Review Detail

So far, this is the best version of the film that's existed. I've tried watching many other edits of this... thing that was splattered on to the silver screen. The Rekindled edit has good ideas, which is built off Hal9000's Legendary edit, but neither theirs nor anyone else's bothers to extensively cut the film down. Just trim some minor moments, but keep the entire narrative intact. The thing is, much of this film shouldn't exist. The Canto Bight sequence should be entirely gone, as should almost all of Holdo. It's a script that's all over the place, with confusing messages, political points, hamfisted/childish banter, wrapped up in awful execution. The codebreaker plotline goes nowhere. The Holdo "follow orders no matter what, don't ask questions" schtick is insulting. The Canto Bight sequence goes without question.

So far, DonKamillo's Anti-Cringe Cut is the only one with the gumption to strip all that out. We bring the narrative down to 1 hour and 50 minutes, which is still a long length, up there with all the other Star Wars films. 2 hours and 30 minutes originally was ridiculous. Trimming the fat is necessary here. Just focus on Rey and Luke. Rey's journey finding out she is a nobody with parents who aren't important is good here. It depends if you watch the Rise of Skywalker normal or Anti-Cringe cut after of course, but trimming the stupid remarks, out of place jokes, lore breaking, or lame lines helps us focus on the meat on the story. That being Luke Skywalker abandoned his Jedi past to protect the galaxy, at least in his mind. It's a good step in the right direction. Letting all that stuff breath here without cutting away is very nice. This edit lets the Achtoo scenes go on for like a half hour uninterrupted. It's unusual for a Star Wars film, but it works great here.

Now, of course, I will make some minor notes for the edit itself. Overall, the film is just the straight visual/audio from the blu-ray. No real color correction or anything was done. There are some edits, like the exterior shot of the Crait blast door that is pixelated a bit, probably because it's zoomed in, that was jarring. There are some transitions lacking a little in context, or rely a bit much on ADR to deliver the information, like Poe being told the plan to use the ships to escape undetected. Just a few different shots would fix this right up. There's also some audio choices I find a bit odd, like that 'Luke has a moment' bit, but it has the Rise of Skywalker finale fanfare playing over it. It just feels a little too triumphant for such a somber moment. Same with the ending with Palpatine. Jovial music shouldn't be playing over Kylo being told he'll rule the galaxy as the new Emperor. Either change it to a sweeping Empire theme, then cut to credits, or something else entirely.

And I'll say, I'm speaking from the Definitive version, adding the Emperor scene at the end is a bit wrong. If I may suggest, if you ever decide to do another edit, to do what the Rekindled edit does, and add that hint to Kylo through the computer screens where Palpatine whispers, "Find me." It's an ominous edit, just if you're looking for inspiration. But other than that, this edit fixes this movie a lot. It's not perfect, I mean, there's no real saving this fundamentally broken movie, but mitigating the cancer swelling over this does help. Thank you DonKamillo.