Star Wars: Episode I - Cloak Of Deception

Overall, this is a good fan edit, in my opinion. First off, I don’t know why, but the graphical quality looks so much better in this so I’m giving visual editing a 10/10. It makes things look so much better. Secondly, I must say I am glad that the annoying Jar Jar parts are out of here, just like most reviewers say. Before I get into the negatives, which there are not a lot, I do wanna say that this fan edit in general makes the movie SO MUCH BETTER.

The negatives are few but the thing I don’t like the most is the less time in the movie. I do like not having the underwater scene but nonetheless, too many scenes, especially in the first third of the movie before Tatooine feel super quick and fast paced. The pacing feels off at the beginning which really lowered my enjoyment and had to hurt the narrative a little.

Other than the weird pacing, the fan film was great and definitely an improvement on the Phantom Menace. I plan on watching HAL9000’s Episodes II and III and making reviews. So far, so good.

Holy shit. This is surprisingly good. (Not amazing, but really good. It's now a decent and watchable movie.) I've always hated all those silly childish jokes. There were just too many of them. You accomplished to make Jar Jar and young Anakin much more likeable and deeper characters. Especially Jar Jar now seems like a funny person and not a clumsy idiot. Thumbs up for the podrace and the final battle. It was very enjoying to watch.

I have never been a big fan of the Phantom Menace. I always found it boring and obnoxious. Hal9000 manages to make it a decent movie for me. With Jar Jar toned down, the character of Anakin improved and political confusion removed, this now makes for a fun and fast paced flick. I really appreciate Hal's approach here. Most people would just cut out literally everything that displeases them but every edit/cut that Hal made was to make for a better film. An example of this is with Jar Jar. Most faneditors wish to remove basically everything that comes out of his mouth. This results in an issue, which is that Jar Jar becomes some random character who for some reason is following everyone around. Hal masterfully refines his character to be an actually likable character who ends up wanting to truly help the cause. All in all, this is a wonderful piece of work which never feels like a fan edit and improves immensely upon it's source material.

Editing was excellent. never really noticed the editing. Loved the trimmed down, streamlined version. much more exciting, much more tolerable and coherent- it was much easier to understand the political plotlines going on than in the original. I appreciated that so much of the awful dialogue was scrapped, particularly by you know who, but also appreciated the abbreviated pod race and other scenes. I did missed the big fish, but get that it took away from the plot. Ultimately, I think this was about as good as could be hoped for. so much potential in a movie that underutilized its actors in favor of special effects. not ready to write this in as my definitive edition, as i'd like to see a couple of the other edits, but so far- it's #1.

Additional Edits on my Wish List:
* changing Jar Jar binks voice to some tough sounding alien voice w/ subtitles. also love that I heard that some edits made him into a bad-ass.
* do the same thing- insert an alien sounding language- for the "Asian" Trade Federation leaders.
* edit out Anakin asking padme, "are you an angel?"
* edit out old woman saying "storm is coming"
* edit out Anakin declaring, "mom, i'm home!"
* edit out R2D2's "award ceremony"
* edited out Soboba sabotaging Anakin's pod racer. it feels contrived- why would he feel threatened by him and furthermore, I think it would have been just as or more tense if it was understood that Anakin whipped it up to have ready for the race, and did not have time to fully complete it, thus- weakened parts (much like the bicycle malfunction in "Breaking Away"- if anyone's seen that movie)

HAL9000 gives us a bit of a "best of" hybrid fanedit, in that he utilizes what he felt were the best changes made by previous faneditors (including his own set of edits years ago). Most Episode 1 edits are around 90 minutes, and some may say that's "too short for a Star Wars movie". If you're in that camp, this one should be right up your alley, as it's a nice and trim 1 hour 45 minutes. Everybody has their own fixed ideas about what should be left on the cutting room floor in terms of the prequels, but HAL has managed to bring a nice balance here. Not my absolute favorite Phantom Menace fanedit, but by no means a bad edit. Bonus points for audio commentary.