Star Wars Episode IX: The Final Order

Disclaimer: I've seen the theatrical cut once and Hal's edit once, so I am not crazy familiar with the material. Frankly, the editing felt botched in the theatrical, so if I mistake that for something done by Spence... please accept my apologies.

QUALITY

I opted for the highest quality version available. Visual quality looks good, but softer than I feel it should be for the file size. It's not on par with Hal9000's cut.

Audio sounds decent, but a bit brittle at points.


VISUAL EDITING

Just a couple of things:

10:17 - is this quick visual cut in the original? it threw me
10:28 - this shot is too quick and the sudden change in colour tone (time of day?) felt a little off.
30:03 - cut seems a bit quick


AUDIO EDITING

Unfortunately, there's a rather jarring problem with the presentation of the surround track. It has nothing coming out of the centre channel 90% of the time and then occasionally something will suddenly sound from that speaker, which betrays fanedited elements. The first instance this becomes noticeable is at 6:45 when there is an added bit of dialogue from Palpatine. It is much quieter as well, in spite of coming out of my centre speaker, which i always have up 2db louder than the rest of the system.

I didn't really want to watch the whole film with a bunch of cuts sticking out that Spence didn't intend, so I chose to mix down the surround to stereo for most of my viewing, else I think my list of audio stuff would have been longer. (For the record, I did also drop the file into my NLE to look at the waveforms and check that this wasn't some random issue on my end. )

So, mixed down to stereo, the film generally flows nicely. There's nothing abrupt as such, but there are a few moments where I can hear something off:

9:10 - sounds like two scores are clashing
11:01 - noticeable audio transition
11:39 - noticeable audio transition
12:27 - the way the sounds shifts here feels unnatural
15:12 - something sounds off with the music here
30:04 - remnant of score that's not from previous scene is audible
1:16:30-37 - noticeable transitions between scores

So it's mostly in the early portion of the film, which probably isn't much of a surprise, as that (perceivably) had the most extreme amount of work done. I did also notice a couple of moments where the sound was a bit thinner, probably due to having to clean up the dialogue and rebuild the sound somewhat. But this came across fairly well, all things considered, and wasn't jarring. An example would be during Palpatine's communication with Pryde; in this particular instance, I'd maybe suggest adding some more room ambiance. As it stands, we only hear music and dialogue.

From my stereo experience I would give this an 8, but since the edit only includes a surround sound option and this does not come across well on a surround setup, I've put it at 7.


NARRATIVE

Personally, I feel like this film is such a colossal fail in the realm of storytelling that you're just really limited in terms of what you can fix. That's not to say there isn't anything that can be done, it's just that the entire central premise of the film is so flawed that no matter how many changes are made, I don't think I'm able to invest in this film properly. Hal and co's fixing of the pacing and the colour grading made such a difference for me, but the base script just has so little of value that I could go either way on various other story changes.

That being said, Spence does make some admirable edits here. Most of what I appreciated came in some tweaks to visions or extended moments. I think what was done with Rey's climactic moment was particularly effective.

I don't really see how the choice to cut stuff relating to Snoke helps tie this in better with the other films. But anywho, I generally have no strong personal feelings on the choices made. Spence doesn't create any new narrative issues as far as I can tell, with just a few exceptions:

The transition into Leia's death at 10:28: I actually saw this clip in isolation when it was shared as a preview and thought it worked really nicely, but the way it sits here felt really rushed and out of the blue to me. (to be clear, I'm talking about the context the scene sits in, not the scene itself). Aside from that though, Leia's absence really doesn't have any negative impact on the plot.

The Emporer's presence is already a pretty poorly foreshadowed plot element, as it stands, and the exposition in the crawl was what little we got. Since Spence has cut that people are already aware of the Emperor from the crawl, we now only have one brief scene where the rebellion concludes he is back and it feels pretty poorly developed as a result. Then again, if Spence has plans to give a chunk of foreshadowing for this in a TLJ edit, maybe this criticism is void.

I also think there is the odd bit here or there that feels rushed, but I didn't note anything specific down because I honestly wasn't sure if this was an original error (the theatrical is SO choppy). One moment I did recall being a bit off, which I can see from the cut list was tampered with, is the reaction to the spy.


ENJOYMENT

Hal9000's edit is used as a base for this, and he did a wonderful job in terms of regrading and just allowing everything to be significantly better paced. That alone makes the film an enjoyable watch for me in spite of still generally not being a fan.

Spence's cut is also enjoyable and he does a fairly solid job of executing his own preferences. I do think he stewards some really nice moments here, but for me, since I don't have any super-strong preferences on the narrative, it then comes down to technical execution. Hal's cut is of higher visual and audio quality and there's hardly anything in it that betrays to me that it was fanedited, so that still remains the preferred watch for me, even though I do think Spence adds some nice touches.

That's not to put down Spence's work here and I'm sure it will be a hit for most people. I also know Spence plans on a version 2, so who knows what's in the future :)