Review Detail

Phase3's approach to this fanedit is most notable for his successful re-voicing of the Neimoidians and replacing their actual words with subtitles, resulting in a more believable, serious opening sequence.

Similarly, Jar Jar's dialog is given the same treatment. His voice took a little longer for me to get used to (perhaps I'm so used to his cadence from countless viewings that I never fully embraced it 100%), but it did achieve its objective in making Jar Jar a more serious character without all the silly dialog. His appearances are trimmed drastically, so if you despise Jar Jar, this will be a go-to version for you.

A lot of the beginning is trimmed. A LOT. "Can you get us into the city?" Yep, here we are! No side trek underwater. Again, this will be a welcome change to some and too deep of a cut for others. It still works in the narrative structure, so it's all depending on personal taste.

We don't get the out-of-character Obi Wan quips, which is a welcome relief. We don't get discussions of midi-chlorians, so that is also a welcome change. There still is a scene that I personally don't care for, and that's "lightning Jedi" at the blast doors aboard the Trade Federation ship (again, this is something I don't like in the original movie). I can accept that the Jedi drop from a large height into the very next scene, but I don't like "superpowers" being attributed to the Jedi where they can move at lightning speed to escape the droidekas.

The battle droids themselves have had much of their dialog removed, which is another welcome change (all the silly Roger, Roger stuff and corny dialog). Personally, I think these could have been re-voiced as they are too silly to be a threat with their existing voice. It's certainly better than it was, but this is one thing I'd love to be taken further.

Now, I trimmed a star for audio editing because there were several times I caught edits due to music/sound changes that didn't flow smoothly (at one spot, for example, the music just stops a bit too abruptly). This should not stop you from watching and enjoying this edit, but my bet is most people will notice several of these instances.

Visually, this looks great. I know that there was some recoloring done to certain scenes/sequences, They don't leap out at you while watching, so it all looks natural and satisfying.

In the end, 42 minutes have been trimmed from the runtime, so the story clips by at a quick pace, but it manages to do this without large plot holes. That in and of itself is a feat of good planning, or an indicator of how much bloat was in the original movie. But how long does the pod race need to last for you to get the idea?

Phase3 has shown that you can vastly improve the storytelling by changing the dialog through subtitles to tighten the pace, clarifying the plot and still feeling like "real" Star Wars. Having different creatures speak a "native tongue" and having English responses works in the Star Wars universe. After all, Han Solo always understood Wookie and even Luke understood R2D2's beeps and boops.

I applaud this fanedit for the very fact that it brings something new to the Phantom Menace that we haven't seen in other fanedits, so, give it a watch!