Return of the Jedi: Remastered

There are so many fan-edits of this film out there, but I find that they change the story too much. This is just a simple edit which trims down the bad parts of the film to make a better story without changing it. I still feel like I'm watching the same 'Return of the Jedi' only more streamlined. All in all, it's really good and fixed many of the problems the timeless film has.

I love the original trilogy. A lot. Those films are some of my all-time favorites. However, Return of the Jedi always seemed a bit…off… to me. Not bad, mind you, just off. [One reviewer mentions “cut scenes”. I think that’s a pretty good description of how some parts of ROTJ feel.]
As I thought about it, I came to realize that this “off balance” feeling the original version of the film has is due to three key distractions in Return of the Jedi:

1. Jabba’s palace silliness. The focus should be on Luke rescuing his friends, but instead we’re treated to a musical number and other cartoonish elements.
2. Han Solo seems jealous of Luke, which shouldn’t have been a focus of the film. His jealousy made his character arc move weirdly backwards. He seemed very immature and lame in Return of the Jedi, at times.
3. Obviously, the Ewoks. Nothing against them or their cuteness, it’s just that the battle as was presented in the original version of the film was unrealistic and thus distracted from the prime conflict of the film: Luke becoming a Jedi and confronting his father.

This edit takes care of all three. Lapti Nek/Jedi Rocks [and droid screaming] is excised, Han’s problematic lines are (sometimes quite brilliantly) removed.

The Endor ground battle was fantastic. It’s completely believable. Han and Leia get trapped in the bunker, C3PO and the Ewoks realize this and get help. They arrive as a distraction when the rebels are brought outside with their hands up. The Imperials go after them, and get a nasty surprise from the Ewok’s bow&arrows. From there on out, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the rebels fight the fight and get their job done. The Ewoks do their part and run around and distract the empire. They try to fight but their sticks and stones just can’t beat the imperials. Finally, Chewie breaks into an AT-AT, does some real damage, Han and Leia get into the base, and the rest is history.

The only place this lost points were some audio transitions that didn’t necessarily sound natural. Unfortunately, I think these kind of things are unavoidable when you are not the person who made the film—and thus you don’t have full access to all the audio resources used for the movie.

Anyway, the result of the edit is a version of Return of the Jedi that retains everything we love about the film. It is still a worthy conclusion to a great trilogy, but now it is also fantastic film in its own right. I would recommend this edit to anyone who has had the same feelings of Return of the Jedi as me.

This was very well done. The film is more serious with most of the cheesy and childish parts significantly reduced. This film is much closer in tone to the other 2 and the second half no longer feels like it was made for 6 year olds. Personally i would have axed even more of the ewoks, they are just so insidiously cute even when they try to be serious. It was good seeing them get their ass kicked tho :) I also personally hate the luke/leia brother/sister thing but until we all get our collective memories wiped i don't think its going anywhere. But these are really criticisms of the source material and scriptwriting, darthrush's remastered edit is far superior to the original and absolutely canes the latest special editions travesty.

Video and audio - are both excellent, incredibly minor mismatches in only a couple of places in the whole film.
Editing - fantastic apart from one or two spots when some added fx edit just didnt quite hit the same quality as the rest of the film.
Narrative - was solid, still easy to follow without the cut scenes and made the tale more engaging.
Enjoyment - 9/10 which is as high as i ever see myself ever giving this film. In fact for it to get 10 there would have to be storntroopers with flamethrowers creating bbg'd ewoks.

I really enjoyed this edit and many of the decisions, but ultimately this just cannot be my go to version of the film...

PROS: I loved the added music during the Obi-Wan & Luke scene.
Very much enjoyed the change-up during when Chewie is introduced.
NO MORE JEDI ROCKS DANCE SEQUENCE!
The Special Edition Ending is the ending I always preferred.
Greatly reduced Ewoks!
Vader is more menacing in shuttle tydirium sequence.
Dialogue and cheesy scenes in the film are reduced (almost a little too much).

CONS: The subtitles from Jabba change from odd "imovie" type to then the despecialized subtitles.
I personally miss the despecialized dance sequence cut from this edit.
The dialogue scenes with Lando are pretty much cut entirely.
Boba Fett shots are not flipped.
No more Leia and Wicket scene.
I miss Vader's eyebrows.
But overall I think the film just loses too much of its charm while the edits aren't super effective.

I'm gonna start by saying that Return of the Jedi is and has always been my favorite Star Wars movie and I was waiting forward for seeing this fanedit. I never disliked Ewoks but then again haven't really loved them either.

The battle on the moon of Endor has always been inferior to the space battle to me and this edition didn't change that. I like that many silly parts were cut but still I would wanted to see Ewoks destroy the walkers. The battle was way wore realistic but also felt a bit one sided and therefore maybe less exciting. The editing however was done very well during the battle.

There were some nice dialogue cuts here and there but I didn't really feel they made much difference in enjoyment. Now that I think of it, I'd rather wanted to see Han Solo and Lando / Leia talks. The Jedi Rocks cut was ok but I would rather have seen the original material there and not the bad CGI characters.

The biggest flaw in this edition was the video quality. The HD version (.mp4) just didn't look as sharp as Q2's fandit for example. It seems the video quality was suffered by re-encoding already encoded material. The audio quality also wasn't as good as I would have hoped. In addition the volume seems to go mystically lower at around 1h 11mins which was a bit annoying. Otherwise the audio editing was was done well, and I really liked the music addition to the Obi Wan scene. Got goosebumps there!

I'm sure this edition works for those who didn't quite like Return of the Jedi that much. For me, it didn't deliver that much. The problems with audio and video really lowered the enjoyment. I hate to say that I think I like the original more than this one. This was actually the first time for a long time that I absolutely didn't love the viewing experience of Return of the Jedi.

Props for bringing an alternative, good quality fanedit of Return of the Jedi. I'm sure many like this more than original. It just wasn't quite for me. Without the video and audio problems I probably would have liked it a bit more.