Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi: Rekindled

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!

Rekindled deserves more reviews (praise), because it is currently the definitive TLJ fanedit.

Poppasketti's edit actually restored some of my faith in Rian Johnson as a director. A good faneditor should have a degree of respect for the source material he’s working with, and that's what we see here. Rather than fight against the director's vision, he brings added clarity to it.

I became interested in fanedits after learning about the work that had been done by various faneditors on the prequel trilogy, such as L8wrtr, Q2, Hal9000, seciors, and now Octorox. It has taken many years, but I believe we finally have a trilogy of good, at times great, films. In many ways I believe it has been a collaborative effort, That said, I didn’t think the sequel trilogy was as capable of being redeemed by a good edit, but poppasketti has shown that The Last Jedi is actually quite a good film when you apply a lot of polish.

I watched the edit twice, once by myself and once with my wife, who is a casual Star Wars fan. We both liked the Poe/Hux call exactly as poppasketti has done it. Star Wars should not be completely devoid of humor after all. On the other hand, cutting out Leia Poppins, Canto Bight, the showdown with Phasma, and the Rose Tico kiss, etc., is exactly what this film needed.

Humor has always been an essential part of Star Wars, and I think it’s fine as long as it’s not in excess. Rather, I think the far bigger problem the The Last Jedi has is the level of cynicism that Rian Johnson brought to it. Holdo is especially problematic. The movie tries to set up a character arc for Poe where he needs to learn...what? To blindly submit to authority? However, we can't ignore the fact that it was actually Holdo’s poor leadership that caused things to unravel in the first place. Poe is an established character from the previous film that is both charismatic and likeable. Holdo, on the other hand, comes out of nowhere to cut him down to size, because he's a man, I guess. I find the story involving Poe, Holdo, Finn, and Rose deeply unsatisfying. The message is confusing and heavy-handed. There is still more work to be done here.

I believe the faneditor who fixes Holdo will have fixed this entire movie. Portraying her as being as misguided in her actions as the others might be a workable fix, i.e., show how truly lost and desperate everyone--including Holdo--is without Leia (and Luke). Failure and disappointment are indeed core themes that Johnson wanted to include in this film, so why spare Holdo from that? (Her act of self-sacrifice could serve as a sort of redemption for her as well.) That way, the situation appears even more dire before Luke shows up to buy them some much needed time. As it stands, Holdo's positive portrayal seems very agenda driven to me, i.e., the wise purple-haired feminist who saves the day. Conversely, taking away some of her luster might serve to cast Poe in a better light--a character we actually care about.

I think this is a great fanedit overall. Nevertheless, I think keeping broomboy is problematic for a number of reasons. Why didn’t Rey (who is apparently the most powerful Jedi of all time without putting in any effort) realize she was force sensitive until she was an adult, yet broomboy just somehow happens to know? Like all the Canto Bight scenes in general, Broomboy just comes across as a little too...Disney.

Truthfully, I don’t think we’ll get the definitive TLJ edit until after Rise of Skywalker releases (poppasketti believes Broomboy may factor into TRoS, which is partly why he kept him in). Until then, this edit of TLJ is canon for me, so thanks to poppasketti. I know film/fan editing is arduous work.

When the Last Jedi came out it pretty much killed my love for Star Wars. Poppasketti's fanedit Rekindled did just that, it rekindled my love and passion for this franchise. Who knew changing a few things could do that? He made filet mignon out of cat food.

I absolutely loved how he handled the Finn and Rose side-quest and battle on Crait. What about Leia's space adventure? It never happened! The lightsabre toss is still there but it seemed more serious this time around due to a musical change.

As much as I enjoyed this, there were still a few changes I would like to see if a second version comes out.

1. Poe's line of not recongizing Holden. She's second in charge and has a reputation. How does he not know what she looks like? That would be like a soldier in the army not knowing who the Vice President was.

2. I would remove the entire Yoda scene. He destroys thousand years old texts and then makes a mockery of the entire belief system. It feels too much like a dig at Star Wars fans and religion.

3. In Luke and Leia's scene he tells her he can't save Ben. She says she knows her son is gone. Then he says no one is ever truly gone. Cut that line and go straight to him holding her hand. He contradicts himself.

4. At the end Leia says today the rebellion is reborn but Luke said the exact same thing like 2 minutes earlier. I would leave Luke's talk with Kylo but cut Leia's line.

5. The ghost dice really bother me. I would either have them not disappear or not be shown at all.

That's my wish list of changes but this version really is great. I highly recommend it and look forward to any future edits he makes of this or other movies.

Congratulation Poppasketti, this is the best edit of Star Wars 8 !

The film is now watchable and almost pretty good (despite the little weakness in the story), nothing makes me out of the film, really you did an amazing job ! All the silly humor is gone, luke is now not a depressed old man but a jedi who lost faith. The death of Snoke is perfect, the casino is just as long as needed, the mama joke is not embarassing, no more BB8 in the walker,...

Here is some suggestions for the v2 to be perfect :

maybe you can inspire of the edit (anti cringe cut) to avoid luke tossing the saber. In this edit, luke is giving back the saber to rey (they reverse the video).

In the anticringe cut also, the flashback between luke and kylo ren is better : luke is not trying to kill kylo (it's too much in contradiction with the character of luke) but just stand near him and is attacked by kylo in response. Maybe you should add this part in your V2

I suggest you also to remove the ending with the kids which is WTF, and end the movie in the millenium falcon with all the characters.

Otherwise, everything is good and i'm starting to enjoy the film !

Well done !

The pendulum has swung when it comes to TLJ for me. I have liked it, hated it, respected it, and now I love it, every second of it.

For a while this was my go-to, but now whenever I watch it there are things I miss. For example, poppasketti took out the Canto Bight segment which, while a very sound decision tonally and in terms of pacing, I think it compromises the movie a bit, thematically, and it's not a leap I'm willing to make. I love the prequels so I don't really mind the tonal shift - I think the camp is most welcome. But there's obviously a lot of good in the edit.

The change to Finn's suicide run is most welcome, as is the trimmed SNL phone call at the beginning of the movie, and many other little cuts throughout, It's still a superb edit and technically impeccable, I might even make a hybrid between this and the theatrical. But at this point in my life I love the movie too much and think this edit unfortunately takes too much away. I would, however, still recommend this to anyone that isn't completely happy with the original movie,