Star Wars: Episode I - Cloak Of Deception

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.

This isn't the first edit of The Phantom Menace I've seen, and it probably won't be the last. Unfortunately there's only so much you can do with the film, and it still will never match the greatness of the original trilogy. A lot of Episode I edits take out the same stuff, I don't think there are any that retain all of Jar Jar hijinks or Anakin's oops's. But, of course, there are little ways edits can be different. I don't know if HAL9000 had any original ideas, so to speak, for his edit, but I do know that he has made a concoction that is, nonetheless, unlike another.

The obvious question is whether that is the best concoction. I'm inclined to say no, but I'm not sure. It might be the best there is so far, though. One of HAL's goals was to make the edit feel like it could be a real movie. Much of the issues that plague other edits are the pacings of scenes: they go by so fast that they have no room to breath. The next best EpI edit is L8wrtr's. His edit moves at a breakneck speed, and it's a lot of fun, while still keeping a good sense of the essence of the movie. But it almost moves too fast. Other edits are even worse on this front. HAL mostly avoids this, save for the first fifth. I do like what he's done with the first act - in the original film it takes what seems like forever for the story to finally get moving, which happens when they get to Tatooine. HAL gets them there in under twenty minutes. It's a double edged sword, really. It's great that the film no longer has a slow start, but now it almost has too fast a start. Once the action starts, the audience doesn't get a chance to breath for a long while. But there wasn't much HAL could do about this, and, honestly, I prefer how he's done it to how other editors have.

The rest of the edit is solid. I noticed most of the cuts, but this was mainly because of my familiarity with both the film and the soundtrack. For a new viewer, I'm sure most, if not all, would be invisible. There were some things I wished HAL had left out, and some things I wished he kept in, but this is his edit after all. I quite enjoy the pod race as is in the original, but I can't fault him for trimming it, and I will admit it is wonderfully paced here. I'm not a fan of the inclusion of the Shadows of the Empire soundtrack, as I just don't think it sounds like anything else in the film, but again, his choice. I do appreciate the instances where deleted scenes were added back in, in the pod race and elsewhere. I like that HAL tried to keep this close to two hours. Edits that are an hour and a half or even shorter just don't feel like Star Wars to me.

Well, maybe I should wrap this up now, I've said quite a bit. Honestly, there's not much special here. I feel kind mean saying that, but I think it's okay, I explain. I do recommend this edit. It's not radically different from others. But it does fit with HAL's Episode II and III edits. I've viewed the work prints for both (as I did this one), and they might be my favorite edits of their respective movies. Episode II I know I particularly enjoyed (weird sentence, right?). Anyway, I hope to see the completed versions of those soon. Then I'll have a prequel trilogy that I can almost feel happy about.

The weakest of the Prequels, HAL9000 elevates this movie from frustrating to acceptable. Other Prequel fanedits cut more, but for my taste HAL9000 cuts better: these are the only edits I've found which reduce the run time without feeling truncated.
Editing is outstanding. Subtitles are a welcome addition.
Does this make the Prequels a great story? Nope. Does this make a *better* story? Yes! HAL9000's Prequel trilogy is the only one you need.

First of all I wanna say thank you to Hal9000 for making this edit. I watched version 4.1 of this edit. The visual/audio editing is seamless and perfect throughout the movie, I have nothing to criticize on that front for sure! Great job, you work really well :)

I have to say, after watching this edit, I think this movie really is unsalvageable. It's riddled with exposition, plot contrivances, and cheesy scenes no matter what you do with it. This is a brilliant effort though, and renders at least 50% of the movie somewhat decent.

I disagree wholeheartedly with any changes to the podrace. I think the way the podrace is presented in the original cut, bar the annoying "yippees!" being thrown around, is perfect as it is and shouldn't be changed. In this cut, the lack of build-up/anticipation at the beginning of the podrace kinda makes it start too soon (much is riding on this race), and end too soon as well. We are brought to the arena, boom the podrace starts, and then it's over too quickly as well since some of the victory shots have been cut too. Overall, I think the podrace should be brought back to its default state bar the "yippees!"

A lot is cut in favor of making this a better movie, but it creates a movie that's just too fast-paced as a result. We're being thrown around from place to place without any time to breath, at least most of the time. Generally, it works, but it's still too fast.

Qui-Gon's character really feels like he's dumb in this. Not sure if it was the same way in the original movie but he comes out as very selfish in this one, and kind of being the cause of some of their problems because of his stubbornness. Much of his "warm father-figure" dialogue to Anakin has been removed (some for very good reasons :P), but that leaves him a bit cold and short-sighted. Don't know if that was intended.

The deleted scenes were overall inserted well enough, although the one with Padme and the Speeder really stood out like a sore thumb to me. It feels pointless.

Anakin as a character feels MUCH better in this movie than the original, I really felt like his arc and motivations worked. His mother came out as pretty stupid though, since most of her scenes in the house have been cut. She kinda just "goes with it", and it doesn't really work in my opinion.

Anyway, I have to say that hal9000 did a good job, all things considered, his editing skills are top-notch, it's just the movie I think that doesn't really work on a very basic level!

Still, recommended because it's shorter than the original :)