Review Detail

I have watched many edits of TLJ, like it or not, I have to thank Ivan Ortega. His edit was a horrible edit, but it lead me to discover other edits on OT.com. While I watched a few one stood out as my favorite, and that was Force Ghost Recon's Clean Cut edit. It kept maybe a couple things, with some sort of niggling voice in my head saying something that wasn't right. I've heard of the Anti-Cringe cut many times throughout the internet, but didn't really give it a chance until very recently. I'm really glad that I did there were a lot of things that I enjoyed with only 6 standout things that I noticed and wrote down as notes. Before I get to the positives, I want to address the negatives first.

Number one, I love the Han mourning deleted scene inclusion (more on that later), but there was something I noticed. It was the fact that the particular version of the force theme that you used was a cheerful version that is supposed to transition to the end credits theme. It was a little distracting to me. If you're open to it, I propose a fix. Maybe use the ROTJ funeral pyre version of the force theme, and I say that because it could follow George's "rhyming" philosophy of it being used to have Luke mourn Han. Cut it at just the right time to transition to Kylo. Number Two, the deleted scene of the third lesson was great. The only thing I noticed was that if you pause at a particular moment you can see the top of the prop blade. Is there a way to fix? Number Three, the portion of Luke's truth of "what happened" to where you see Kylo with the Knights of Ren you can still only slightly hear the Obi-Wan dialogue from the TFA force vision sequence. Is there a way to take it out for the purpose of Luke seeing into him? Number Four, I am aware that you have cut the Canto Bight side quest, thank god, but there is one scene where you can see DJ and the others. That is when you see the elevator going up. Granted it's a blink and you miss, but you can still see DJ with Finn, boxed BB-8, and Rose. Number Five, I see what you're doing with the green saber blade in the apparition portion but keep it blue it's one of few things that Rian did better. Number Six, with Liea's death from earlier how is R2 still able to scan for the beacon??? Finally, this one is not a negative but something I would've loved to see. Hear me out. What if when Rey is lifting the rocks, she finds out that it is harder than it seems maybe when Finn and co are looking at them being lifted maybe add some faint screams of Rey and when you see her up close add some cg blood from her nose. The reason I propose this, is because I see you are cutting down a little on her "Mary Sue-ness".

With all of that out of the way, I loved pretty much everything else in the edit. Bravo. Just fantastic BB-8 fix, inclusion of deleted scenes, keeping Leia dead (bold), Chewie not being translated by Rey, no Joke to Hux and many other cuts of the odd-ball humor, no slapping Hux around, Luke's point of view of the truth further expanding Obi's point of that and NO MURDER CONTEMPLATION, fixing Holdo's plan (BRAVO), the scene of Luke apologizing to Rey, the various transition shots of the island, many more from your change list, and good job on adding the ending with Palpatine my god that was wonderful (perfectly setting up the Rise of Skywalker). I loved the Luke fixes most of all really I never would've thought that someone could do such an amazing job, but you did and I applaud you well done. Don, I just want to congratulate you on how well you did on this edit. I probably will never again watch any other edit of this movie, only yours. Well done.

I highly recommend this edit to anyone. I understand why this edit won the Fanedit of the Month award. I haven't finished your Rise of Skywalker edit, I was halfway through it, but I will re-wind when I watch it next. You've done an amazing job, you sir have earned a fan of your work.