Hi Hal, stopping by here to leave some of my thoughts on this edit (I’ll do the same for the other 5 of the 9000 Saga too).
I really enjoyed this edit. Considering the amount of unnecessary, distracting, or overly goofy stuff that pervades TPM, I was really impressed by how seamless the edit felt as a whole; it almost never felt like there was something missing, and the whole film came across as much less grating. Impressive stuff!
In terms of specific aspects, one of my particular favourite parts was the rearranged finale; removing the goofiness and giving Anakin more agency makes it feel a lot more compelling and genuinely tense, and for the first time ever I found myself rooting for Jake Lloyd’s Anakin. I also loved the new opening crawl; so much clearer than before.
The smaller changes throughout were also great to see; I particularly like the midi-chlorian-less conversation between Anakin and Qui-Gon on the landing platform, which now felt more genuine and endearing. The cut from Jar-Jar going “More? More did you spake?” to the entire droid army advancing on Naboo was a great transition. The couple of deleted scenes on Tatooine were also an effective addition.
Though this edit will probably serve as a replacer of TPM for me, I do feel that it suffers from the core problem of TPM itself; that the film is just very insubstantial. It struck me when watching that if you remove the goofiness, simplify the political nonsense and cut distracting scenes/sequences, it leaves the film with very little meat. It’s also incredibly fast-paced, giving TROS a run for its money. That isn’t really a fault of your edit so much as with the film itself. I’d say the only jarring element is that removing the Otoh Gunga sequence makes it feel weird for Jar-Jar to be tagging along with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, as his introduction gets so heavily truncated. Nonetheless, the sequence as a whole is not missed from the film, making the first act feel far more efficient.
As a whole, I enjoyed Cloak of Deception, and will probably return to it whenever I do my next marathon!