Star Wars - Episode I: Return of the Sith: Revisited Edition

Pros:
- Less of the Gungans. Less of JarJar. Less of the bad CGi overall.
- No more cringy "Yippie" or "Oops" from Anakin. Less bad voice acting overall.
- No Midichlorians! This makes the Force way more like the Original Trilogy.
- More in tone with the OT in terms of humor and droid antics.

Cons:
- The added "deleted scenes" are SD/Low Quality. They do add greatly to the story though!
- The final battle vs Darth Maul is re-cut/changed. The battle itself was the best part of The Phantom Menace.

Conclusion:
THE BEST WAY to watch Episode 1 The Phantom Menace hands down! This edit cuts down nearly all the bad stuff from the original movie. It is and stays the Phantom Menace. You can't change that, but this edit comes as close to perfection for the movie from 1999. If this is your first time seeing TPM, or even if it's your 1000th time, i highly recommend this Edit. It's the best version of the movie. Most people tend to skip TPM on re-watching Star Wars. I say no more! Next time you watch Star Wars, do yourself a favor and watch this!

Recently I recommended the originalo Star Wars trilogy to a friend who had never seen them, and I sat down to watch the prequels again to see if they warranted a recommendation as well. I was surprised that they were even worse than I remembered them.

Years ago I saw an SD version of TPM by "The Phantom Editor". I thought that it was an intriguing concept, but the low res quality of it put me off and I never really dug any deeper. Last month I dug out that copy of "The Phantom Edit", but was again disappointed. I decided to look for an HD copy, and that's when I stumbled onto FanEdit.org.

Seciors was the first fan edit that I watched here, and he hooked me immediately. The relentless pace of his editing is incredible... this edit makes TPM not only watchable, but actually enjoyable. Almost every transition is flawlessly executed, and I agree with pretty much every trim he made. Jar Jar no longer annoys me in this cut, and I never once felt myself rolling my eyes.

Since watching Seciors Episode I, I think that I've watched three of the other highly rated edits as well. As much as I like them, I keep coming back to Seciors as my favourite. There are really too many good things to say about this cut to list out. What sets him apart in my opinion are his bold editing choices. He's the only one that I've seen that chose to remove Darth Sidious altogether, which really paid off in my opinion. I love not only his editing out the "Chosen One" subplot, but also his clever editing of that entire discussion with Shmi. His restructuring of the final battles come to a much more satisfying conclusion. This edit actually feels like a Star Wars movie.

I only have two suggestions that would make this edit flawless, and both deal with transitions in the last act. The audio transition after Queen Amidala says "everything depends on it" needs tweaking, but that's probably because you couldn't separate her dialogue from the musical queue. I'm not sure what can be done about this, but if you could somehow clean it up the transition would be flawless.

The other suggestion is the end of the "Master and Apprentice" segment. If you could just find a way to extend the beat on Qui-Gon's funeral pyre, the transition would feel more natural. As it was, the transition felt a little abrupt. Again, not sure how this could be achieved with the footage available.

I don't want to sound negative. Seciors edits of Episode I and II have restored my faith in the prequels. If I thought his Episode I edits were bold, wait until you get to Episode II. Who else would have thought to put the end of the movie at the beginning? I can't begin to tell you how brilliant and inspired decision that was.

What I really want to know is, are you working on an edit of Episode III? I hope so, because I'd love to see what you do with it, and I'd love a proper ending to my favourite series of fan edits! My only request is not to add the footage from "The Other Boleyn Girl" that some chose to use. The colour pallets of the two movies couldn't be more different, and although the idea is a good one, the execution is too jarring.

Please do Episode III!

I'm a newbie to to fanedit thing. In fact, a month ago I had never watched or even heard of it. But since then I have become addicted and look forward to watching movies I sadly could not previously enjoy, become a movie I will watch time and again.

This was the second fanedit I ever watched. When I first saw the Star Wars prequels I did not hate them to the degree many did, at least the basic dark, tragic storyline. But man did Lucas mess it up in execution. Much like Episode VI, he tried to be too cute. As we all know, Jar Jar made it intolerable so I love that edit. The Annakin kid was annoying at times, but you've managed to tone back his cockiness and dumb one liners. He is stud Jedi material after all, so he has to be confident.

I'm not much of a technical guy, but the video and sound was excellent as far as my humble system is concerned. The edits were not detectable, particularly since I did not remember the movie much. Maybe there was once or twice it was clear something was chopped, but really minimal.

In summary, you've done about all can be done with this movie. I disagree in terms of Star Wars does not do politics - an understanding of it lends more to the series, so I would prefer that material not be removed. The "8" for enjoyment represents the highest rating in this case, because I don't think any edit can completely overcome the shortcomings. Nice job!

The Phantom Menace is without a doubt the biggest disappointment in film history and probably always will be. It's unsurprising that it inspires so many to try to correct it's myriad of flaws by re-editing the dross in to some kind of coherent film.

So it's a delight to watch this reconstruction by seciors, a real treat from the magnificent opening crawl. You can't immediately help feeling a bit sad too at the thought of what could have been.

Rather than just shorten the film, seciors has made some brave but excellent, common-sense decisions about the plot that massively improve it. Dropping the 'Trade' from 'Trade Federation' is a stroke of genius, simplifying things by depicting them as a group of rebellious planets (which will no doubt fit in nicely with subsequent edits of the remaining two prequels).

Other narrative decisions shine through as well. Retaining the mystery of the Force by ejecting the bizarre 'Medichlorian' and 'Chosen One' sub-plots works brilliantly. There are other changes to characters story arcs, such as Palpatine's (Ian McDiarmid) which I won't talk about for fear of spoilers (see 'criticisms / spoilers' below) - but every decision is pretty much spot-on.

The film is finally brought in to some kind of focus and characters get the screen time they deserve according to their role in the story. The idiotic Jar Jar Binks is relegated to a minor character, whose presence while still not making any sense no longer gets in the way of the film's progression. Long and drawn out chats about treaties and trade disputes are dumped in the bin where they belong.

All of this means that the story Lucas must have had originally, about a central wise Jedi trying to stop the Republic from falling apart, starts to tantalizingly come through. There is now a central character - Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) is now without doubt the films main protagonist, something comically missing from the original. Whether he's a memorable protagonist or even an effective one is still debatable, although that's something even a Fan Edit as good as this will struggle to remedy.

In summary, Return of the Sith is the first time I've watched The Phantom Menace and actually enjoyed it. Sure, some of the enjoyment no doubt came from the wide-eyed appreciation of it all actually making some sort of sense and not ever getting boring (and incredible feat), but there's no doubt as well that seciors has somehow managed to put together a coherent film that can actually be watched in it's own right, and for that I'm very grateful.

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM / SPOILERS

* The title 'Return of the Sith' is an excellent one and is completely believable in the Star Wars canon. How excited would we all have been if that was the original title? There's one problem - the Sith played a small role (in the case of Darth Maul an unforgivably small one) in the original. With 'Darth Sideous' removed completely this title only actually refers to one character (however excellent) that suddenly appears fleetingly midway in the film and then at the end.

There's two possible solutions - include the conversation between Sideous and Darth Maul at the beginning ("at last we will have revenge") and maybe some of Sideous talking to the Federation through the film (even if it's just the part where Sideous says he's sending Maul - "Now there are two of them!" is actually one of the better lines in the film).

Otherwise we never actually know who Darth Maul is (even his name), why he's tracking the Jedi and why he confronts them in a fight to the death. In Star Wars films, characters have light sabre fights for massively important reasons in the plot. He's clearly on a mission that presents a lot of danger to his life and at the end he obviously hates the Jedi and they're his priority (he doesn't try and kill the Queen on sight for example). Why?

Otherwise, call the movie what it is, especially now in this re-edit; 'The Battle for Naboo' or something. We all wish the film was about the return of the Sith, but it isn't unfortunately. The title and excellent cover-art refer to a film that we wish we'd had, not the one we were presented with no matter how it's re-edited.

* The pod race is much more enjoyable now. Anakin's crossing the line in victory all feels a bit rushed though; it's a very important emotional part of the film whether we like it or not, and maybe the pacing could be looked at to emphasize that moment more.

* The re-cutting of the ending, going between the Naboo fighters attacking the Control Ship and the light-sabre fight on the planet, feels a bit jagged at times. Obi Wan now has to wait too long for the force field to go at one stage and the ships jumping from leaving the hangar to approaching the control ship is jarring. Finally, I can understand drastically cutting down the Naboo battle scenes to eliminate the hideous slapstick elements, but this again feels a little rushed.

* The running time of the film at 1hr 25min makes everything go by very, very quickly. In the case of this film, that's probably no bad thing. But maybe there's times to pause for breath, or elongate certain scenes as I've suggested above, to produce a running time maybe ten minutes longer that will feel even more natural and better paced.

I must emphasize though - this edit is fantastic.

My ratings pretty much some up my review. The edits great and it is the Star Wars Saga intro that we deserved :) Great Job!