Pulp Empire

A fun concept, giving a great new vibe to Star Wars. Not being a Star Wars fan, only having seen original movie twice in 28 years, sort of allowed me to see it untainted with star wars fan ferocity.
The Tarantino style introduction of characters and titles was brilliant. The Yoda/Pai Mai voice over, worked perfectly, very enjoyable.
And this brings me to the music. Tarantino obviously has a great ear for soundtrack music, which has led to the songs being over used in popular culture. The Music in Pulp Empire often felt shoehorned in, didn't fit comfortably within the film.
"Tarantino Cuts" are a fun novelty, but the music is ultimately distracting when trying to enjoy a film.

I was pretty excited to see this fanedit. The preview clips looked great, and it was a daring take on my favorite SW film. Overall, I enjoyed it. There was some great, and some not so great. Could this have been a Tarantino film? No. Was the edit enjoyable? Yes.

I won't reiterate in detail what a lot have said already. Some points are obvious - too much slow motion, music choices didn't always work, and some chapters were worked better than others.

There were moments that I absolutely loved. The multi-panel shots were great. The intro to the final chapter was awesome. I even didn't mind the Neil Young song. It works for this. (but faneditors, please: No more Neil Young in Star Wars. You're killin' me.)

On a tech side, the release was nice. I watched the 720p MKV. There was a weird issue with the aspect ratio being off on my main TV, though when played on a different TV, it displayed fine. There were some weird issues from slow motion, but it wasn't too distracting. The only other editing item I will mention is mix of the music. I really wanted it to be louder for most of the film, but I'm not going to subtract too much for that, because of all the amazing work the editor did sound wise.

Bottom line rating for me is ~7.5 stars. Thanks NJVC :)

I've been a fan of Star Wars since I was but a boy, and a fan of Tarantino since I was but a teenager. So, naturally, when I saw this I was instantly excited.

The quality of the MKV I watched was really, really nice. I didn't notice any blocking or anything of that sort. The audio was good, too. There were a few times that I had trouble hearing dialogue over the music, but that could have been the set up I was watching on. More on the audio later.

The visual aspect of this edit was nearly perfect. Not a single rogue frame to be found. I'd have to say my favorite sequence was the duel with Darth Vader at the end. It was incredibly well done and worked well with the music you selected. The splitscreen were also great to watch. They worked quite well at compressing time! I did have a few minor peeves, first being that the slow motion effects weren't always that smooth. I understand that you can only slow down 24fps so much (which is to say not a lot) before it starts looking kinda derpy, but I feel that it was overdone a few times throughout. The second was that during a number of the fades between shots was that the scene that was being faded out or into would change shot midfade. I found it to be a mite distracting, and it's something that I try not to do while editing.

The music selections were pretty good, however, there were a few instances where I felt they didn't quite fit. For example, when Han is getting frozen, the music used was from the scene in Kill Bill Vol. 2 where the Bride is digging herself out from the ground. It's a rather upbeat and almost heroic piece, and it doesn't quite fit with the action on screen. There were also a few times when the music faded out to nothing, not quite suddenly, but it didn't particularly sound right, either. That said, I really enjoyed hearing the Pai Mei dialogue dubbed over Yoda. The lipsync on that was spot on. Very clever, very well done.

The narrative, I felt, wasn't quite cohesive. There's one instance when Luke is rescued by Han that we see him recovering in the bacta tank, but we don't get that scene afterwards where Han and Leia ask him how he's doing. It's an important character moment that helps to build Han and Leia's relationship. My main concern for this edit is that it was a lot more style over substance. The addition of a sixth chapter felt wholly unnecessary - that bit could have very easily been woven in with Chapter Five. And while I enjoyed the character title cards that introduced Luke, Han, and Leia (Darth Vader's was great, by the way!) I was half expecting a second credits sequence. In a Tarantino-esque edit, character should be numbers one, two, and three. While his ecclectic music selections are certainly memorable, they play to the characters, not just because they sound cool (although Rule of Cool is always a consideration).

If you plan on revisiting this (which I do hope you do - revision is always a good thing) try to give the story a bit more time to breathe. A few times it felt like things were rushed along to try and keep the length short. Don't worry about how long or short it is. Remember, a great film will always feel too short, and an awful film will always feel too long. I do hope you don't feel as though I'm poo-pooing your edit. It was a marvelous technical achievement, it really was. I look forward to seeing what else you produce in the future!

(and, for what it's worth, this has inspired me to do a similar type edit for Return of the Jedi)

Overall I thought it was a good edit. Some great ideas and good editing there but also a fair amount of bad choices (based on my opinion), with some ideas i didn't really dig. But despite that i enjoyed it and i am glad i saw it. it was a bold edit from njvc and i congratulate him for his effort here.
The split screen in many scenes was nicely done and well implemented. Yoda speaking Chinese (or whatever it was) was really awesome and seamlessly implemented as well. Vader gave me a 70ies porn vibe that for some reason worked great and gave his character a nice new twist. Also i loved the use of the clone wars animated fight in the cave scene! A moment of brilliance there by njvc and easily my favorite moment of the entire edit. Also sound replacement was done great, and the music choices were really cool and really fitted the Tarantino vibe.
On the bad side, many scenes felt very much like a music video montage, instead of part of an actual movie. They gave a very video-clip/youtube-tribute kind of vibe. They contributed to the edit not having a good story structure at moments when it needed it and instead it could even feel kind of random. And another contributing factor to that was the non-linear structure of the edit. The first black and white vader-luke clip was nicely placed at the very beginning building up nicely the rest of the movie, but after that, the whole chapter-thingy felt unnecessary and in my oppinion it didn't help the story in a good way, and it made some things confusing. I think a straight narrative would have made the edit stronger, the story more focused and more to the point.
Some minor criticism is that njvc uses too many fades. Some of them made sense in places like the flashback introductions, but others felt completely unnecessary and distracting. Also not exactly a criticism but at many parts the edit was border-lining to going into Tarantino parody territory. I know the point was not to make a Tarantino Star Wars movie, but more of a tribute to him and his style. But at points the edit felt that it was pushing it too much or trying a little too hard.
I probably have gone a little overboard with all my negative comments, but don't get me wrong. This is not a bad edit. Far from it. Is it a classic though? Nope. But it is a Bold and Well made for the most part edit that i recommend to any star wars fan. I felt that for every thing that i didn't like there was always something there good to counteract it and for me to enjoy. And for the majority of the edit it was the good thing that left the biggest impression to me.
Great Job njvc!

Let me get a few things out of the way first.

I've watched this fanedit six times. Before it was released I was a previewer and gave njvc private detailed feedback 19 pages long. I've put a lot of thought into reviewing this fanedit. I watched the workprint 5 times and the final cut once.

I am very biased when I watch this edit because I'm a Tarantino fanatic. I can't help but compare it to his films and think "how would Quentin have done that scene?" Is it fair to do that? No.

This is not a positive review but I'm going to try my best to be constructive and compliment the goods as much if not more than the bads.

Lastly, I love njvc to death. He is a great friend, a talented musician and editor and has a beautiful beard.

On with the review!


Audio/Visual Quality: DVD5 was great quality, haven't watched it in HD yet but I'm sure it's all good. 10/10


Visual Editing: First the bad, then the good.

There is an overkill of slow motion. The editor relied on that Twixter plugin way too much. Some of the dissolves/transitions felt out of place. Too much style over substance.

But damn njvc does some cool stuff. A lot of marvelous skill on display here. Some of the hero moments and montages have nicely composed visuals. Great split screen effects. Many wonderful stylistic nods to Tarantino. 8/10


Audio Editing: First the bad, then the good.

I felt that the editor was lazy in his choice of music. There was too much reliance on Tarantino music in my opinion. The genres and styles of music change so often and it lacked an overall theme or throughline to the soundtrack. At times it felt like watching Empire Strikes Back with a Tarantino soundtrack playlist on shuffle playing over it.

There were like 40 different songs in a 90 minute movie. Some of it clashed together, Chapter 5 in particular felt cacophonous. Chapter 2 had the best selection, the different styles worked well there.

But there were many wonderful musical moments all throughout. Chapters 1 & 2 were absolutely perfect musically. Chapter 3 was almost perfect. Chapter 5 had some great moments. Slaughter and L'Arena were my favorite choices.

And despite the fact I previously told njvc that he raped Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold, the audio editing in that Vader fight is fucking awesome.

7/10


Narrative: Great first half, falls apart in second half.

Prologue through Chapter 3 was dope. Pre-credits sequence is best moment. Yoda chapter first was brilliant. The non-linear aspect worked well in the first half.

Chapter 4 was too rushed. The Space Oddity montage ruined pacing for me and felt completely out of place. Chapter 5 felt too long by itself. Chapter 6 starts off nicely but then it gets to the big moment.

Ending was terrible. You fucked up the greatest movie ending ever. Sorry for the bluntness.

5/10


Enjoyment:

Despite all my criticisms there was a lot I enjoyed about it. It's obvious the editor had a blast making this and put a lot of blood sweat and tears into it. It's meant to be a fun remix. I really enjoyed some of it. And others have said how much they love it, I'm in the minority here.

For me this is not a case of the good outweighing the bad. I wanted to see "The Empire Strikes Back directed by Quentin Tarantino". This was not it. I was disappointed, maybe too much hype had built up for it.

My enjoyment is purely based on my own tastes and personal viewpoints about movies.

6/10


Recommend?

For Star Wars fans who don't care for Tarantino or people who think Kill Bill is Tarantino's best.