Review Detail
9.2 60 10
(Updated: August 25, 2012)
Enjoyment
7.0
Ahh let’s see where to begin, jeez this is a tough one…..The Phantom er, um i mean Shadow of the Sith, the illegitimate child of the whole Star Wars universe. The movie that quite frankly should have never existed in the first place. For all my ill feelings towards this movie, for whatever reason people keep putting it back in the spotlight, trying to salvage something that will resemble a good sci-fi Star Wars episode. I myself have edited this film many years ago but with so many versions on this site and certain things in my head that I know aren’t quite feasible, I will have to relegate myself to just sit back and watch what others have done. With that in mind, we now have a new fan-edit of this movie from L8twrtr. Can he finally bring balance back to the force or will this movie still come up a big steaming pile of bontha pooda?!
The honest to goodness truth…….NO! The reason being, quite frankly, the original movie just isn’t that good. Period. Watchable, very much so. However, for the origin movie that sets up the beginning tale of the most iconic figure in cinematic history……it flops right on it’s face before it can even get out the starting gate.
The fan-edit itself, I along with probably many other people waited patiently for this movie to download. After reading what seemed to be a great set of cuts/changes, along with the 96 minute runtime, I anxiously awaited to watch it. The Fan logo resembling the THX logo starts things off, very nice i must say. Brownie points there. Then the really nice custom L8WRTR logo comes on, along with what resembles his version of the Lucasfilm logo. Double brownie points. Then, ohh no what happened! We come to the first technical glitch of the movie…..the tile credits. It starts off way to fast and then tries to catch up. Not good. Then the newly revised title crawl starts off with one sentence to grab the audience, when every single other Star Wars film the title crawl is written in paragraph form (2 or more sentences makes up a paragraph). Not good. For everyone that hated the title given by Lucas, as evident with this fan-edit, the title credits ends with a very cheesy homage to the original title:
“Little do they know that a Phantom Menace has been plotting revenge…”
What? I am not making this up. Still shaking my head. I will give L8twrtr some credit though because at least he put the Jedi’s names in the title credits. That always bugged me more than anything. I mean if you watch the original movie, terrifying I know, but Qui-Gon Jinn isn’t mentioned by name until Anakin introduces everyone to his mom. That is like 30 minutes into the film. Jeez Lucas, don’t you think you should let the audience know what the name is of one of the main characters in the film at the very start?! Then the movie finally starts and pretty much in the end you see a mix/match of scenes from previous edits, until you reach the conclusion. I felt there was still a lot of pointless scenes still left in the film that really needed to be taken out. I think that would have really tightened up this edit……**cough** “It’s working, IT’S WORKING!” **cough** Captain Obvious has been cut to a minimum, along with everyone’s favorite Gungan. Good job there. The Pod race is cut together pretty well, but since you eliminated the announcer it becomes a little dull and uneventful. Should have left a few lines here and there. Who said Hanna Barbara isn’t cool?! The re-arranging of the four character plot threads was handled really well. I liked the swift resolve of the Obi-wan/Darth Maul fight. Flows much better now. The ending I found fascinating, not the couple of scenes preceding it (terrible), but because of L8wrtr’s commentary I have to agree that this should have been the last scene of the movie in the first place. You for some reason didn’t fix the match-cut involving Anakin and the audio comes in a little abruptly, but overall I think you ended it very nice.
Before my brain turns into a pile of incoherent goo, let’s break down some technical elements shall we:
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TECHNICAL ASPECTS
————————————-
VIDEO: When I heard that you used a color corrected version of this movie by Adywann, I was truely excited. Then I watched and then watched again and for good measure looked at it more carefully, but in the end came up disappointed. If my eyes are bad, then I will totally apologize, but I really didn’t see that much of a difference. Also, the deleted scene with the probe droid is pretty bad. Something just looks really off. I did notice that Adywann really plummed out the reds a lot, which was a little distracting (just to name a couple):
1. When the ship docks in the command center
2. Nute Gunray’s cloak
3. Nute Gunray and Rune Haako’s eyes have a strange tint.
Overall, it was pretty average video but a little too much digital compression for my taste. Maybe needs to be encoded with a higher bit rate? I did notice quite a few hard transitional cuts that were a bit weird which made the pacing in the beginning get a little off kilter because of the removal/rearranging of some scenes (just to name a few):
1. No talk on the planet of Naboo. The transition looks very strange. Monitor goes out and then bam straight to the invasion on the planet.
2. The removal of the underwater sequence. Very pointless and useless sequence of events. However, you go from getting the Bongo, Bongo leaving Gunga City, to Nute talking to Sidious, and then bam invade the palace. No real flow. It doesn’t look right because along with the video, it makes the audio sound strange.
3. After fixing the pod, hard wipe to Darth Maul arriving.
4. After Anakin wins race. Wipes to Padme and Shimi, then bam to Qui-Gonn meeting up with Obi-Wan. Not good because of the removal of Qui-Gonn talking to Watto.
5. After Anakin says bye to Shimi, bam right to deleted probe droid sequence. Not good.
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars
AUDIO: This was a very mixed bag for me to be honest. There was quite a few hard audio cuts/fades that really wasn’t that seamless. The very best example that I can give is when Anakin introduces Padme to C-3PO. At first I had to do a double take to make sure I heard what I heard, but make no mistake about it you can clearly hear the line you excised “Do you really like him?” I think if you go back and do a revision, you can hammer out all the little kinks.
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars
EXTRAS: I liked the deleted scene section because it showed in nice little sections what you took out with really good explanations, Also, the commentary track was well thought out and very informative. Good job.
Overall: 5 out of 5 stars
PRESENTATION: This aspect I wasn’t to pleased with, to be honest. The menus are pretty plain and they share the same aspect ratio as the movie, which for a menu isn’t good and there is no audio or anything. I wish a little more care was taken in that regard. Very underwhelming to say the least. Sorry.
Overall: 2 out of 5 stars
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FIANAL SCORE: 3 out of 5 stars
————————————————–
In the end I can sympathize with L8wrtr, in that he wanted to create a fan-edit that for himself and possibly many others can watch without having to find the fast forward button!
I meant to say FINAL SCORE: 3 out of 5 stars. Sorry for the typo. 4′o clock in the morning. Need to get to bed. Later.
EDIT by TMBTM:
Since we now rate fanedit from 1 to 10, and giving the various ratings you gave on various aspects in your review,
this edit would be rated 6,5/10 (6 or 7 if you prefer).
The honest to goodness truth…….NO! The reason being, quite frankly, the original movie just isn’t that good. Period. Watchable, very much so. However, for the origin movie that sets up the beginning tale of the most iconic figure in cinematic history……it flops right on it’s face before it can even get out the starting gate.
The fan-edit itself, I along with probably many other people waited patiently for this movie to download. After reading what seemed to be a great set of cuts/changes, along with the 96 minute runtime, I anxiously awaited to watch it. The Fan logo resembling the THX logo starts things off, very nice i must say. Brownie points there. Then the really nice custom L8WRTR logo comes on, along with what resembles his version of the Lucasfilm logo. Double brownie points. Then, ohh no what happened! We come to the first technical glitch of the movie…..the tile credits. It starts off way to fast and then tries to catch up. Not good. Then the newly revised title crawl starts off with one sentence to grab the audience, when every single other Star Wars film the title crawl is written in paragraph form (2 or more sentences makes up a paragraph). Not good. For everyone that hated the title given by Lucas, as evident with this fan-edit, the title credits ends with a very cheesy homage to the original title:
“Little do they know that a Phantom Menace has been plotting revenge…”
What? I am not making this up. Still shaking my head. I will give L8twrtr some credit though because at least he put the Jedi’s names in the title credits. That always bugged me more than anything. I mean if you watch the original movie, terrifying I know, but Qui-Gon Jinn isn’t mentioned by name until Anakin introduces everyone to his mom. That is like 30 minutes into the film. Jeez Lucas, don’t you think you should let the audience know what the name is of one of the main characters in the film at the very start?! Then the movie finally starts and pretty much in the end you see a mix/match of scenes from previous edits, until you reach the conclusion. I felt there was still a lot of pointless scenes still left in the film that really needed to be taken out. I think that would have really tightened up this edit……**cough** “It’s working, IT’S WORKING!” **cough** Captain Obvious has been cut to a minimum, along with everyone’s favorite Gungan. Good job there. The Pod race is cut together pretty well, but since you eliminated the announcer it becomes a little dull and uneventful. Should have left a few lines here and there. Who said Hanna Barbara isn’t cool?! The re-arranging of the four character plot threads was handled really well. I liked the swift resolve of the Obi-wan/Darth Maul fight. Flows much better now. The ending I found fascinating, not the couple of scenes preceding it (terrible), but because of L8wrtr’s commentary I have to agree that this should have been the last scene of the movie in the first place. You for some reason didn’t fix the match-cut involving Anakin and the audio comes in a little abruptly, but overall I think you ended it very nice.
Before my brain turns into a pile of incoherent goo, let’s break down some technical elements shall we:
————————————-
TECHNICAL ASPECTS
————————————-
VIDEO: When I heard that you used a color corrected version of this movie by Adywann, I was truely excited. Then I watched and then watched again and for good measure looked at it more carefully, but in the end came up disappointed. If my eyes are bad, then I will totally apologize, but I really didn’t see that much of a difference. Also, the deleted scene with the probe droid is pretty bad. Something just looks really off. I did notice that Adywann really plummed out the reds a lot, which was a little distracting (just to name a couple):
1. When the ship docks in the command center
2. Nute Gunray’s cloak
3. Nute Gunray and Rune Haako’s eyes have a strange tint.
Overall, it was pretty average video but a little too much digital compression for my taste. Maybe needs to be encoded with a higher bit rate? I did notice quite a few hard transitional cuts that were a bit weird which made the pacing in the beginning get a little off kilter because of the removal/rearranging of some scenes (just to name a few):
1. No talk on the planet of Naboo. The transition looks very strange. Monitor goes out and then bam straight to the invasion on the planet.
2. The removal of the underwater sequence. Very pointless and useless sequence of events. However, you go from getting the Bongo, Bongo leaving Gunga City, to Nute talking to Sidious, and then bam invade the palace. No real flow. It doesn’t look right because along with the video, it makes the audio sound strange.
3. After fixing the pod, hard wipe to Darth Maul arriving.
4. After Anakin wins race. Wipes to Padme and Shimi, then bam to Qui-Gonn meeting up with Obi-Wan. Not good because of the removal of Qui-Gonn talking to Watto.
5. After Anakin says bye to Shimi, bam right to deleted probe droid sequence. Not good.
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars
AUDIO: This was a very mixed bag for me to be honest. There was quite a few hard audio cuts/fades that really wasn’t that seamless. The very best example that I can give is when Anakin introduces Padme to C-3PO. At first I had to do a double take to make sure I heard what I heard, but make no mistake about it you can clearly hear the line you excised “Do you really like him?” I think if you go back and do a revision, you can hammer out all the little kinks.
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars
EXTRAS: I liked the deleted scene section because it showed in nice little sections what you took out with really good explanations, Also, the commentary track was well thought out and very informative. Good job.
Overall: 5 out of 5 stars
PRESENTATION: This aspect I wasn’t to pleased with, to be honest. The menus are pretty plain and they share the same aspect ratio as the movie, which for a menu isn’t good and there is no audio or anything. I wish a little more care was taken in that regard. Very underwhelming to say the least. Sorry.
Overall: 2 out of 5 stars
————————————————–
FIANAL SCORE: 3 out of 5 stars
————————————————–
In the end I can sympathize with L8wrtr, in that he wanted to create a fan-edit that for himself and possibly many others can watch without having to find the fast forward button!
I meant to say FINAL SCORE: 3 out of 5 stars. Sorry for the typo. 4′o clock in the morning. Need to get to bed. Later.
EDIT by TMBTM:
Since we now rate fanedit from 1 to 10, and giving the various ratings you gave on various aspects in your review,
this edit would be rated 6,5/10 (6 or 7 if you prefer).
S