Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back: Revisited

What else can I say that hasn't already been said by literally everyone else? This is a phenomenal piece of art, handled with nothing but care and love. The Empire Strikes Back, arguably the greatest SW film as well as the greatest sequel of all time has be beautifully remastered once more, only this time not a single frame was left untouched. Right off the bat, my favorite new (large) addition is, well honestly it's a tie between the battle of Hoth and the asteroid belt chase, both having this new sense of scale and tension never personally felt since the original 1980 cut. Even the small touches, from actually seeing individual snow flakes fly across the screen on the infamous frozen ice world, to subtle changes in sound fx heard in the rear sound channel. Did I mention how amazing and how crystal clear the entire film sounds? I didn't even have a surround sound system yet it all felt like a brand new experience. Same goes for the picture quality of course, and besides the exception of an occasional artifact or two in the corner and sometimes messy film grain, this is still easily the best the whole film looks after 37 years thanks to a complete overhaul of coloring that really does it justice. Even the newly added CG fits in, I'd say, 90% of the time and even sometimes looks absolutely gorgeous (Cloud City, like everything having to do with it). If you're a defender of the Special editions, then you'll love it even more, and even if you loathe the updated cuts of the OT, you'll probably love it as well since most of the bad additions are restored to there original states. I can't praise Adywan enough for his hard work, honestly if it weren't for him I wouldn't have that much of an interest in fan editing, so thank you very much!

As expected, this is nothing short of brilliant. I think the highest compliment I can give Adywan is that I didn't even notice 90% of the changes. This is what the Special Edition should have been. Everything is professionally done and it feels like a proper, commercial release, not an amateur fanedit. The only issue, and others have mentioned it, is that the video quality isn't as good as it should be for an 8GB HD file. Nevertheless, don't let that stop you from enjoying this amazing work of art.

This is my favorite movie of the OT, so i'm a bit suspect and was also very expectant to see Ady's magic in action.
AWESOME! He nailed it has usual, and made this so long waited edit finally ready. There are surely a few fixes and things he missed but with all of us fans support, we can help him improve even further for when he releases it with menus and all, like ANH:R.
I won't say much more, i only say this: GUYS, CHECK THE BEST STAR WARS EDIT YET, FOR YOURSELVES =)))

Thank you brother Ady for your devotion and excellent work. Never give up! The Force will always be with you, as will I. =)))

PS: Congratulations to all of Ady's team and supporters who helped him to bring this wonderful work into our lives. =)

Just the other day, I was saying to my stepson how I enjoyed Adywan's first effort, but I felt somewhat wistful about the fact that the task of completing the other films has been such a grand effort that he'll probably never be able to finish any more of them.

I could not be more happy to be wrong! After 9 years, Adywan's latest is upon us, and it does not disappoint.

In my review of the original, I noted that the changes were so small that I couldn't even notice them until I actually looked at his edit list and was blown away at the amount of effort put into it. Once again, that statement holds true. I just felt like I was watching "The Empire Strikes Back" with no changes, even though he's painstakingly restored this film, even reshooting certain elements himself in a few cases to make sure that viewers have the best possible experience.

Last time, Adywan somewhat controversially snuck in a couple of prequel elements to better tie the film series together as a whole (specifically, adding a battle droid on the Jawas' ship, and adding the "Anakin vs Obi-Wan" music for the Vader/Ben duel). Those were probably my favorite moments in that edit, but he got a lot of controversy for doing that, and later had to release a "Purist" edition. This time, Adywan has avoided any prequel elements altogether; even though I miss those little touches, he went for probably the wisest route -- a choice that may make this edit even more beloved than his last one.

I was glad to see that Ian McDiarmid's Emperor is still in place -- a change put in with Lucas' own Special Editions -- but that his looks were somehow made to resemble his appearance more from "Return of the Jedi" than "Revenge of the Sith," and that the scene was recut to match the original script instead of the Special Edition changes. (In the SE script, the Emperor reveals to Vader for the first time that his son is alive, and Vader is astonished -- even though he's already been openly and vocally pursuing "young Skywalker" for half the film up to that point! Now the conversation makes sense again.)

A few commenters have noted that Yoda has some different expressions in some scenes, but I honestly didn't even notice.

Thanks to Adywan and his team for delivering such a great gift to the Star Wars and fan editing community!

This must be the most waited fanedit of all time so it has a lot to live up to. I think it just does that and even exceeds all the expections.

There's so much added into the movie and some of it, well, most of it is Hollywood quality (and even better :) ). The Battle of Hoth is simply amazing with all its additions. Yoda has more personality with his new face expressions and now there are blaster blasts every time a stormtrooper is hit in the cloud city "battle". Now that's something that bothered me a bit... sometimes when a stormtrooper was hit, there was no effect. And talking about effects, there are tons of different kinds of effects going on background in this fanedit, and they sure are top quality.

There simply isn't any addition that bothered me in this edit. Well, I could say that Yoda was sometimes a bit goofy with his face expressions, heh. But mostly in a good way. This simply appears to be a flawless diamond.


My ONLY grief is the quality of the video (.mkv HD version). It appears to have a lot of film grain compared both to the blu-ray release or a 1080p rip of equal file size to this fanedit. It looks very mushy, on both, my projector and monitor. When it comes to HD, I want the image be clear. Now it seems there's always something going on even static backgrounds.

I'm not sure why exactly the video has so mushy look. The 720p shouldn't be the issue nor the bitrate. It should be high enough. But it looks like grain with low(ish) bitrate. Bad combination. Is it that the source material is different or does the color correction for example do something bad to the image quality when compiling? Or maybe something to do with the compile parameters. I'd like to hear some suggestions. And I encourage others do comparisons as well.

I hope the video quality gets better in the coming blu-ray release. It's not bad by all means but not just that great either.


I don't want to end this review with negativity so I simply say the fanedit itself is the best fanedit ever done. Period.