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

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!

This is one of my favorite fanedits of Episode I, and the main reason is the pacing. This thing just barrels along, with smart choices to the action to make it more lively and exciting. Of all the edits of Ep. I I've seen, this one feels the most like a "Star Wars" movie.

My favorite little edit is the way the Anakin/Greedo deleted scene is cleverly and seamlessly incorporated. A fantastic use of that sequence.

My only complaint would be that the speed sometimes feels a little too break neck. Tatooine especially suffers from this, as I feel like a little more time taken here would help us get to know the characters. But if the material wasn't there, I'd rather it went by quickly like this anyway.

There were a couple of slightly odd Audio cuts and transitions. Nothing was particularly wrong with the cut, but it would sometimes very clearly start or end a piece of music at a point that wasn't the natural conclusion. No biggie, especially since Star Wars movies are so difficult to edit sound wise.

Overall a fantastic edit that's well worth your time!

I'll not rehash what many other people have said. I noticed a few audio hiccups here and there, but nothing too major. The biggest payoffs were the removal of Sideous, the Obi-Wan / Darth Maul fight considerably tightened up, and renaming the Federation. Success on all counts. Well done, sir.

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.

Last year I attempted to make my own edit of the Star Wars prequels, albeit with limited skill and very basic software. I eventually disregarded my own efforts and began a search for a more professional edit, eventually settling on Q2’s ‘Fall of the Jedi’ trilogy, which was very skilfully edited. However, what Seciors has done here is a lot closer to what I originally imagined for my own edit.

Despite the fact that I hold Q2’s work in high regard, I struggled with a couple of the bigger editing choices – mainly the concept of an un-named background extra destroying the Federation ship at the end of the movie. On the other hand, I agree with all of Secior’s major choices here.

Additionally, the re-integration of up-rezzed versions of my favourite deleted scenes (Greedo, farewell to Jira) and very clever removal of Jar Jar from a couple of scenes (balcony fall, Anakin/Padme heart-to-heart) brought a smile to my face! Although, there is a (slight and unavoidable) noticeable difference in picture quality between the up-rezzed deleted scenes and the rest of the movie.

I really appreciate the fact that a number of the less desirable characters (Jar Jar, C-3PO, etc) are minimised, rather than eliminated. I’ve seen a number of edits which have attempted to remove them completely from the movie, with varying degrees of success. Instead, Seciors has managed to reduce (rather than remove) their impact on the movie, whilst still allowing them have a proper introduction and moment to shine.

The only character who falls foul of the editing process is Boss Nass. With the removal of the underwater city scene and editing of his initial conversation with Padme, he fails to get a proper introduction. Instead, he unceremoniously pops up from nowhere. But this is a minor issue, and is not enough to pull me out of the movie.

The overall effect of this edit is to provide a much faster paced version of the movie, with a more comprehensible story (no more taxes, treaties, midichlorians, etc) and understandable villain (the Federation). At the same time, Seciors has managed to improve on the mystery of the Sith, by removing Sidious and the unsubtle hints that Palpatine is the master dark lord - including the horrendous close-up during Qui Gon’s pyre scene.

All-in-all, this is my favourite edit of TPM and is now my ‘go to’ version. I’m greatly looking forward to Seciors’s take on RotS!

NOTE: This review is based on a pre-release MKV version of the edit that Seciors kindly made available to me prior to its official release. I believe the only difference between the two was an issue that was resolved with the surround sound.