh and look now he's in the Jedi spacecraft & following them round Tatooine...
But what can you do? It's the source's fault. Given that we can just about believe that he might have guided the Jedi to Theed, it would be good if we could have just a couple of line's of dialogue to explain why he's following the principals off Naboo.

I remember the pod race as interminable. This version seems better, though ideally would be just two laps!

So essentially great. There is only one thing I strongly disagree with, and that's taking out Obi-Wan's promise as Qui-Gon is dying. That *is* a key moment in the trilogy. To have him mention it casually to Yoda later felt weak. You managed to speed up the pace everywhere - it's ok to slow it when it's important!

I can't compare to other fanedits of Phantom as I haven't seen them, but this is great - I say find it and watch it.

(A caveat before I begin: I hate the source material for this edit, so I did not take into account my bias when giving a score for enjoyment.)

This was a flawless edit, technically speaking, very professional. And Q2 has removed the most egregious mistakes from Phantom Menace (midichlorians, little Annie's accidental adventure, most of Jar-Jar, R2D2 and C3PO). He also manages to make young Anakin tolerable; the biggest impression I got was that he was a cute kid, which is plenty at this stage in the game, if you ask me. The whole thing clips along at a much faster pace, completely to the film's benefit. And, in what ended up being the most beneficial change in Q2's prequel trilogy edit, Darth Sidious is no longer in the movie at all!(You need v.2 for this) I cannot overemphasize what a difference this makes. Once it's no longer obvious from the get-go who the "phantom menace" actually is, top-to-bottom everything gets better. The eventual reveal in the third film is way more satisfying, for instance. Ultimately, however, these prequels are horrible, with this being easily the worst Star Wars film by a long-shot. But if you're on the fence about liking them, and you want to give them another shot, Q2's versions are a marked improvement.

The ONLY thing that stood out as a kind of "huh?" moment was why Jar-Jar is suddenly a part of the Jedis' crew. I understand the explanation had to be cut to keep him out of our faces, though, so fair enough.

Hey everyone, I had the wonderful opportunity to watch this edit. I'm a big fan of L8wrtr's edits of the Prequel Trilogy because of the new flavor it adds to them. This is definitely another great alternative for those that are looking for something a little bit more closer to the original prequels, but told better. The edits are greatly made. It makes the film move at a much better pace as well. This is definitely my go to alternative to the theatrical of Phantom Menacce. Great job. I'd highly recommend it.

This film suffers greatly from pacing, acting, dialogue, directing, ect. But this edit fixes almost everything!

The quality of the fanedit is great. It's source from the bluray and has a very good HD quality. The sound is equally as good and serves the job well as to what to expect from a SW movie.

The visual editing was almost seamless the whole time and the transitions felt a lot more like an OT movie wich is great. Audio editing was nearly perfect but I could hear abrupt cuts once or twice. I don't at all blame the editor, I realize that sometimes making the music from differnet scenes blend together might be difficult.

Now the narrative and pace of the film is what I think to be what sets this fanedit apart from others. The editor tries to cut all the unnecessary shots that he could find, and believe me the original movie is plagued with them. The film goes at a much more faster pace and that makes the movie much more digestable since it only is like an our and a half long. I do prefer star wars movies to be at least two hours long but I understand that with this film is simply not possible because so much is needed to be cut.

My enjoyment of the film rarely is existant when I watch the original film but with this edit I was surprisingly hooked to the movie and it suddenly became a much more engaging story. I beleive a lot of that was due to the fast paced editing, that didn't wasted a minute of film. This certainly is the best cut of the film yet and I think Q2 has finally made TPM into viable piece of entertaintment.