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

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!

There is a lot to love about this edit. As you can see from the runtime, the cuts are deep. This changes the pacing from the dull slog of the theatrical release to a real roller coaster ride. It moved a little fast for my taste, but then again, that was probably necessary to successfully remove so much of what I hated about Ep I: midichlorians, virgin birth, the chosen one, Captain Obvious (Ric Olie), bantha poodoo, Boss 'Bbbbbbbbbbbbb' Nass and Jar Jar's stupidity.

Removing Darth Sidious was a good move. It largely worked but unfortunately left Darth Maul without motivation. Keeping at least part of Sidious and Maul's 'At last we will have our revenge' scene would have established a nemesis for Qui Gon and a Sith counterpoint to the Jedi's mission, while adding a lingering dread to the story. It would also have balanced Maul's later appearances in the film and provided a coda to Yoda's final scene where he notes 'Always two there are'. But I liked how you kept (and added) scenes with the probe droid searching Mos Espa for the queen. Its menacing black shape floating through the streets helped restore the tension lost by removing Sidious and foreshadowed Qui Gon's later encounters with the Sith.

The pod race edits were miraculous. Thanks for excising the two-headed announcer, but leaving the Tusken Raiders and Aurra Sing cameos. I would have preferred limiting Jabba to his introduction and race announcement. Spitting at the gong and sleeping at the end of the race were useless comic relief. It makes him look like a loser instead of a ruthless, tyrannical gangster.

The final battle between Sith and Jedi also worked really well. The pacing was smooth and consistent. Leaving Qui Gon's meditation with Maul pacing outside the shield broke up the action enough to build tension without destroying its flow.

I wish the space battle at the Droid Control ship lasted a little longer (but with less of Captain Obvious - 'It's one of ours!', 'That's the enemy!', 'I'm breathing air!') However, you did a great job transforming Anakin from a stowaway pushing random buttons into a pilot in command of his ship. Most of his cockpit scenes and dialog from the Theatrical release were useless, but a lot of them would have been fine without his dialog. For example, 'Spinning's a good trick' is ridiculous, but watching him fly the starfighter (without talking) and execute barrel rolls to avoid laser fire only confirms his flying skills and force instincts.

A few of the visual cuts in the edit were jarring, but for the most part, they contributed to the roller coaster pacing. However, the audio was seamless. Seciors did a fantastic job syncing his new edits with the score.

Overall, this is one of the more enjoyable Episode I fanedits I've seen, and I enjoyed this version of Episode I as much as any fan of the OT can. 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.

(I apologize for making so much of this review about myself, but I just didn't know how else to get my point across.)

I was huge Star Wars fan as a kid, but when The Phantom Menace came out, it was "just another movie". Maybe I was a little disappointed, but it was no big deal to me. I think I only saw it twice. Once when it was in theatres and again when it was on TV for the first time. All I ever saw of it since were the Red Letter Media reviews, which I think are brillant.

After watching SECIORS' fanedit, I thought I needed to see the original again though, so I'd be able to actually judge what he did. In doing so I realized, that I loved all of SECIORS' editing choices and that he did an impressive and flawless job in reducing the film to its core. I also realized that most of the hate TPM is getting nowadays is totally justified. What a godawful movie the original is.

Although I always considered myself a movie geek, it was only over the past ten years that I started focusing on things like storytelling, character arcs, character motivations, pacing, expositional dialogue, directorial choices, etc. I believe TPM fails on all accounts. (I also feel like even stating that I'm aware of the fact, that there is nothing that hasn't been said about TPM, is a cliché.) In my opinion the movie doesn't even work, if you look at it as a film purely aimed at kids, due to all the political crap, the pseudo-philosophical nonsense and the overlong action sequences.

Having said that, I think this is exactly why SECIORS' edit succeeds. Halfway through his version I stopped overanalyzing everything and just let my seven-year-old self take over, and looked at it on a scene by scene basis, enjoying the spectacle, just like I saw Return of the Jedi for the first time. (I loved the Ewoks, for chrissake!)

SECIORS turned a bloated mess into the entertaining and easily digestable kid's movie Lucas probably wanted it to be in the first place. My initial thoughts were, that this edit must be every parent's dream come true. Finally parents can watch TPM in less than 90 minutes and without having their ADD kids go bonkers before the third act starts. I actually suggested calling it "The Parent's Edit", but SECIORS decided against it. Whatever!

:-)

I don't know too much about the technical side of video editing, so I'll give it all 10's there, since I didn't see or hear any flaws. I also thought the narrative worked perfectly fine, despite the fact, that 50 minutes (!) were cut.

I'm torn when it comes to enjoyment though. I didn't really enjoy the movie, I enjoyed figuring out the amount of work and thought that was put into this edit. I think this is the best version possible, although I probably should check out some of the other TPM fanedits to properly comment on that. Unfortunately I can't do that right now. It's just not physically possible, at least within the next couple of months. I'm still recovering, you know?

:-)

On a sidenote: I think the obsession faneditors have with TPM is fascinating and I'd love to read you guys discuss this topic in the forums. This is going to sound brutal, I'm afraid, but I think even the best edit is just damage control. Like …, you can get Daft Punk or Moby or Four Tet or whoever to remix Rebecca Black's Friday, but it's still an embarrassingly bad song, and listening to the remixes is something you do out of curiousity, because you respect the DJs, but it's still rather unlikely, that you'll put it on your playlist, no matter how impressive their work is. Right?

Right?!

Again: I loved SECIORS work. If I had kids, THIS is the version I'd want them to see. I just think the original movie is beyond salvageable.

(EDITED: Now, that's what I call a great poster!)

Pros:

A. The pod race was quite exciting, not sure what edits were made here, but it seemed better than I remembered from the theatrical release.
B. Young Anakin cringe was kept to a minimum and Jar Jar never got the chance to upset me while still having a quirky personality.
C. Cut small problems that then get solved moments later as they aren't suspenseful during repeat viewings thereby making them pointless.
From a technical stand point this was an impressive fanedit, visual quality was astounding and there were no dodgy frames/cuts, no audio blips or glaring sudden musical cues. The deleted scenes that were incorporated back into the movie added to the experience and development of characters.

Cons:

A. The film has been cut down to a mere 78 minutes excluding credits - there are no brakes here, the movie shares the necessary information then moves on. The end result is a nice action piece where you don't really care about the characters/events too much. It feels more like a recap than immersion into a living breathing world.
B. The final battle and Sith duel seemed cut down a fair bit - slightly disappointing as its one of the more interesting parts of the movie.
C. Cut nearly every character exchange not essential to the plot - this severely affects the character development of Qui-gon and Obi-wan, most of the other characters get developed effectively.

Final thoughts:

Ultimately, Phantom Menace is a hard movie to save, but the editor cut a little too much here, leaving bare bones dialogue which made the film feel like an empty shell. A great version if you're marathoning the films and needed to get this one out of the way fast.