Review Detail

I can't believe it took me this long to get to this one. This edit is perfect. It's an amazing piece of work. At first you might think it would be a weird homage to Tarantino by filling it with references, but the edit was far from it. It takes (imho) the best Star Wars film and makes it Tarantino-esque but only to a degree, because while Tarantino would have carried the film through to a 'cinematic' ending like in Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill, Django Unchained; Pulp Empire evokes the old school Tarantino of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown ilk, where you don't get that crowd pleasing finale but a thoughtful, resonating end that haunts you for a while. The Neil Young closing to this was absolute genius, the montage put together at theend--I've never seen anything like--it's actually why the prequels exist: for the three minute montage at the end of njvc's Pulp Empire. I loved the out-of-left-field music choices like (!) Bernard Hermann's Taxi Driver theme in lieu of the love theme, and the opening with Morricone's theme from the Lee van Cleef classic "Grand Duel" hooked me. Substituting Pai for Yoda was hilarious and worked perfectly. The best scene in the trilogy (Luke vs Vader) scored to Ecstacy of Gold was great!

Bottom line is--this isn't a simple re-edit or remix of the original. It takes the material and uses style to create something new entirely: that's where the "Tarantino" aspect comes in. But njvc has definitely made this his own by applying deeper meaning and ambiguity to the scenes. The linear cohesion of the original is gone, the story is absorbed upon reflection after viewing, and I personally love those kinds of stories. An amazing edit, and my personal favorite of any I've seen. Score 11/10