Star Wars: Episode I - Cloak Of Deception

This is a stellar edit. Not enough to save the movie, but it's the best it can be without radically changing huge swaths of material.
The phantom menace is my least favorite star wars movie, and there's one big reason: it bores me to tears. Whatever about the unrealistic love plot of episode 2 or Anakin's unnatural character arc in episode 3, you could at least follow their stories and the characters had identifiable traits and relationships with each other. The characters here are 1-dimensional, some even round down to having 0 dimensions. The story is filled to the brim with unnecessary political drama that is too complex and dull to follow, yet too loosely tied with the jedi's actions to make it easy to follow either plotline. The jedi's part of the plot is devoid of energy and filled with unnecessary sidequests (Otah Gunga and Podracing), so it's hard to care about the "good" part of the movie either. No matter how you edit it, you can't make these characters endearing and you can't make the story engaging, all you can do is get it over with faster.

And that's exactly what Hal9000 has done, with benefits. Along with masterfully refining the structure and pacing, he has carefully extracted all character and story beats that one could find irritating. While there exists edits which make more dramatic overhauls to the movie, this is more like the definitive version of the movie that could still be identified as the same movie. It fits in with all the extended star wars content perfectly, and keeps the spirit of the original movie. Like I said, this doesn't make it into a movie that I'd revisit often, but it's pretty much an objective improvement over the original edit, and probably the best edit that doesn't mess with the original canon.

The star of the show here is the pacing. Perhaps contrary to what I said above, this doesn't cut every single unnecessary frame of the movie. Rather, it makes smart removals, carefully choosing what to trim, cut and retain. It doesn't seek to blaze through the movie as fast as possible, or else it would still be an unsatisfying experience. Instead, this edit keeps a brisk but steady pace, similar to the original trilogy. Otah Gunga is entirely cut (seamlessly, I might add), and political dialogue is cut up to the utmost essentials. As a result, the story is 1000x times more easy to follow, and nothing outstays it's welcome nor end too soon. Nowhere are the cuts noticeable. Instead of being the quickest way to experience the movie, it's the most satisfying way to experience the movie.

Cuts made to story and character moments are similarly well executed. The above mentioned cut of Otah Gunga means that the first act of the movie exclusively consists of the rescue of queen amidala and the running of the blockade. You know... events that actually set up the plot, and are at least mildly exciting? Unlike the huge distraction that waterworld was? Needless to say it's a great change. The update to Anakin's contribution to the ending makes it a massively more satisfying conclusion than what we got in theatrical. Child Anakin and Jar-Jar's cringworthy acting has been trimmed, but just like the overall pacing, it isn't completely gutted to the point of damaging the plot. That means that some cheese remains, and many viewers will dismay, but it really does help scenes flow in a natural way.

On the topic of the technical aspects, the only time I noticed a drop in quality was during the scene where Qui-Gon's gang encounters Darth Maul's droid and runs back to the ship and takes off after a brief duel. Many reviews mention certain deleted scenes looking quite bad in comparison. I personally did not notice, though the version I watched was newer and had a previously included deleted scene removed, so there could have been further updates to iron out those flaws. Besides, the scene i mentioned above was included in the theatrical cut (at least I'm pretty sure it is). Either way, I can't give the visuals a perfect score because of this, but it isn't anything to worry about.

To summarize, I can't give this a full enjoyment score because it remains that; a flawed, boring movie with flat characters and story. Don't go in thinking that this will fix the movie. But do go in thinking that this is a vast, vast improvement. Hal9000 has made a straight-up replacement to the original film. But if you seek a more radical approach with massive changes in service of making the movie actually enjoyable, you will have to search elsewhere (I suggest "The Phantom Menace: The Ancient Lore" as a starting point).

First of all I'd like to say that TPM was always my least favorite Star Wars movie, so it was the one I was looking for a fanedit the most. Lukcily it's probably the most fanedited movie of all time so that wasn't too hard. What WAS hard, however, was finding the right cut. And Hal's "Cloak Of Deception" fills those shoes nicely.

Most prequel fanedits end up taking away too much for my taste, which hurts them both narratively and technically. Hal's V5 doesn't suffer with said problems: nothing is taken out of the movie without a purpose, and 99% of the cuts were incredibly seamless, not giving away that you're watching a fanedit. Therefore, technically it's an almost perfect fanedit.

Most of what was cut here is what originally was the first act of TPM. That way, the trip to Naboo serves only to kickstart the journey of our heroes in a somewhat similar way to the first sequence in the original Star Wars, or the first sequence in a James Bond movie. It also gets us to Anakin much faster, but the edit doesn't go out of its way to make him the protagonist. The film's still much tighter and more focused though, so there's definitely a lot of improvement to his character and to how he relates to others. Qui-Gon's still the main protagonist I'd say, but the movie's not as convoluted and complicated like it was originally, which in other words mean the plot was vastly improved.

However, two moments that still take me out of the movie come to mind, but they're extremely minor: the exclusion of Gunga City, and the added deleted scene "Dawn Before the Race". The deleted scene's issue is quality, as it's clearly SD quality alongside a very high quality 1080p video for the rest of the edit, but it's not that big of a deal. It's probably not as much of an issue with the more compressed versions too. I would, however, prefer something like L8wrtr's version of the scene that this deleted scene is substituting. But it's fine. The exclusion of Gunga City doesn't hurt the narrative in any way, mind you, the only very minor complaint I have of it is that it's the only time where something was cut and I was able to notice. Maybe it's becasue I knew what was going to happen beforehand, but there's still room from improvement there.

Overall though, Cloak Of Deception clocks in at 1h49min, which is appropriate to me. Many fanedits end at something below 1h40, and I feel like pace in those cuts is just too fast. Hal's never gets boring at any moment, cuts out everything cheesy and stupid, while still maintaining the TPM spirit, but only the good stuff. I'd change almost nothing from this, and it's definitely replaced the original when I rewatch the PT. Strongly recommend.

I really enjoyed watching this edit, didn't hate the episode I original as all others because it was the first movie I saw and I entered the star wars universe through this movie.
But this edit removes some of the childish and annoying things and makes the movie flow more gentle across without removing the story.
This is my favorite way of watching episode I as of now.

This is a masterful edit and in my humble opinion the definitive TPM edit. I used to believe seciors Revisited edit was the best, but after showing it to my wife, who hadn't seen the movie in years, she remarked that it seemed too rushed, like a mere summary of events rather than the actual movie. I think seciors TPM suffers from feeling too much like an edit, and in the end, 85 minutes is just too short for a Star Wars movie, which are usually closer to the two hour mark. Either you embrace the PT or you don't, and so I think a philosophy more like HAL9000's is in order. The point isn't to race through the movie in order to get it over with, but to make it as enjoyable of an experience as possible. In this regard I think HAL9000 succeeds. I think the most important task for a faneditor working on TPM is to cut out the excessively annoying and childish elements while also removing much of the tedious political dialogue. Not only do these not fit well together in the same movie, but neither are interesting to your average movie goer. Other than that, tighten up the pacing a little bit without leaving too much on the cutting-room floor, and you've actually got a decent movie (yes, I like this movie now and think it deserves its rightful place in the Star Wars canon). I like that we get a fair amount of Jar Jar, but that he has been toned down a great deal. If this had been the Jar Jar we got in the theater, I don't think anybody would have complained.

My only gripe is the removal of Jabba the Hut from the pod race. I support the removal of most of the cameos, but Jabba's appearance here actually makes enough sense to merit it. After all, the pod races seem to be a pretty big deal on Tattooine.

This is one of my first Fan Edits, but I must say I was blown away by how much the cuts made to this movie changed it from one of my least favorites, to actually being fun to watch. I really enjoyed the less childish Anakin (still the cringe worthy "are you an angel" bit, but you can only do so much I guess), and Jar Jar was much more tolerable, although still a little too derpy for my tastes. I saw nothing in the sound or visual departments that seemed out of place, and every edit seemed to fit well.

I still want to watch l8wrtr's and Q2's prequel trilogies before I decide which is my favorite overall, but I can definitely say that this is a solid replacement for the original film, and a joy to watch. Thank you for taking your time to do this!