Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker: Anti-Cringe-Cut

Oh boy...Star Wars prequels and now the sequels. The eternal debate/fight. Well, at least for the prequels we have a ton of fan edits, plus the Lucas' versions, so it's really hard not to find your cup of tea. Which means prequels are already saved. The sequels on the other hand, mainly episodes 8+9, have a long way to go, very few fanedit choices.

Before my review for this, I should state my brief opinion on the original so you know where I'm coming from. It had stuff I hated, stuff I was bored about and some stuff I enjoyed. My overall enjoyment was like a 3-4. I saw it once in cinema and never looked back. Before watching this I tried HAL's "Ascendant", which was a "restructure" type edit, but it didn't work for me, I needed an aggressive edit. Enter DonKamillo!

Technical wise, having also seen the Episode 8 Anti-Cringe, I was a bit dissapointed. In general the audio and visual edit was good, but as the movie progressed, especially at the section with Palpatine, the jump cuts where all over the place. And it was unnecessary, because the editor could have avoided all that if he had just left Kylo alone and not force-cut him.

More specifically, the scenes below are the ones that stood out a lot:
- Cutting Ray jumping above Kylo's ship at the desert. I mean, why? Is it better to see the ship crashed for no reason at the next scene?
- The sound of the lightsabers in Kylo's quarters where they "mind fight" with Rey. I read the reasoning behind this, but no. It was super weird.
- When Rey goes to the fallen Death Star by sea and Jannah said I'll take you there. Well, we just suddenly see Jannah and Finn at the fight for no apparent reason. In the theatrical cut we know Rey left by herself, but here they left all together, yet Rey is all alone and Jannah and Finn pop up before the duel.
- After Kylo gets the map and says "Look at yourself", the sound is almost cut off for like a second.
- I found the flashback dialogue between Luke and Rey after she stabs Kylo, a bit forced and unnecessary.
- One of my biggest problems, the fadeout of Han and Ben. I mean, that's how we end the arc of this character? A fadeout? That was a big no for me, which connects it to my next point.
- The whole ending scene that had to do with Palpatine, was "full" of jumpcuts and generally changes that where pretty obvious. Something that could have being avoided by keeping Ben there.
- And lastly, something that I mentioned also in Episode 8 Anti-Cringe, the green light in Luke's saber. You could tell it was added. I obviously understand the reasons behind it, but since I could tell, I wouldn't mind the other color.

Overall, I still suggest this version to anyone who wants an aggressive edit of Episode 9, Don's is the only one. I just hope the editor will revisit it to smooth some things out and change others. For me it will be my go to version, but that is because I don't have a choice and it's a shame not to watch the final film of the saga in a future marathon.

Thank you DonKamillo, thanks to anyone who read my review and may the force be with you!

P.S. I copy pasted some of my text from my review of the Episode 8 Anti-Cringe, because it applied here also.

I owe DonKamillo a review for this one, but it's a hard one to quite put into words. His TLJ edit, though not my favorite, is really great work. This one... is as good as it gets? I'm of two minds; on one hand, I want to commend the effort to make something out of this cinematic malpractice, on the other hand, a corpse will eventually smell, no matter what you do.

As a fanedit, it's a valiant effort; small cuts to tighten the pace, trying to maintain continuity with the TLJ "Anti-Cringe Cut" and, well, that's the thing; The Rise of Skywalker is such a condensed disaster, I couldn't even tell you what has been edited in the movie without reading the list of changes.

I know, this isn't the most helpful review and it's not a reflection on DonKamillo's talent or efforts here; I just want to make sure that, if you watch this, you know what to expect. Some movies are so consistently bad, they're impossible to fix. It's a problem that, surprisingly, the Prequels didn't have, because for all their bad dialogue and questionable action sequences, you could tighten them up and come out with something enjoyable. TRoS is dense; you can't remove any major scenes without losing significant details and you can't space them out to breathe, because they never shot anything quiet or character-building. What DonKamillo does here, in effect, is cut out a lot of the extraneous information that don't contribute anything to the film, making it a little less of a headache. For example, Poe and Zorii don't know each other beforehand in this version of the film, which is good, but at the same time you can't cut out Zorii entirely, because her three minutes of screen-time are necessary to further what passes for a plot here, despite the fact that she's otherwise a superfluous character. That kind of thing.

From a technical perspective, the edit is good. I didn't really notice anything, it looks as pretty as it should with seamless transitions. The only bit that pulled me out was Luke's scene and his de-ghosting-- but I'm the guy that needs fifteen minutes to do a simple jpeg edit on Gimp, I'm not going to be the one to complain about this type of thing.

Ultimately, it's hard to rate the enjoyment of an edit like this, because the source material is just abysmal. I'd like to say that this is a better version than the theatrical, but I honestly never want to see anything related to TRoS in general, ever again. If, for some reason, you're enough of a SW fan to want to put yourself through this nipple-clamp of a movie again, then I can at least say that the "Anti-Cringe Cut" is the significantly less painful version of it.

Ever watch a fan edit where you immediately realize that if you decide to re-watch the movie ever again, it will be edited version as opposed to the original?

This is one of those.

While my technical knowledge is very limited so I don't feel right speaking on any of the technical aspects, I did find it to be edited quite seamlessly with little to no noticeable changes or flaws in the video or audio.

Definitely would recommend to anybody who found that this last Trilogy was not enjoyable. There are still aspects of it that I still struggle with but I will be watching this version of it as I feel the changes to it as well as the finale to be way more enjoyable then what we originally got. Also important to watch The Last Jedi anti-cringe edit as well, as it does playoff the changes that were made in that as well.

Before, I should say that I really liked the original TFA and TLJ (minus the casino part) and I have not watched DonKamillo's TLJ.
But I knew the endings of his TLJ edit going in. Luke's and Leia's story was transfered from Don's TLJ, which had choices I do not agree with (personal preference). And lukes ghost effect is hard to undo I guess...
I don't think the narrative is on top. I guess that if you cut away that much it feels empty and forced, or abrubt, in some places. Some cuts even made it wierd. (Lukes ghost, Kylo's non-crash, and several specai effects).

That said,
This edit is beautiful and fun! The cuts are seamless and the quality is great. Almost all the cringe and unnecsessary plot are gone. That makes this a fun, fast-paced adventure. It is really worth watching! It is amazing how much crap it is in the original that we did not need.

Spoilers follow.

So, at last, the Anti-Cringe Cut of Episode IX is here.
I could not wait to see the film, and was, once again admired by the big changes you dropped in this one. However, I feel the narrative has been brought out to the expense of character a bit too much. I'll go through the movie analyzing the narrative decisions, highlighting the best as the ones I liked less.

First of all, I wanted to mention a minor flaw I noticed with the receding Star Wars text, as it is surrounded by an iris which paves the way for the text. I see why you did this, though.
I think the first act works wonderfully, both with the "minor" changes like the Emperor's broadcast and Kylo not crashing and the removal of certain characters and plot points. I loved the removal of Finn's secret that lead nowhere. I think that the first head-scratching moment comes when Ochi's name is pronounced: per the narrative, I didn't know who he was and it seemed a bit too soon to give out his name. Maybe, for a possible version 2.0 (which I encourage you to put out as there's so much good in your edit that can be built off of!), you could invert the two lines (to "I've seen that ship before... Ochi's ship!" and perhaps add a short flashback of Oochi's close-up so to establish him visually too, and get clear any doubt.) I liked the serpent scene and the healing's removal was necessary to pull Kylo's death through.
Contrary to some reviewers, I didn't find it difficult to accept the masking of Kylo's ship in the desert. Well done. I also enjoyed the Kijimi sequence. Babu Frik is such a fun character. Nonetheless, Poe loses a bit of backstory here, and Zorri Bliss is not really consistent as a character. To be fair, she isn't very developed in the theatrical either, but I believe that leaving some of her romance interest (if possible, without the smuggler angle of it) in Poe in the movie could have benefited both characters, fleshing them out a bit more. It would also add to Poe happily welcoming Zori Bliss and Babu Frik to the battle, which feels partly hollow in this edit (partly because it is implied Babu Frik was his friend on Kijimi, not Zori Bliss, so when they arrive you're still happy to see them cheer.)

Unfortunately, I feel a great disservice has been done to Hux too. If on the one hand, he was mistreated in The Last Jedi by making him pure and unabashed comic relief (and you fixed that in your release of The Last Jedi), relegating him to a cameo with no reaction to the previous movie's storyline doesn't help in this one, if only because he disappears from the movie after half an hour. Furthermore, I feel that General Pryde is robbed of some development too, as Hux's death could work to that end, too.
Upon the good things this edit accomplishes to help the narrative, I also liked the postponement of Chewbacca's survival, as it now comes off as a surprising reveal rather than cheap backpedalling.
I think the big narrative wonkiness (which is also a fault in the original, don't get me wrong) comes in when Rey goes to retrieve the dagger a second time: she says they're going to need it again, but they don't, and it appears there's no way around that if not to include the Indiana Jones-esque moment where the dagger points to the throne room. I understand why you removed that, but I think that more than helping the movie, it created a plot hole (unless I lost something, that is! :))
I really liked the contraction of the narrative when our group arrives on the moon of Endor, and I think that having Jannah bring Rey and Finn to the ruins immediately as they arrive works well, but not fleshing her out even a little bit I think makes her feel a bit too much like a Deus Ex Machina. Some backstory would not have hurt at all, I believe. Her, Poe and Hux are the three characters that suffer the most from this edit, unfortunately.

Now, the big, absolutely grandiose decision and change this edit forwards is the death of Ben Solo. No choice can be more logical than this. This is what makes the edit step up. It is the logical conclusion to his arc, and I wonder why the original decided to have him redeem. Obviously, this means the disappearance of the Knights of Ren in the third act, but it is most definitely forgivable as it is genius to have Kyo die.
I wonder why the planet-destroying weapons weren't done with, as they have no reason to exist if not to temporarily add threat to Poe... only for that to be swept away by Lando's speech. Speaking of which, I liked the reveal of Lando. This way we're not left wondering what he was doing on Pasaana, or why he was left behind with no reason at all, and makes it seem as if he was already at the base, and enters the quadrant only when he has something valuable to say.
Luke's force ghost, as stated before even by the editor himself, isn't entirely convincing but it isn't too noticeable while watching, at least to me. Ironically, I found the switch from TLJ footage (Luke walking down the steps) to TRoS footage more jarring. Maybe you could tone down some of the sunlight in the two shots of Luke looking down to Rey to make it mesh together a bit better? Anyways, the effect in the two later scenes come off much better. Now, we come to the second plothole that bugged me: if Luke went searching for answers regarding Palpatine, why didn't he tell Rey, his apprentice, that he knew the coordinates to get to Exegol earlier? Is it because he returned to Ahch-To and closed himself to the Force again? To make it clear, I understand there wasn't much to work with in the first place, and this would be forgivable plot hole if it had been explained why Luke doesn't contact Rey earlier. The change to Leia's lightsaber is not the one I was expecting! I think it works fine, but the shot of Leia holding the saber in the flashback seems oddly black & white almost. I imagine this is due to the colour correction, to make it resemble the yellow tint of the saber, but I feel that you may have lost a bit too much green/blue from the background. Maybe purple would have caused less trouble?
The final battle in the third act, works, lean and mean, very well. Both the set pieces work, and Rey remembering Han, Leia and Kylo adds some emotion to the moment. Well done. Nonetheless, I have to nitpick here (this is very minor): when Rey grabs Leia's saber, the saber is blue, and when she grabs Luke's... it is yellow. I think this may have been inverted for dramatic effect, and it works very well, without a doubt, but as a fan I couldn't help but notice it. I had to point it out, but had it happened in the original (other than mere lack of attention to details) I wouldn't have bothered too much; I see it a bit like Vader's saber not being rotoscoped in a shot from Episode IV.
I have to say that Luke's death is a moment that definitely lands, and is well cut together with the original footage.

During the celebration, you obviously cut the same-sex kiss. It didn't feel natural, I see why you cut it. Nonetheless, I think that it can be frustrating for some people to see that moment gone.

And finally, the ending on Tatooine. At first, I was left wondering why you changed the lightsaber to red (!) but after some thought, I got to the conclusion that it feels right for Rey's arc. This is a bold decision you have made. This is my reasoning: Rey's theme in this movie is to embrace who she is. She has the power of both Jedi and Sith, and she doesn't doesn't understand it; therefore she fears it, and herself. By building herself a red lightsaber, she is embracing the dark side to do good. It is a way of showing that colour doesn't necessarily count. What matters is what you do with it. Still, I think that the colour yellow created less confusion, as one reviewer felt confused after seeing the film.

All in all, I think your edit satisfies many of the faults the original had (except the ones which are no fault of the editor) but also creates some of its own doing. I do like most of them, and strongly encourage DonKamillo not only to finish off his ACC trilogy but also revise his edit of IX in the same way he did for VIII to implement some of the feedback me and other reviewers have brought forward!

Congratulations,

Canon Editor