Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens: Restructured

Not much to add to the many reviews:

- The main edit effort works, firing once instead of twice. It doesn't feel like anything is missing from the film.

- Edited transitions are seamless.

- My kids didn't realize they were watching a fanedit, despite having seen the theatrical multiple times.

- This edit successfully replaces the theatrical for me.

I just wanted to drop in and say how much I enjoyed this edit! Even though I liked The Force Awakens a lot, I was never enamoured of it, especially in its third act attack on Starkiller Base. I felt the rhyming with Episode IV became too evident and plain unnecessary. Going in this edit, I was skeptic that such an apparently minor restructuring could transform this movie into an absolute blast. Pushing the Starkiller Base firing back to the third act drastically helps the movie. It not only breaks the mirror-structure, but it also injects the background to the Sequel Trilogy with so much more logic, and the emotional payoff comes along with it. The addition of the Leia deleted scene also helps this drastically, and also builds off of the character we see during the Hosnian Prime destruction. I also loved the incorporation of the Rathtar snippet in Rey's vision. Congratulations.
Truly, this is the edit of Episode VII.

Nonetheless, I must say there are two visual imperfections that brought me out of the movie. After the crawl fades away, the starfield seems to change in size instead of simply brightening and panning without resizing. I don't know If this was an issue in the original movie, though.
The other one is the fact that black bars on the left of the frame appeared every once in a while. I don't know why this happened, but I hope you can fix it before you release a V4, which would be the absolute definitive The Force Awakens edit.
I cannot recommend this edit enough! Well done!

I enjoyed the heck out of this and it is now my definitive version of the film. The ordering of starkiller base firing feels seemless and also common sense. I liked other edits where they downplay Rey's abilities and hold back Kylor Ren's reveal but your restructure is my canon now. Great job and keep doing what you do.

I must say, I wasn't sure the idea behind this edit would work (saw a video, thought it looked great), but I can safely say that it does work!

So, first, the technical qualities of the edit. Visual is top of the line. Perfect. Well done!

Audio, however, has a few problems. Most notably, throughout the movie the volume is very uneven. Both my buddy and I noticed this, and we compared it with the original and I don't know what happened but the volume swings a lot in intensity. I don't suppose that was intended so this is an issue.

Also, as everybody pointed out, Finn's line "It's the First Order, they've done it" makes little to no sense in context. Removing it entirely wouldn't hurt the movie at all. Just cut to him coming up and saying "Where's Rey?" after everybody reacts, or cut to someone else after he says "It's the First Order" and leave it at that (no "they've done it"). Maybe a Han reaction shot/someone else?

However, I just LOVE how this edit gets rid of the god-awful reactions shots in the original to the planets exploding. It's completely impossible for anyone to witness such an explosion from across the galaxy, even within the same solar system planets can be hours away at light speed, so this edit works wonders within that context. I love the Han/Starkiller firing, I love the insertion of the speech, the modified Kylo Ren+Snoke scenes, everything works!

It also reduces one parallel with A New Hope so there's that.

The ending though doesn't work in the original (it's too quick, tonal problems gallore too), and it still doesn't work in this one. Not much we can do because there aren't really more available scenes, it's just a rushed movie problem.

I enjoyed watching this quite a lot, and the narrative stands improved. Some issues (mainly audio) remain, but if those are fixed, this could definitely replace TFA for me.

This is a very interesting edit, with a lot of potential.
Narrative-wise, there's not much to critique, as this film does just one thing (it's in the description). It does that particular thing very well, and the new format will probably slip past many people unnoticed. If you felt TFA was a bit too close to ANH in structure, then this is the edit for you.

Narrative-wise, there is potential for improvement, but it depends what deleted scenes (if any) are released in future. Since the Starkiller attack has been removed, the second act is slightly light on drama (even if it was "forced" drama). Also the political background of the film is, perhaps, even more obscure now, since content has been moved. If future scenes give us a look at Leia's rumored political subplot, this would be perfect to re-instate, and flesh out that second section of the film, before the attack on Starkiller base begins. But these are just possibilities, and cannot be called criticisms of the edit: what Hal9000 has achieved is excellent given the material released. I only hope there is more available in future, for the editor to improve on it even more.