Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Lone Gungan Edition)

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63%
5-7 stars
 
0%
 
13%
1-3 stars
 
0%
Overall rating
 
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
7.0(4)
Audio Editing
 
8.7(3)
Visual Editing
 
9.0(3)
Narrative
 
8.7(3)
Enjoyment
 
7.8(8)
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(Updated: November 09, 2014)
Overall rating
 
8.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
7.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
Dude. Seriously. You took a pile of horse crap and made it into a chunk of silver - not gold, but oh so much silver! I don't think this one will ever make gold because there are just some bad acting bits that can't be efficiently cut, but you took it almost as far as it could go... This edit is by far the best cut I've seen.

If you want my opinion, there were some rough cuttings here and there, especially in the beginning war scene, but it all came through very well overall. Most importantly: You made a Star Wars movie.

I have the 1:30:35 cut if that makes a difference to anyone reading this review that might have a different cut.

Some minor editing notes:

1. Jar Jar's voice was still kind of dumb (but not on the a-hole level of the original). If there was a voice less... 'bloopy' (if that's the word), and more like the Trade Federation voices, then he'd be vastly more bearable.

2. The pod race was a good edit, but still ran slightly too long. I think it would have done well to chop out the part between Ani catching up on lap 3 to Sebulba and when they tangled causing Sebulba to crash. The whole jumping up the ramp thing is still stupid, but minor complaint.

3. When running to the ship before Maul catches them, I would cut the "I'm tired" part of Ani's sentence "Quaigon Sir, wait I'm tired" and just have him say "wait" but again, minor.

4. The Terminator scene was jarring and strange. It should stay in the hallway scene with the Federation guy talking about the Naboo enslavement. Thankfully it's brief.

5. There was a really rough cut when everyone landed back at Naboo to take back the planet. Just after the part where Ani yelled "They're here" you could have just did a smash cut to them discussing the plans rather than chopping in that tiny bit of footage between and doing the diagonal rolling fade from Ani to the discussion of plans.

6. After Padme and her crew rappel up the wall, and land on the windlow ledge, it would flow better if you cut the scene of her slowly aiming at the window and just edited in the breaking the glass and having them bust through into the hallway.

7. I think the slo-mo on Palpatine was great at the end, but rather than doing that loop fade to the credits. I think just a normal fade or a smash cut would have worked better.

All that aside, you worked wonders for this film... bravo.

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(Updated: September 10, 2012)
Enjoyment
 
7.0
Review by Waslah — April 7, 2011 @ 2:14 pm

I took a look at this film just the other day and decided I would share my thoughts.

The Edit is very very well done. I don’t remember any hard cutting, or jumping around, or any of the various strange visual deals you get from many fan edits. On the other hand, I did think that some of it while very well done made for a film that moved just a little bit too fast. By cutting so much out the pacing does seem to become very very frantic in some cases. Some minor changes here and there might fix that.

The new invasion of Naboo is excellently done, and really adds weight to an otherwise danger-less film and I greatly appreciated that. Many of my problems with Episode 1 is that at no point did I ever feel like any of the characters were ever truly in any danger, and that just saps the excitement right out of a film like this. What’s done here, by eliminating the heavy handed and out of place humor that often overtook Lucas’ original version of the movie, goes a long way towards making me care about the situation and the characters in them. A massive improvement in my opinion.

Touching upon the footage of the “Nabooians” fleeing the droid army and federation invasion…it does feel out of place. I might suggest perhaps you could look at something like Star Trek Insurrection which may have something that at least looks a little closer to the Star Wars universe to take from that wouldn’t feel so out of place.

The audio work is my one big problem with this film. It may just be a technical problem on my end but it did often feel like the dialogue and sound F/X were very quiet while the music itself was incredibly overwhelming and often drown out said dialogue and sound F/X. There were also moments where the dialogue did not line up with the video, giving that rubbery dub look when some of the characters spoke. While this only happened now and then it did happen on occasion and I did find it slightly annoying.

The whole concept though, with Jar Jar being the only Gungan, and the re-dubbing of the Nemodians and Jar Jar, is a brilliant one and actually made me like both much much more. The trade federation is finally a villain I can take seriously and Jar Jar is now a character that I enjoy watching and feels a lot more in line with tone of the original trilogy.

Overall I’d say this plays a lot like a rough draft to a great story. There’s a lot of brilliant ideas at play here, and with some tightening up it could be a version of Phantom Menace that I’d happily place into a regular viewing rotation.

7/10
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(Updated: September 10, 2012)
Overall rating
 
4.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
3.0
Enjoyment
 
5.0
Review by geminigod — April 26, 2011 @ 12:51 am

Sorry, but I just can’t give this edit quite the same overall props that everyone else is. I can give you a 10/10 for your creative vision, but this plays out like a rough preliminary cut. There are major sound, video, and technical editing problems that make this movie barely watchable for me in its present form. It got better once we get to tatooine, but I almost stopped watching during the first 30 minutes due to the technical issues related to the re-scoring, sound equalization issues, low video quality, jump cuts, poor story tracking cuts, etc.

That said, I do think that if you get the right tools and take the time to tinker around with this, your technical skills may catch up to your creative skills and result in a finished product that could stand on a video shelf with the originals and some of the other great star wars edits. I really do hope you do this, or work with another editor to help try to bring your vision to life, because I really do think it could be great.

If I stumble across some appropriate footage that you could plant for Naboo being terrorized, I will let you know. It was a good idea, but the BSG footage just doesn’t work, and the music certainly doesn’t work!

Lastly, my two cents on the whole virgin birth thing is that it is crazy to keep it, but that’s just my opinion. I thought that was the one edit that everyone could agree on, but I have never before heard this theory that somehow the Emperor genetically manipulated and apparently conducted some sort of in vitro fertilization on Anakin’s mom. Not sure where this theory came from, but it sounds like a giant stretch that I can’t buy into for more than a nanosecond before I scratch my head and say, “What?!” Where is that referenced? What evidence? If that were the case, why would the Emperor allow the mom to be a slave on Tatooine? Considering it was pure coincidence that Quigon even stumbled upon Anakin, how can this be rationalized as part of the Emperor’s plan? Why would the Emperor not have been training him from birth? Why does the Emperor act surprised regarding Anakin at the end? Rubbish.

Rating-wise, if I keep it simple with 3 categories: an average of 3/10 video, 2/10 audio, 10/10 creativity = 5/10.
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