Star Wars: Episode I - The Ancient Lore

When it comes to watching Episode I I've personally avoided watching it for so long I barely remember the film and as such also avoided the many fanedits over the years for fears of bring back those bad memories. As its been so long I finally gave in and watched Andreas edit and I'm glad I did.

What drew me to this edit was the reimagining of the narrative and using other source material to expand on much needed character development while omitting offensive scenes throughout some examples *SPOILERS* like expanding on the trade federations backstory to strengthen their motives, allowing the villains more screen time to give a sense of peril and also better introducing Dookus character to the storyline and reintroducing Jar-Jars as a member of the Jedis original crew sent from corusent. Is this film perfect? no. can the few issues be fixed? yes, quite easily.

The main issues are really only technical ones like Mauls sabre changing orange in some scenes, although you get the narrotive point better with Dookus hologram throughout it still looks out of place in some scenes eg Jedi council scene @ 00:56:23 and some clunky subtitles one example of this is during the original films opening scenes on the trade federations ship which is now shown later in the film when Qui-Gons using his sabre to melt the bridges blast doors these are the new lines:

Nute Gunray: "close the blast doors... Were you born stupid?"
Rune: "this guy just wont give up!"
Nute Gunray: "shut up, your encouraging him" – encouraging? Should read something more like "shut up, stop admiring them!

Also something out of place is the heavy metal rift first heard at Tattooine when entering Mos Espa and the Maul scenes which brings you out of the Starwars film. Lastly Qui-Gons close up death scene @ 01:27:56 repeats itself but not sure if its intentional though.

Overall a very good edit from Andreas and a definite improvement over the theatrical, looking forward to the improvements version 2 of the Ancient Lore will bring.

I have to say when i was downloading this edit i tought it was just a cut and cut edit of a prequel
I have never been so wrong in whole my life (Hobbit 1 reference)
I don't want to give any spoilers so the only thing i will say is giving qui gon jinn a purple lightsaber was a epic choice
The edit is fantastic but you could have removed force speed and the this is pod racing line
overall great highly recommenced it

I very much enjoyed this edit. That isn't to say that it's without its problems. Without going into details (as it's actually possible to spoil this edit), I felt that the musical choices made didn't always work and it certainly sacrifices invisibility for the story. While some of the more jarring edits did take me out of the film, it wasn't enough to keep me from both enjoying and recommending this edit. And to conclude this review let me just say this to the editor, "It could have taken her two minutes to find the blanket." Thank you.

Certainly a novel way of experiencing this episode, the integration of material from other films is an interesting idea (particularly the inclusion of Dooku), but I feel that I lean towards the more “traditional” edits.

Perhaps though that’s a consequence of being fairly familiar with the original (and other fanfixes), but some of the choices resulted in sections feeling a little out of place and I found myself missing music which had been swapped out. Glad to have seen it though, shows what can be achieved by somebody thinking outside the box.

A refreshing take on Episode I, yet still needs more work.
I really enjoyed watching the new narrative unfold, and think the it is a better story for EP1. The work done with the source material is wonderful, and most offensive and annoying lines were trimmed away. I also like the changes made to the soundtrack and the idea of adding materials from fan films.
However... There is an obvious and jarring drop in quality when using the video from the fan film, which I hope is fixed in V2. Additionally, there were a few lines of new dialogue (in the subtitles) that felt out of place, especially between 1:07:13-1:08:13. Moreover, there are a few out-of-place cuts throughout the edit (such as at 56:23, or at 1:07:13).
All-in-all, I recommend watching this edit. It tells a new and compelling story by using the existing materials, and is enjoyable.