Morning TiMartin

Thanks for the link to this yesterday.

So I’ve watched it through and thought I’d give you some feedback on your excellent work:-

Firstly - The editing/soundmixing/quality surrounding all things technical is absolutely top notch!! It’s all Seamless and well executed. The new musical cues are also excellently mixed so a full 10/10 for this side of things, I can totally see that you’ve spent a lot of time just working this into a finsihed product. Amazing work!

Now onto the actual Story, now there are probably lots of little beats and changes that I’ll fail to mention. So what I would say is this, if I don’t mention it below then the changes were so seamless they escape all scrutiny for good or bad…so that in itself means it’s good, right? 😃

Ok, so:

Poe’s new entrance. EXCELLENT!

This is obviously quite an aggressive edit, and I’ve seen a few edits that have omitted the humour but kept the original idea of Poe stalling Hux.

This version where we jump straight in to Poe’s assault REALLY works. Especially as we don’t know it’s Poe until we get the close up of him ‘Wooooh’ing’ it’s a really solid ‘hero’ moment and really captures the character but also carries the breakneck pace from TFA over into the beginning of this movie.

Love it!

Luke’s saber drop. I really like it!

Technically it’s totally sound but obviously due to the limits of the source material, I think it’s just missing something. Whether it’s a pause, or a shot of the saber hitting the floor, I don’t know…I think the footage just needs to hold somewhere for another second or two to reflect the drop.

I know that this isn’t really possible considering the source material and that such a change takes some serious work in itself, let alone trying to make something else out of nothing.

The Kylo not firing/no bridge explosion edit. I like this, it works around the ‘Leia Poppins’ problem but from this point I think this choice is the start of revealing the compromises you had to make with regard to cutting out and subsequently around larger pieces of the story.
The Rose/Fin/Leia/Holdo cuts- The Resistance Storyline

Ok before I dig in to this, please let me tell you how (as above) all of the technical elements totally sell the edit, but from a story perspective the aggressiveness of this edit starts to make the overall movie feel like there are fundamental pieces missing (which of course they are) but I would say that the bits you have cut (although they are the most openly criticised creative decisions within the original cut, are so fundamental to the structure, now that they are gone, leave holes in the narrative that are too big to cut around) I totally acknowledge why and the job you have done to get it to where it is, is AMAZING. But I think the aggressiveness of this edit is probably a touch too much for it hold it together and not present new questions to the audience - Who? Why? What?

I know why you cut Rose and Fin and everything that relates to their trip to Canto-Bight (the lead in, the trip itself and the aftermath) and it’s all fine, but now we just have major characters that disappear for such a long part of the movie (this includes Leia, Poe and Holdo) that when we do catch up with them, as an audience member it’s jarring and everything about where, they’ve been, why they are evacuating, who Holdo is and why she might be important (because she is played by Laura Dern and all of a sudden gets such an massively dramatic death scene) left me with more questions than the frustrating part of the original plot relating to her inherited leadership and her relationship with Poe.

As I’ve said, I know why all this has been cut, I would just offer that maybe it’s just not fully possible to be this aggressive, structurally speaking?

None of this is meant as criticism of your work. I hope I’ve already explained enough above to outline that your editing skills are top drawer!.

I also totally acknowledge that maybe my own personal view on what constitutes the lesser of two evils between keeping the story elements that generate so much debate or the questions presented by their removal sadly falls in favour of the original cut?

However, I fully recognise that it’s all subjective, but maybe there’s a middle ground somewhere?

(Some of the most interesting edits I’ve seen to get around some of the issues with the original creative decisions or structure/pacing of the movie are:-

Luke using the Force the rescue Leia after she is sucked into space - although I’d like to this in better quality and with a less bombastic - more John Williams-esque score.
Edits that deal with Canto Bight in a ‘they get in and get out’ manner before heading off to meet the First Order in a similarly less bloated manner - These versions seem to keep the movie from having large holes where the audience then has to fill in the gaps, but also just get the worst parts of this movie out the way in a quicker and more efficient manner)

Snoke’s death

This worked, I’d argue it was a little too aggressive? But there is nothing here that doesn’t work. It’s definitely on the more aggressive side of what a lot of people have been doing with removing all of the telegraphing that Kylo is about to kill snoke, and maybe it lacks a little bit of the tension due to it occurring a lot quicker with less smack talk from Snoke, but it’s efficient and it certainly works.

The battle of Crait.

This was another part of the movie where I just felt that the omission of Fins sacrifice left a hole somewhere.

What you did worked from an editing point of view, but there was no crescendo to the action.

The Porgs on the Falcon

The reveal of Chewie as he roars is clearly cut a moment short in order to remove the Porg and it’s own battle cry.

The shorter cut is the one cut in this movie where I feel I noticed the edit itself due to the placement and pacing of the shot. A bit like Luke dropping the saber at the beginning, it’s the abruptness of the shot ending that makes it stand out.

The ending/Final shit

I really LOVE your new ending shot, just the remainder of the heroes on the Falcon, rather than the ‘broom kid’
The composition reminds me of the final shot of ROTJ, and so the iris out feels totally right here and is a lot better than the original version IMO

There is a LOT to love here, I love your pacing, to get all of the major/important beats into a concise 1.5hr movie is a tremendous feat, and you should be really proud of the job you have done, especially from a technical perspective.

There are some compromises within the structure and story, but this plays like a TLJ greatest hits, all of the fun, none of the dross with some serious improvements in there too.

I’d love to see your approach with a slightly more conservative cut just to balance it out a bit, but otherwise this is a really really solid and accomplished effort and I really enjoyed watching it.

Many thanks for all of your hard work, you are a really talented and accomplished editor to do what you did with it.

Thank you so much.

Kindest regards