Review Detail
8.1 48 10
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
10.0
This is one of only a handful of fanedits I’ve actually seen, the others being Superman Redeemed (combining III and IV), X-Men Requiem War (all three movies), Superman – Last Son of Krypton (combines the first two movies) and Start Wars – Rise of the Empire (combining the original trilogy). To be honest I was starting to lose faith in fanedits as nothing more than a bit of fun or an excuse to cut through swathes of story and bring down the running time. Without wanting to be derogatory towards the other edits I’ve mentioned, Superman Redeemed just didn’t have the chance of being a good film given the source material (the edit was a vast improvement on the two movies though), Superman LSOK and X-Men both made drastic cuts to some of my favourite films in an attempt to improve a flawed sequel, but because of the cuts made to the first movies the edits will never be superior to them, and Star Wars, well, the opening crawls stretched out to four hours long would have been an improvement on the trilogy as originally released so that edit was bound to be an improvement.
But this edit, given how unsatisfactory I found the original versions, is enlightening and entertaining. The pacing is great and the two and a half hours fly by. Still inferior to The Matrix, but hey, the editor didn’t have a budget of millions, a crew and a screenplay he could tinker with at whim, so given the limitations put on him I think this is a great job. I can see why some people feel that Morpheus didn’t get closure but I don’t think it’s all that important. Of the crew of the Neb who made it through to the sequels he’s the only one who lived. He played his part in getting Neo to where he needed to be so I think that it’s fitting that his fate is left hanging. I can honestly say that on viewing this it actually feels like a full movie in its own right and doesn’t need to sacrifice anything. Definitely a replacement to Revolutions and Reloaded in my eyes.
To anyone who’s new to fanedits I would highly recommend this as an ideal one to start with. It is a perfect example of how improvements can and should be made, and highlights just what we could be missing out on by not giving fanedits a go.
5/5
Word of warning – when unpacking the archives for the DVD version using WinRar I received an error message for each file. The ISO file generated fine but Windows Explorer shut down every time I tried to open the folder it had extracted to. It’s not an infected archive – thorough malware and antivirus scans confirmed that – and it may have just been a corruption limited to my PC, but just in case it’s not and anybody else wants to avoid the same problems I encountered I recommend extracting it to a new folder away from any other files, buried in a tree of two other new folders with no other files in, and once the ISO has been created move it to your intended destination and delete the new folders.
Review by latenights — January 18, 2009 @ 4:21 AM
But this edit, given how unsatisfactory I found the original versions, is enlightening and entertaining. The pacing is great and the two and a half hours fly by. Still inferior to The Matrix, but hey, the editor didn’t have a budget of millions, a crew and a screenplay he could tinker with at whim, so given the limitations put on him I think this is a great job. I can see why some people feel that Morpheus didn’t get closure but I don’t think it’s all that important. Of the crew of the Neb who made it through to the sequels he’s the only one who lived. He played his part in getting Neo to where he needed to be so I think that it’s fitting that his fate is left hanging. I can honestly say that on viewing this it actually feels like a full movie in its own right and doesn’t need to sacrifice anything. Definitely a replacement to Revolutions and Reloaded in my eyes.
To anyone who’s new to fanedits I would highly recommend this as an ideal one to start with. It is a perfect example of how improvements can and should be made, and highlights just what we could be missing out on by not giving fanedits a go.
5/5
Word of warning – when unpacking the archives for the DVD version using WinRar I received an error message for each file. The ISO file generated fine but Windows Explorer shut down every time I tried to open the folder it had extracted to. It’s not an infected archive – thorough malware and antivirus scans confirmed that – and it may have just been a corruption limited to my PC, but just in case it’s not and anybody else wants to avoid the same problems I encountered I recommend extracting it to a new folder away from any other files, buried in a tree of two other new folders with no other files in, and once the ISO has been created move it to your intended destination and delete the new folders.
Review by latenights — January 18, 2009 @ 4:21 AM
L