Okay, here’s a more in-depth “review” as I promised. Bear in mind that this is coming from someone that mostly liked TLJ and the direction it took, but felt that it had some major problems that prevented it from being great.
This is a fantastic edit. Really. All of the major changes work amazingly well, and some of them even manage to fix a scene I would have just yanked out of the movie completely or otherwise altered more drastically than you’ve proven necessary. Luke’s saber toss now has emotional weight to it since it isn’t played for laughs through the music, and it feels like it was always meant to be scored that way; the “milking” scene now works as Johnson intended it to without being undercut by the bizarre shots of Luke actually drinking the milk; the over-the-top CGI nonsense of Finn vs. Phasma and BB-8 in the walker are seamlessly extracted and not missed in the slightest; and your version of Finn’s suicide run is simply perfect.
And, of course, Leia’s spacewalk - thank you so much for getting rid of the one scene that consistently takes me out of the film in such a seamless way!
Anything else that’s been taken out, I didn’t miss. There are bits here and there that I still wouldn’t have left in the way you have, but they aren’t nearly as much of an issue when those are now the worst moments, rather than being surrounded by even worse stuff. I prefer Hal’s treatment of the “prank call” moment, and I’d also have kept his removal of the “cowl” line and the line about Rey’s parents being dead, though I understand your rationale for keeping all of these things and taken in the context of your edit as a whole, they don’t bug me as much as they normally do.
I also would probably restore the BB-8 hologram deleted scene after Holdo’s “Stick to your post and follow my orders,” or stick a Luke/Rey segment between the first Holdo scene and this deleted scene plus Rose’s introduction (which might help address another issue I had that I’ll talk about in a bit), but that’s mostly personal preference and a desire to keep as much Finn material as possible with Canto Bight being mostly gone.
Technically, the edit is flawless. I noticed no harsh audio transitions, the video quality is top-notch, and all of the VFX work (both that which is new to this edit like BB-8 during the Star Destroyer escape and everything surrounding Rose’s crash and Finn’s suicide run, and holdovers from Hal’s edit like the caretaker removal) is seamless and professional. On that level, you’d never know this was fan edited at all, and that’s a massively important thing to me when it comes to fan edits.
There’s one little bit, when Leia is brought away on a stretcher after the bridge explosion, where the music left over from the “spacewalk” scene wraps up that feels a little out of place, but it’s very minor and I don’t know if that can be “fixed” anyway, so I’m not taking any points off for that one. 😉
Now, I do think a couple of the cutaways back to the fleet seem awkwardly short, particularly the one just after Luke’s first lesson, which I think would feel less choppy if it was placed immediately after the Maz scene. But I also think this is largely due to cutting Canto Bight down as much as you (and Hal) have, so it’s difficult to address this without throwing off basically everything else structurally. I think, as I said before, that restoring the BB-8 hologram deleted scene leading directly into Rose’s introduction, and placing a Luke/Rey island segment between Holdo’s first scene and it, could address this, though that means shifting every other fleet-to-Rey cutaway from then until at least Canto Bight, so I don’t know if it’s something you want to toy with for what’s really a very minor thing that might not even stand out on repeat viewings.
TLJ is, like ROTS, a difficult, disjointed movie structurally, so don’t take the last paragraph as a major criticism, or as something that should prevent you from releasing this as your final version. The theatrical movie has structural issues too, and cutting stuff/reinstating deleted material only adds to the “house of cards” feeling when it comes to how the movie is put together.
As I said, these are all minor issues, and I don’t believe they should prevent you from releasing “Rekindled” as is, because as I said, it’s very very good, and I’m not sure how easily these things can be addressed, or if they even need to be. This type of thing is probably better saved for a V2 down the road after a lot more people have had their eyes on it, assuming it’s something you want to address at all. As it stands, it’s not hindering my enjoyment of this edit, just something in the back of my mind during a couple scenes.
Excellent job! Yours is now the only non-Hal Star Wars edit that’s replaced the “official” version for me. 😃