Pulp Empire

Overall, I felt that this was a brilliant edit - there were a couple of niggles, but nothing that should stop anyone from seeking it out and watching it ASAP.

Visuals
+ This is probably the most seamless and stylishly put together FanEdit I've seen. The split-screen Hoth battle especially is excellent and the Tarantino styling is spot-on. Character intros were v cool. Loved the use of B/W.
- Only gripes (and this is incredibly minor) was that I felt there were a couple too many instances of slow-mo.

Audio
+ The song selection was very mostly good and appropriate to the scenes. Loved the Joda-dub/sub work!
- I'm not sure if QT would have used the (admittedly awesome) Chemical Brothers track, and it felt a little out of place given the genre of music used elsewhere. Also, it felt as if there was almost too much new music (I noticed this mostly during the Could-City scenes) - not sure how much of this was due to editing out Williams though.

Narrative
+/- I had a niggling feeling that the reordering of the story could leave first-time viewers scratching their heads. Obviously most people will be coming to the edit already being familiar with the story, so this is probably not an issue.

I seem to have written much more negative than positive in this review, but I'll just stress again that these are all at best minor issues with an incredibly professional piece of work. Well done, njvc!

ps. See it! Now!

For me, this is the kind of project that fanediting is all about, the kind I can share with people who don't know anything about fanediting. It's also the kind of project that gives me that feeling of seeing something the first time, even though I've seen this movie way too many times to count.

I'm no more than a casual fan of Tarantino, I've enjoyed all his movies to varying degrees but none of them are movies I feel a strong urge to revisit. But here is a movie that he easily could have made that I will come back to several times. It's all style, but in a good way. The visual tricks, the non-linear narrative, the fantastic music, it all adds up. And the fact that no trademark Tarantino over-the-top violence and language was used is a big plus in my book.

Yoda's new dialogue, the split-screens, the constant fades, the Falcon's engines, the hero moments, and the attention to detail were my favorite things about this edit.

I did have a few minor nitpicks. The audio work is well done, but there are moments where things from the original ESB sneak through that were too noticeable, mostly snippets of Williams' score. I can't complain too much, as I (more than most) completely understand how hard it is to work around this stuff in a Star Wars edit, and I know Mr. jvc put a ton of work in to minimize it as much as possible. But it's only fair to mention it.

The other audio thing that jumped out at me was Yoda's new dialogue. There was a hiss (or noise, I'm not sure how to describe it) present during his dialogue that was absent when he wasn't speaking. I know it came from the source and was impossible to remove, but it might have been possible to find some of that hiss from the source that was clean of any dialogue, and repeat it under the Yoda scenes to keep it consistent and less noticeable.

The Clone Wars animated footage was a great surprise to me (in a good way), but I wish Anakin hadn't been named. I was thinking that he was meant to be Luke until that point, and I thought it would have made more sense if he was Luke.

The video quality (watched the mkv) was fantastic. I will say I wish there were some things from the SE that weren't there (the Praxis ring explosions and Vader's pink lightsaber core being the main issues for me), but that's a necessary evil when using the HD source (THANKS GEORGE!). Down the road, once Harmy is done with his HD reconstruction of ESB, I'd love to see those elements replaced, but that's just a wish on my part that need not come true for me to recommend this edit enthusiastically.

One last nitpick - prequel footage? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!1!!11! Completely unnecessary in my opinion.

I've spent more time on the bad than the good, but believe me when I say this is a wonderful edit, a great testament to the power of creative editing, and a strong contender for various site awards. Hurry up June, so I can vote for this thing!

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.

I said God Damn!

I was fairly certain going into this that it would be the most bad ass fan edit of all time, and let me tell you, NJVC did not disappoint.

"Empire" is essentially my favorite film. So typically an edit of it would make me leery, but this is not a typical edit. Quentin Tarantino is one of my all time favorite filmmakers, and I think one of the most enjoyable aspects of his films are his musical choices. In fact, I love his musical choices so much that I take musical inspiration from him whenever I edit one of my own short films. So imagine my pleasure when I learned that NJVC would be doing that same Tarantino musical treatment to "the Empire Strikes Back!"

Of course the Tarantino inspiration doesn't stop there. He's got character title cards, subtitles, black and white segments, an animated segment, chapter splits, split screens, slow motion, fades, montages, and whatever have you. Basically all the things that make my spine tingle whenever I see a Tarantino movie. And they're all used perfectly.

But how is that music? It's awesome. It's just seriously very awesome. Pretty much perfect choices all around. Being familiar with the music in Tarantino's films, on a number of occasions a song would come up, and I would realize what NJVC was about to do with it, and I wouldn't be able to keep myself from smiling (the use of the Mercenary soundtrack in the carbonite scene comes immediately to mind).

Now for the negative, unfortunately. Like I said pretty much perfect choices all around. The songs make perfect sense for their respective scenes. But they don't always work together. This is probably more true for the Battle of Hoth chapter than the others. It's just that, in that chapter, there's little flow between the songs. It's not as cohesive as one might hope, though on the other hand, some have argued that Tarantino's use of music isn't cohesive either. Anyway, it's really only a problem in that second chapter, other than that it more or less works.

Unfortunately there are sometimes, when you can hear John Williams, but I know how hard it is to replace a SW movie score, and I think NJVC did an impeccable job working around JW. There are also some scenes where I do wish the replacement music could have been louder, but I was happy for the most part.

The real issue with the edit is the narrative. I really do love the non-linear story, and the flashback montages to the previous films. The story, however, seems like it could be rather confusing. And by that I mean, I wonder if I would understand it had I not seen this movie previously. Of course, it's hard for me to know for sure what this theoretical version of myself would and wouldn't be able to understand; but watching this edit it just felt like the narrative wasn't all there. What I did love is how the film almost feels like it's telling two parallel stories, the hero in one being Luke, the hero in the other being Han. (I suppose the original film is the same, but I just never looked at it that way. This edit actually made me notice a lot of things I never though I hadn't noticed in a film that I've seen a million times). What's also interesting is that these two heroes barely even share a scene together in this edit.

Few other thoughts:
- I liked the animated sequence, but there is a little bit of a what the hell factor to it Though this is probably intentional, I kind of wish Yoda would acknowledge it or something.
- Like others said, this edit starts slow. It really does get awesome as it goes along. If I were to rank the chapters, it would probably start with six and go in descending order down to one. Which is awesome. I love movie that get better and better as they go along.
- I'm flattered to see that I'm in the credits! Thanks NJVC!

Anyway, the negative thoughts are more or less nitpicks. I keep using the word awesome and there's a damn good reason why: this edit is awesome. Watch it now. Seriously, do it. I'm thinking about doing it again right now. And then again later with my friends. Great stuff NJVC.