TL;DR:
Cut about 30 minutes out but also inserted most of Siege of Mandalore arc, giving it a runtime just under 3 hours.
OP:
Today, I would like to present a fan edit that I’ve been tweaking and re-editing again and again and again until I finally am 100 percent satisfied with it.
Basically, I started with the New Canon Cut of ‘Revenge of the Sith’ by NFBisms as a solid foundation.
Then, I cut most of the Battle of Coruscant so it seems like Anakin and Obi-Wan head straight to General Grievous’ battle cruiser.
Also cut a couple of quick shots of Grievous so that the audience ends up seeing him at about the same time that Ani and Obi do.
Also cut about 30 minutes of scenes after Anakin’s secret reunion with Padme at the end of Palpatine’s rescue, leading up to Anakin’s talk with Palpatine at the Galaxies Opera House.
I cut all of that footage because I’d always felt that those scenes were way too dialog-heavy without actually moving the plot forward; in this way, I feel the pacing is much better.
1251isthetimethati, a Reddit user, has a video that helped me download all of the scenes from the Siege of Mandalore arc from ‘The Clone Wars.’
Unfortunately, because I really wanted the intro titles to be seamless and everything, I didn’t include the intro to the Mandalore arc.
However, I did include it as a post-credit scene of another fan edit I did, Episode 2: Labyrinth of Evil.
In this edit, I did my best to integrate the Mandalore scenes with the original ROTS scenes while also keeping up the pacing, which means I kind of had to snip off some footage toward the end of a sequence, etc, but I also used wipe transitions where I felt they would work well.
You may also notice that Anakin’s assignment to spy on Palpatine is basically given off-screen, again, for pacing reasons.
There was a point where I was looking for the end of Obi-Wan’s fight with Grievous, and I realized it occurs after the scene where Palpatine reveals himself as a Sith to Anakin.
To me, such timing feels out of place, so I moved the end of that fight to an earlier point where we see Grievous escaping on his motor bike.
I mean, sure, Obi defeats Grievous before Anakin informs Palpatine that Obi has engaged Grievous, but a fight can escalate more quickly than Ani can receive a play-by-play of it.
Toward the end of the credits, I inserted Obi-Wan’s message from Rebels.
At the end of the credits, we can also see the final transformation of Darth Vader.
Another note: It must seem insane, how many times I’ve edited this film, but I feel that I’m finally 100 percent satisfied with it.