Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Episode III: Children of the Force

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I have been immensely enjoying Smudger9's Clone Wars series so far, and agree this one is by the far the best yet. Whereas the first one suffered from action-overload and the second from an episodic narrative, this one felt cohesive, in large part thanks to Smudger9's awareness that Cad Bane needed introducing during the first act, and his weaving together of two separate instances where the Jedi had reason to admonish Ahsoka to smooth the transition between conflicts. The Ryloth arc served to give Ahsoka some much needed character development, (as other reviewers have demanded), and the Bane arc, being one of the tv series strongest, will always stand tall on its own.
Technically this entry is as smooth as we've come to expect, even alternate dialogue dubbing went unnoticed this time around.
The attempt to tie the Hostage Crisis and Holocron Heist episodes together created an exciting and highly entertaining section of the film, but as Bane began his solo mission to retrieve the holocron I did find myself wondering what the whole hostage crisis had been for. Was it merely an attempt to distract everyone from his true intent? I asked Smudger9, and the answer is yes. Considering the strengths of that episode I don't fault him for including it, but it seems a poor decision on Bane's part. His agent was already equipped to enter the Jedi Temple undetected and the "distraction" did nothing to help but alert many people to the present danger. What's more the many bounty hunters Bane called on to help him achieve the hostage situation seems all the more unnecessary in this version of events. As a strategy to force the Chancellor to meet his demands and release Ziro it was genius, but as that motive was wisely cut from this film, it was left making little sense.
That said, all in all Smudger9 has delivered his best episode yet, and addressed numerous points his audience has raised in his last entries by delivering a story that largely followed the same characters (thus eliminating episodic syndrome), tying arcs together, and including a stronger focus on character development and non-action scenes, to give those there are more weight and the audience less fatigue.
Kudos!

This was excellent. Though, the first half with Ryloth seemed to drag a little and seemed to have no real bearing on the story later. I realize though that you're working with what you have, and what you've done with it is superb. There were some hard music cuts during a couple of transitions that I noticed but wasn't too distracting. Every time a droid said "Um..." before a sentence made me cringe a little, but at least you kept it to a minimum. Video quality was crisp in HD and the editing overall was smooth throughout. Highly recommended, as has been with all your edits so far. Great work!

This is easily the best of the Clone Wars tv -> movie edits Smudger9 has produced. The story flows perfectly from start to finish and always feels like a movie experience as opposed to an episodic one. I've been intrigued with this series since Smudger9's first Clone Wars movie which was very well made if not slightly flawed. The second offering never quite felt like a movie in my opinion and reduced my interest in the series as a whole. But this third offering has thoroughly perfected Smudger9's Clone Wars movie formula.

The editing was nearly flawless and the overall story was fantastic. Great Job!

Hands down the best of Smudger's three Clone Wars edits (so far). The story flows incredibly well and despite being two story arcs it successfully makes it all feel part of one bigger narrative (introducing Cad Bane midway through the Ryloth arc certainly helped this). The overarching theme of children helped. By choosing Ryloth you get Ahsoka continuing to grow as well as the clones and their young Twi'lek ally which helps to connect to the final story of the Force sensitive children - very well thought out! While the final part - the hunt for the eponymous Children of the Force - in the final section of the movie felt a little rushed this is hardly the fault of the editor and it does him justice that he was able to weave in so many other ideas that matched the title he had given this edit anyway.

From a technical standpoint there were no moments where reconstructed dialogue to transition between stories stood out - something I know is a challenge in putting a variety of normally loosely connected episodes together. Honestly, from an audio and visual perspective the movie flowed so wonderfully. I have so much credit for Smudger for being able to pull this off. It genuinely felt like I was watching one single story.

Highly recommended and I can't wait until Episode IV comes along!