Star Wars: Abridged I - The Republic

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Faneditor Name:
Franchise:
Fanedit Type:
Original Release Date:
1999
Original Running Time:
418
Fanedit Release Date:
Fanedit Running Time:
148
Available in HD?
Brief Synopsis:
Star Wars: Abridged is meant to tell the Skywalker saga as succinctly as possible, taking all nine films and cutting them down to three. While many narrative threads remain the same, some have been vastly altered.
Intention:
The Skywalker saga is now told over nine films and I wanted to trim that down as much as possible to create a narrative that can be watched in a single day. Narrative choices have been made to remove what I believe didn't work or created new narratives that I think work better. Most of the side quests and subplots that don't really add to the main plot have also been removed.
Release Information:
Digital
Editing Details:
The Abridged series vastly deviates from the canonical source the further you go into it but kicks off relatively the same. A lot of prequel 3-in-1s have solved many of the narrative problems and I'm standing on the shoulders of giants for Star Wars: Abridged I - The Republic.

Some of the changes include eliminating almost all of The Phantom Menace except for the scene where Anakin leaves home. Qui Gon has now been recast as a Jedi recruiter in a prologue who finds Anakin on Tatooine.

I've completely removed all mention of clones and have also removed the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the force. Anakin and Padme meet for the first time in her apartment on Coruscant and with a bit of compositing, it's heavily implied they consummate their relationship.

Grevious has been completely removed and much of this edit relies on a trimmed down version of Revenge of the Sith.

User reviews

9 reviews
 
89%
7-9 stars
 
0%
 
11%
3-5 stars
 
0%
1-3 stars
 
0%
Overall rating
 
9.1
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.5(9)
Visual Editing
 
9.0(9)
Audio Editing
 
8.5(9)
Narrative
 
9.7(9)
Enjoyment
 
9.2(9)
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(Updated: January 09, 2023)
Overall rating
 
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
I was very pleasantly surprised how well this truncated version of the PT played out, even with turning Geonosis into Kamino and skipping the third act of AotC entirely. Focusing on Anakin and his romance with Padme, teacher-student relationship with Obi-Wan and Palpatine, and his descent into the Dark Side was a wise narrative choice.

On the technical side, there was a few rough visual edits and the added deleted scene with Padme's family had noticeably different picture quality, but overall it was pretty seamless. The audio editing was great, there were very few instances where you could tell dialogue was removed.

Easily the best of the subjectzero Star Wars Abridged series, this edit is a fantastic and succinct re-telling of the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader. A solid 9/10.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
B
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(Updated: July 26, 2022)
Overall rating
 
9.1
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
A couple edits toward the beginning are a little jarring but I don't think it could be helped much given the narrative changes. I noticed edits much less as time went on and I do appreciate how well it worked considering how much I agree with those changes. One thing I will note that I miss despite agreeing with the changes is some of the old Padme. Unfortunately, while I welcome the changes to Anakan's personality I feel like other changes came at a sacrifice of Padme's character. She takes much less of a pro-active role.

I felt watching this much more appreciative of Anakin's more reserved character and his fall felt more tragic for me with the narrative more focused. I appreciated that while a lot of cringey cheese was toned down we still get some good fun lines from good ol Obi Wan. 3PO and R2D2 are through-out in short sequence that seem like they are hanging around the film for transitional scenes.

As I watched this edit, I found myself contemplating the role of the jedi, zen, desire, loss, fascism, authoritarianism - The politics were actually enjoyable. Thank you so much for this edit. I didn't know the prequels could be so enjoyable again. It's like a new life breathed into them :)

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
P
1 reviews
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Overall rating
 
9.9
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
Well I'm not a "Star Wars fan" , I'm even a hater ( its tooo slow in every way in all movies) . But you did a great job with the first 3 episodes!
No jar-jar , no bad cgi-s , fast plot and action is the name of the game! The only thing that needs an "upgrade" is the scenes at Naboo with Anakin and Padme walking and eating, they are low quality .

Thank you for the edit !

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
Overall rating
 
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
7.0
Audio Editing
 
7.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
All things considered, this is a good edit, narratively speaking at least
The editing itself however could use some work, though its only very few and very far between
Namely, I'd like to point out how the Edit forgot on slight mention of General Grievous, since this edit aimed to remove him

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
A
Top 1000 Reviewer 4 reviews
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Overall rating
 
9.7
Audio/Video Quality
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
This is one of the better 3 in one edits of the prequels I’ve seen. It does a good job of knowing which scenes to leave in and which to cut out from both of the movies. The transition between Clones and Revenge is perfect and I was surprised at how well editing Attack of the Clones into 40 minutes worked. I really liked how you edited out the climax of Clones it worked really well. One more thing I loved about this edit is the text that appears on-screen letting us know which planet we’re on. It’s implemented really well and helps with establishing where we are.

While the new narrative works pretty well, but I do have some critiques for it. First off I like the idea of the opening scene being Anakin leaving his mom but the execution wasn’t quite there. Also, I love using the deleted scenes of Padme and her family, but the quality of the image is noticeably less good. This isn’t really a problem in the close-up shots and mid-shots, where the quality is not significantly lower, but it’s a huge problem in the wide shots where the quality looks way too blurry. The narrative improvement is worth the lower quality though but it has to be mentioned. There is also a really obvious edit in the Naboo scenes where the music cuts out way too soon after we see Anakin and Padme start their relationship, and again the cut right before they leave Naboo is too abrupt. However, that those are really my only issues with the edit is remarkable considering the amount of material that needs to be cut.

The Revenge of The Sith portion of the edit is edited near perfectly. There were a few minor issues with some scene transitions, specifically with the cuts between the Anakin and Obi Wan duel and the Yoda vs Palpatine duel, but that’s pretty much all. There was another narrative change in Attack of the Clones that I thought worked perfectly centered around Kamino, which makes me excited to check out the other two edits.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
D
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