Pulp Empire

Wow. I am blown away. This was absolutely fun, fun, fun from start to finish! Rating this from a technical perspective it isn't perfect but it takes so many chances, does so many interesting things, and succeeds on so many levels that it hardly even matters. Be warned, you'll need to know your Star Wars movies relatively well because this edit is non-chronological.

Just some of my favorite moments: Pai Mei's voice for Yoda (inspired!), the character names popping up (DARTH VADER), the Hoth splitscreens, "Boba Fett" scrolling across the screen during his amazing intro, "A Silhouette of Doom" over the anime saber battle. And that's all just in the first half!!

Find a copy of this and watch it. It's guaranteed the most fun you'll have with a fan edit this month.

Fan of Stars Wars franchise and the Tarantino style. This film is the best of both worlds. Told the whole Empire Strikes back story in a non linear way while being scored to great music. You can tell njvc took his time on this fanedit. You'll never see the seams in his editing. Choice of soundtrack fitted every scene.

I particularly enjoyed the character introductions in the Kill Bill style. Montage scenes from other Stars Wars episodes were integrated.

However the voice of Yoda replaced by Gordon Liu's in his part as Pai Mei in Kill Bill was off-putting. I dont think njvc is a Cantonese speaker. Yoda was speaking gibberish and the same sound bites from Pai Mei was used over and over again. I'm sure I was suppose to just ignore this and read the subs but I had to take a few points off from the rating for it. Gordon Liu' has dozens of movie out over the decades and there are plenty of lines to choose form but thats impossible if you cant speak the language. I sat through the film with a buddy that did not speak Cantonese, and he seemed to enjoy the scene better.

Overall, it's a must see for fan edit enthusiast and njvc has set a new standard of fanmixes with Pulp Empire.

I have to confess two things up front. I am a big fan of njvc's previous work, but despite that, I was very skeptical that he could pull off his stated goals or that they would work for my personal tastes. I am pleased to report that for the most part I was wrong on both counts.

This is a very ambitious edit from an audio and visual standpoint, and from a technical fanediting standpoint.

njvc is a master with audio work and soundtracking. so I had high expectations at for this part, and he did not disappoint. There were a couple beautifully scored scenes. One that really stood out for me was the animated scene.

The animated scene is also just one of many examples where he demonstrates great visual and storytelling creativity that I absolutely loved. The character montages and the use of ANH and ROTJ footage was also wonderful.

This whole edit is just so fresh and fun that any technical issues at the end of the day just don't matter very much or ruin the overall experience.

That said, there were a handful of moments where technical things did momentarily pull me out of the scene. The most problematic IMO is the use of slow motion. The use itself is not the problem. In fact it is quite important stylistically. The problem is the inconsistent use of different types and some video glitches in a moment or two. The worst glitch that I can remember is in a land speeder scene on Hoth. In fact this scene really stood out in my mind as the worst usage. There were also moments in this scene when I began to feel as if the slow motion was over-used and unneeded. Lastly and perhaps most importantly regarding slow motion, there were really two different styles used and they visually clashed with each other a bit. There was normal smooth slow motion, and then there was a choppy slow motion that looked like it was shot with a 14FPS camera. Stylistically, I really loved the choppy slow motion and would have preferred a more consistent use of this look throughout.

There were a few other minor issues I had. While I absolutely loved some of the fades njvc creates (so beautiful!), fade transitions were over-used a bit IMO for certain intra-scene quick camera cuts. Yoda just didn't quite work for me either.

Overall, awesome job as usual dude.

njvc breathes new life in an all to familiar fanedit with pulp empire as star wars meets tarantino. for a film i'm all too familiar with i was impressed that njvc managed to cut a lot from the film without the overall narrative to the story being effected. the flashback scenes were a nice touch in filling in the gaps what with empire being the middle film to the trilogy. i really liked were njvc placed the animated segment and the newly voiced yoda is a real scene stealer

as others have said the battle of hoth with it's spilt screen and use of music is nicely done, though for me the highlight of the edit was the battle between vader and luke while njvc further cements boba fett as the coolest bad-ass in all the galaxy. others have comment that the original score can be heard while you can hear it faintly in the background at times it's never a distraction. i could only imagine the hours spent in removing the best he could, and in removing john williams score njvc has made this edit his own with the songs selected

however at times i felt the music was over done and would have preferred the music not to be playing but i'm guessing that it used to cover up the original score when ever possible. i also feel the music could have been used more as background music, such as the radio station announcer we hear from reservoir dogs could have played in the background of the millenium falcon. at times the music didn't feel like it was adding anything to the visuals but rather just playing over the footage.

i personally wouldn't have opened with the yoda segment, it seemed a little off seeing luke talking to someone who we haven't meet nor do we see on screen. the engine effect on the millenium falcon seemed some what out of place for me, there are some funny moments (yoda voice being dubbed and having luke understand every word he says) but i wouldn't say this was a comedy fanedit in the vain of TV's frink star wars edits. it just felt like the only part of the edit that was done to raise a laugh. the slow mo effects at times felt a little overdone and became tiresome after a while.

overall an enjoyable fanedit, the question i guess one must ask is will this be vol 1, as the story has only been half told? i wouldn't seeing vol 2 some time in the future.

Side note: I've watched this fanedit as a previewer but I think the "final cut" is about the same.

This is a very good fanedit. Strong concept, well done and with a passion.

I will not repeat too much of what the other reviewers said. I wanted to focus my comment on the audio side of this edit.
The audio aspect of it is its stronguest point (great choice of songs, great timming, fits the project perfectly) and possily its lowest too (some original music bleeds occasionally, but I know too well how it is difficult to remove Williams music from this movie!, volume levels could be adjusted here and there etc.). That's why it's difficult to rate the audio here. It's not perfect, it maybe could have been (a bit) better in places, but it simply cannot be perfect as the goal here was to remove all Williams music (something I did not even dare to try in both of my War of the Stars edits). There is enough heavy work done here on the audio side of things (lots of sounds reconstructions) to fully enjoy the edit without being too much of a nitpicker. Very good job.

To me the narration flows well. I understand some people saying that there are nice scenes that are missing. But my guess is that some of them are missing because the music could not be removed. There are some fanedits where your main goal dictates your cuts and you have to play around it. That can be frustrating for the faneditor, but it's also, ironicaly, what is fun!

The "Tarantinish" mood is fully exploited and the enjoyment was exactly what I hoped it would be.
(I wonder what the people who understand what Yoda is saying now will think of the edit, haha).

Thanks for this edit.
It's one to keep and to share with people to show what fanedit can create.