Having watched its components, I’ve now watched Smudger’s second movie. As again it’s extremely technically competent, this time merging the capture of Gunray, most of the Boba Fett arc, the Malevolence arc, and a scene from the Zillo Beast. He’s created new dialogues and new interpretations.

I hope it’s clear that I have the utmost respect for Smudger - I’ve always been a big advocate of his work and uploaded them all recently so they could be more widely enjoyed.

But I need to be analytical here, with the intention of releasing (in my subjective opinion) the best experience. This second movie, while unquestionably brilliant, illustrates those two main issues you face when one adheres to the cinematic approach.

Firstly, whilst it interlaces (in a very polished way) a lot of storylines, they weren’t designed to run together so there isn’t a central momentum to the movie and to me it felt like a sequence of unconnected events, which got a little mentally tiring over the full two hours.

Secondly, while it uses mainly decent arcs and is full of good moments, the third act is malevolence, whose final act is quite goofy, which really takes the wind out of the episode’s sails. As far as I’m concerned, an arc is only as good as its worst (unavoidable) content.

I must emphasise, that if you do have the goal of turning TCW into movies, that I believe that Smudger’s are the best that could possibly be produced. I’m simply believing that there’s a justifiable case for an alternative approach.

I think I’m probably hammering this point home a bit too much - I know I’ve said it plenty before - but this is a braindump as I review the series and other approaches in order to load it into my head as completely as possible. I’ll be returning to these thoughts as I work through the edits, and I’d also like them here for people to consider and react to.