Review Detail

QUALITY

I watched the largest file size available and it looked excellent. No complaints. Surround sound too - yay!


VISUAL EDITING

No issues.


AUDIO EDITING

Virtually flawless. Two things stood out to me, minor though they are:

- 55:22 - sounds like two different parts of the score start to clash here, though looking at the cutlist i'm not sure exactly what might have been changed.
- 57:30 - it's a nitpick, but something about the cut here doesn't work for me. I feel like maybe it's a foley thing. The crashing rocks in the birds-eye shot are loud, but then when we cut to the closer shot we don't really hear their impact in the water


NARRATIVE

This isn't a radical edit. There are lots of changes, yes, but compared to many other edits the narrative and main thematic thrust is fairly intact. This is a linear take, with a couple of deleted scenes added in, undesirable elements reduced as much as possible and the optional addition of (very) subtle Palpatine foreshadowing. Some thoughts:

- The lightsaber toss now comes across better for having been rescored. Quite surprising how effective this is really.
- Luke's daily routine is better, but should be cut entirely IMO. It just feels unneeded and kills the pacing. I especially think this is needed given the addition of his grieving scene.
- The way things were edited to avoid Rose intervening with Finn is nothing short of aces. It feels completely natural and it's the only time I've seen it done convincingly. Great job.
- The added force whispers and hood effect in the cave are extremely subtle, to the point where I'm not sure I would have noticed if I hadn't been aware of those changes beforehand, but they are well integrated and some foreshadowing is better than no foreshadowing. By far, the most effective and inspired addition is the radio communication at the end.

There are virtually no narrative issues introduced as a result of the editing process, which says a lot about how bloated this film is. The only thing that felt off to me was possibly unavoidable, which was Finn and Rose's escape following the explosion. It's just hard to avoid this feeling abrupt and like there is footage missing. But this is minor in the grand scheme of things.


ENJOYMENT

Subjectively, I still would like more done at some stage and maybe I'll get round to doing my own cut sometime. There's still a couple of moments of awkward humour, but I also think the film is a bit muddled with its themes. Poe has an arc where he is meant to respect leadership, but Holdo treats him like filth. Not to say his mutiny is justified, but Holdo is painted in a bad light and then we're presented with a "twist" that she was right all along. Well, how about a little communication next time? And less belittling of your crew. She may have had admirable hidden motives, but she still showed poor leadership.

Then you have Yoda, whose entire scene, aside from a pep talk, is to further drive home to the audience that the old is dying and something new is coming. It's the end of the jedi - hence the burning of jedi texts. And yet Luke contradicts this completely in his speech at the end of the film - huh?

Nothing in Canto Bight is worthwhile IMO (including all themes involved) and it would be much better to skip the entire escapade and have Finn and Rose go onto the ship themselves without the codebreaker. I saw this done in Sobo film's edit and thought it was quite inspired, even if the technical execution was sadly not there.

Lastly, I think the only thing cut that I quite like is the boulder gag with the caretakers. It always makes me laugh.

I think if I did ever get around to my own edit, I would have to use this as a reference point because it's easily the best edit of TLJ that I have seen to date, both in terms of editing choices and execution. This is a very polished piece of work. High visual quality in surround sound with 99% of editing going by entirely unnoticed. It's what I love to see!