War of the Stars II: The Future in Motion

What can I say? TMBTM played a blistering main set with TWOTS, answered the call for an encore and blew the audience away with TWOTS2. We leave dazed and awed, jaws agape over the ride we just took.

This is what fanediting is all about.

April 22, 2012 @ 5:04 am

Watched this for the second time today. I’ll try to keep my thoughts brief and not spoil any surprises.

War of the Stars II succeeds in its own right and is a wonderful follow up to the first edit. There were many times I was blown away by how TMBTM changed things. The opening sequence lets the viewer know right away that this is a sequel to WAR OF THE STARS, not just a fanedit of ESB and ROTJ.

I personally loved that this was not a Grindhouse movie and that some of the added scenes and effects didn’t have the same consistent look throughout. It added to the mythology of it all, as if the director of this movie blew his budget on two sequences so had to go cheap with some other effects. And maybe even the original director never fully finished the movie and some scenes were re-shot by someone else.

TMBTM has succeeded in making a truly great sequel to War of the Stars without falling into the trap of making a carbon copy of the first one.

A lot of hard work went into this making this and it paid off well. 10/10.

April 30, 2012 @ 3:12 am

***SPOILERS***

TMBTM, you’re a genius. A genius. This was probably the most brilliant edit I’ve ever seen. Personally, I thought it was a ton better than the first WOTS, which I only gave 7/10 (maybe it was just not for me). I was wowed the whole time I watched this.

Technical quality – 10/10 – it was a tad fuzzy and some added scenes had worse quality than others, but given the type of edit this was it did not affect the viewing experience at all.

Editing – 10/10 – that rotoscoping and 90 new SFX shots… WOW. Just wow. I don’t know HOW you did the stuff you did, but it turned out wonderfully. My jaw was dropped the entire time I watched the before and after video – some of it was stuff that I didn’t even notice when I was watching because it was so seamless.

Entertainment – 10/10 – as I said, this is probably the cleverest edit ever. The new opening explaining Vader’s survival is just beautiful. Then there’s a marathon of one jaw-dropper after another: the new snow creatures on Hoth, Yoda’s new entrance, the wonderfully color-corrected deleted scenes, the new sequences with Boba Fett, the revised Tatooine rescue, Boba’s explosive new death, and the ending… oh, the ending… I’ve already given a couple things away in this review, but I don’t want to give this away… all I can say is that it was splendid – the rotoscoping was perfect, and it was just a brilliant idea in general… WOW. Wow, wow, wow. There were plenty of other things that amazed me, so many that I can’t even remember them all to list them. There were only a couple issues I saw: one, sometimes the new footage looked too obviously animated, but that’s ok. And sometimes the new lines did not go along right with the lip movements. There were only 4-5 times where this really stood out. As long as you were doing that much rotoscoping, maybe you could have just modified their lip movements a little bit. But it’s ok. Overall, this is still a stunning edit, two hours of sheer amazing. Thank you, TMBTM, for this fabulous fanedit experience. It was crazy insane awesome.

Presentation – 10/10 – cool cover art. The menu was nice and creative. The before and after montage was really interesting. Good job overall here.

Overall – 10/10

When I first saw this edit several months ago, I must confess that I was rather nonplussed by it. The original Star Wars trilogy is so masterful in its plot structure that this mash-up of EMPIRE and JEDI seemed nearly heretical to me. And as enjoyable as it was to see the deleted scenes from the Blu-ray in this film, they did slow down the overall pacing of the edit.

However, as time passes, my respect for WotS II has only increased, even as my opinion of other fan edits remains unchanged. There's so much creativity and imagination brimming from this release, it's impossible not to love.

While many fan edits are attempts to correct errors in the film, as with the many prequel edits, this film plays simply as a "What if?" This is what a Star Wars sequel might have looked like in an alternate universe.

As such, The Man Behind the Mask expertly weaves in footage from the other movies, such as REVENGE OF THE SITH, to create a wholly different viewing experience. He even adds in his own special effects to help tell the story, with astonishingly believable results (that is, it looks like this is the way the movie was supposed to play in the first place).

His alternate version of what happened to Darth Vader after the Death Star; his variation on the Wampa attack; the alternate arrival at Dagobah; his version of the tree vision; the way the scene *actually* plays out in his version; Luke's temptation in the Emperor's throne room; and the corker twist at the end -- every part of those scenes is a work of genius.

If you're a fan of STAR WARS, by all means check out this alternate take. It's a remix that you won't soon forget.

TMBTM is a crazy genius. Lightning really has struck twice with his The War Of The Stars treatments of the Star Wars OT. The apparent ease he’s breathed new life into 3 films (now edited down to 2) that I’ve seen hundreds of times, and loved since I was a kid, is nothing short of breathtaking. They’re Star Wars… but not as you know it.
The War of the Stars II – The Future in Motion picks up exactly where the first film finished and takes things to a whole new level. You can’t say what’s undeniably great about it without spoilers and this is one film you really don’t want to spoil for people. I watched this with a smile planted firmly on my face from beginning to end… and then did it all again straight after. For me, this was as special as the first time I saw the original Star Wars back in 1977.

The mixed sources mean the video and audio quality varies throughout but it’s never distracting and, aesthetically, it feels perfect for this presentation. I love that it’s based on the original theatrical releases of The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, complete with the model shots and matte lines George Lucas has sought to erase from history. It’s gloriously retro and exactly the kind of thing I’d have been renting on video every weekend when I was 12. The new fx shots are really well done, some are pretty much perfect and others are deliberately hokey looking, either way it works.
And even though I nearly cried laughing… I’ll never look at a force choke the same way again

Normally the top score would be 10 out of 10. This one goes to 11