Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back: Revisited

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.

Brilliant!

(Spoilers for this edit)
It was a long wait, but The Empire Strikes Back: Revisited is finally here. This is a great fan edit loaded with lots of new surprises. The battle of Hoth is phenomenal. The enhanced FX throughout the film are so seamless that shots will slip by you as if they had been that way all along (The Force Awakens bunk nestled on the back wall of the Falcon is just one example). Two new embellishments I really liked were the Snowtroopers repealing down from the AT-ATs and Mcquarrie's giant white spider from his early concept art of Degobah. The physical models used in place of the outdated background mats looked fantastic. Every laser bolt and light saber is gorgeous. This is the best version of one of the greatest movies ever made. Adywan has a dream of doing the revisited treatment on episodes 1 through 6. If you are a Star Wars fan, after watching this edit that will be your dream too. Get this edit, watch it, enjoy it, then be sure to donate at least the price of a movie ticket to help support Adywan and his crew.