War of the Stars II: The Future in Motion

I didn't watch the first part yet, so I came to this fully fresh and unprepared.
---Spoiler-warning----
The first half and a little bit more of this edit are brimming with creativity and I was quite flashed by it, the second half is more like the original until the end that is, where Luke turned to the evil side.

I think that end is awesome in a sense of "What if"-scenario, in fact I would have made it even more evil by preventing the rebels from blowing up the death star and being completely destroyed. That is a pure evil end, that I made a few months ago for my edit, but then got the creeps and changed it back to a good ending. But in this edit it would have worked nicely.

TMBTM has amazing special-effect-skills: How he turned the emperor into a ghost, or the red eyes on Vader, the falling down of his ship, or making Luke enter Jabba's palace alongside Leia and many more instances of special-effects that he created for this, is simply amazing.

Narrative-wise I love how he changed the tree-vision to make Luke enter Lando's city before he actually gets there. As a what if-scenario I also love how he made Vader not being Luke's father. and how he made him show more his jealousy of the emperor: "You are weak old man"...

But there was a thing I didn't like and that was how the bounty hunter died, special-effect-wise pretty good, but the explosion could have/would have waken up Jabba's palace. But that's a minor point.

Also I missed Leia strangling Jabba, but that is personal preference, the narrative worked for this as is.

I loved the use of the deleted scene of the sandstorm, and I liked the use of subtitling of R2D2 to bring in some humour.

Like already said the second half dragged a bit, because the first half was so full of new ideas and changes, while the second half seemed to be more like the theatrical version, so that one expected more during that phase, until the great evil (that could be even more evil) end that is.

I've heard that the first part was grindhoused, I think that would have helped here as well with the integration of the deleted scenes that have lots of scratches.

Maybe there will be a version 2 of this to make the evil ending, even more evil, and to grindhouse this and to use a bluray-source to get the most out of it.

But to redo all those special-effects would make it probably a very hard and long work, so I can understand if TMBTM don't want to endure that.

---Spoiler-warning-end---

I highly recommend this edit for the brimming creativity of the first half, the great new ending and the masterful use of special effects. I downgraded audio/video-quality, because on my 42"-TV the picture looked flat as it is only SD.

Edit: I misunderstood something crucial about the bountyhunter and therefore amended that point in my review.
Edit2: After watching "War of the stars 1", I change my opinion and welcome TMBTM's decision to do without the grindhousing-effect.

War of the Stars 2 - The Future in Motion is another stellar fan edit from Mask, which only suffers because its inevitable comparision to its predecessor, War of the Stars.

In the original, Mask's heavy use of degraded footage allowed for the inclusion of imperfect video and sound in all editing choices and extra footage. Here, a more serious attempt at filmmaking is approached so when extra footage is markedly bad, it is jarring, not charming.

This film also suffers due to it's run time. Yes, the original movies all hover at about 2 hours. But here, the narrative has too many crests and valleys as it transitions from the Episode 5 material to Episode 6.

These complaints though, are really the only substaintial faults that can be leveled against this. Outside of them, the film is amazing.

Mask has done a brilliant job weaving dialog, scenes and nearly 100 unique special effects shots to create yet another ingenious reimagining of Star Wars. Suprises present themselves from its opening sequence all the way to the closing moments of the movie. This is truly indicative of the magic that comes with fan editing as scenes we're all familiar with become innudated with new meaning. I imagine that had Lucas had the same ideas Mask has had, maybe we'd have a different Star Wars altogether.

Like War of the Stars, this film isn't meant to replace one's OT of Star Wars, but it is a must-have compliment to it.

I know that, 6 or so years from now, looking back at Episodes 7, 8 and 9, I'll be thinking about what creative spin Mask is going to mold out of it all. And...I'll be looking forward to watching it!

This is, possibly, my favorite fan edit of all time. (It gets stiff competition from Slark's Doc Savage, but that's another story for another day.)

Beyond being a great edit, it is also a fantastic film in it's own right. It takes everything that is good about the Star Wars universe and mashes it up against everything that is good about bloody, messy, self-indulgent cinema.

Without giving too much away, Bobba Fett plays a much bigger role in this film than he did in the originals, and that's Awesome.

There were a few scenes where the Audio was different enough from the vocals to be distracting, but not distracting enough to detract from my enjoyment of the film. A conversation between Luke and Yoda comes to mind, but it is easy enough to overlook. In fact the only real moment that suffers heavily from this is Leah's last line. ("It's not like that")


I can live with the flaws, and I've seen worse in commercial movies (especially when they try to bowdlerize expletives for television) so I won't dock him too many points for that.



The story itself is fresh. It is surprising, it catches your attention. Some of the choices that were made are so inspired that I found myself wondering why Lucas hadn't done them to begin with.


Simply put, this edit took some of my favorite moments from the history of cinema and combined them in a way that makes perfect sense, to tell a dark and gruesome story that left me wanting more.


And the ending, well, that was a hell of a punch.

May 30, 2012 @ 9:41 pm

So many good things going on here. I thought the last part was the best, some mind blowing awesomeness going on, story-wise and editing wise. A real treat, just for us.

I think a rating should be based on everything about the edit, and not everything is perfect, not because the editor fails, but because this material can’t be perfect. Can’t rate the final product higher than 8/10.

Highly recommended, I know I’ll be watching this again.

Update sep 9 2012

With the new rating categories, this can be judged in a different manner. Enjoyment up to 9.

*Nothing in this review is meant as a personal attack on the editor. This is just one viewer’s opinions on this fanedit*

****** WARNING SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW *********

As usual I’ve avoided reading any reviews for this edit. I followed the In-the-Works thread but didnt know much more going in then that there were going to be deleted scenes reincorporated and special effects added by TMBTM.

So I went in with War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused not fresh in my mind at all! (having watched it only once quite a while back). It was nice to have a brief recap at the beginning. And then bam right away, this is not your average Star Wars movie! Awesome effects work and using old anakins face instead of Hayden Christensan!

All the Dagobah scenes were probably my favorite part of the edit. Changing Han and the Millenium Falcon to having light speed (instead of the “no light speed” and cloaking device talk) was very cool.

Effects work: I can only imagine how much time and effort went into all these effects so all I can say is great work. I did feel that some worked better than others. I was most blown away by old anakin on the operating table and Boba Fett in the dining room at Bespin (with the removal of Darth Vader from the scene). Also really liked the effect with Darth Vader eyes and the warped screen effect when Darth Vader was doing force chokes. And nice to see Ian McDiarmid in the hologram in place of the other actor who they used as the Emperor in ESB.

Voice/Dialogue replacement: For me this was hit or miss. There was some great Yoda stuff. i.e. the change in where “that is why you fail” comes in. And there were some that luckily enough matched perfectly (or you did effects work with the lip movements). Other places I understand dialogue replacement was necessary to the story you were setting out to tell, but it did take me out of the experience a bit but I commend you at trying out changing the lip movements with effects.

Music: The 80s style guitar rock stuff was kinda cool, and definitely gave a different feel to the Hoth scene with Luke riding the Taun Taun. But part of me didn’t like the jumping around of the music from Star Wars themes to rock to Gustav Holst (although they all worked well).

Deleted Scenes: I know that the original source/conditions of most of the scenes were not that great and TMBTM did the best he could so I can’t fault him on the quality of the scene. For the most part I liked the inclusion of the deleted scenes.

Some effects and/or deleted scenes that didnt work for me were a few in Jabba’s Palace. Although having Luke and Leia (disguised in bounty hunter geat) did look really great. But mostly the thermal detonator rolling on the ground and Boba Fett appearing to look out of a door way at Leia and Luke, these shots just didn’t look that great to me.

Entertainment wise this edit was a blast to watch. Maybe the most fun I’ve had watching a fanedit just seeing how TMBTM changed the storyline of Star Wars so cleverly and creatively!

So rating this is rather tricky. I rarely give 10s (I’ve only rated two edits 10s). But again as mentioned above in my review, some of the voice replacement didn’t work for me, some of the new effects and added shots didn’t work for me. And while there’s no rule that says the tone has to be consistent in any movie, in my personal opinion the edit would have benefited from being a bit more consistent in tone. It felt sort of all over the place, and maybe that’s what TMBTM was going for.

I give this a 9/10 A very entertaining edit and very very creative from an editing and storytelling standpoint.