I just watched the first film of Smudger’s series here and I have to say, for what you set out to do (Season to movie adaptation), this edit was seriously done perfectly. I don’t think there is any way to break down this whole season into a better movie than how you did it. From the editing tricks to making the storyline make perfect sense from start to finish, to the added worldbuilding through Echo’s flashback, indistinguishable small uses of AI lines, and more, I was never left confused about the overall structure of the plot.
Technically, the edit is in a near-perfect state as well. No distractions from soundtrack changes, the quality was great, and I didn’t see any visual bugs. The only tiny thing was I thought some of the added wipe transitions were a little fast, the one that stood out the most was when they’re traveling back from the snow world in the opening scenes, I believe the original was a slow fade to black but here it was changed to a quick wipe. I think I noticed a couple of times where the transitions were altered and the wipes flew by too quickly, but this was quite minor overall.
If you are looking to consume a season of the Bad Batch in one sitting, this is absolutely 100% the best way possible to do it. You don’t need an episode guide flow chart, or timestamps to skip to the ends of certain episodes when the main plot moves, just watch Smudger’s edits! You will get the series’ core storyline in the best presentation possible.
While I do think that this is a 10/10 for accomplishing a quality Season-to-movie goal, I do have to point out that there are some inescapable narrative challenges with such a format. Particularly in the development of relationships between characters, there is just no possible way to show their bond grow over time when considering the need to tell this story in ~3 hours max. Omega’s relationship with the Batch did not initially feel like a natural growth, as obviously, Smudger has to cut a large number of side adventures in order to preserve this single movie format. I could definitely tell as a viewer that I was missing something because Omega bonded with certain members of the Batch way too quickly and it felt like I had missed the reason why. For example, since we primarily jump from Episode 1 almost immediately to Episode 8, we’ve missed about 2 hours of stories where Omega connects with certain members of the Batch through these side adventures (and yes, many of these filler episodes are indeed boring and do not impact the events of the main storyline whatsoever, but they do serve to pace out the bond formed between characters as each episode does usually contain a moment or two of growth). So when we jump through half a season, Omega suddenly out of nowhere shows extreme care and concern for Wrecker when he is getting his chip removed and calls him “My friend”, even though they have not shared any character moments together and appear like strangers to a new viewer. This is again noticeable when Omega says to Wrecker, “Can you show me how to arm this kind?” as she points to an explosive, referring to a previous episode where Wrecker and Omega go through a trial in disarming a bomb together, but since it’s a filler episode that was cut and we don’t see it in this movie, this character moment is lost but as a viewer I can still tell she was referencing something I never saw. Again, this isn’t Smudger’s fault, it’s an impossible challenge to solve in a Season-to-movie format, but for people watching TBB the first time through this edit, you should be aware that characters do have quite a bit of bonding that occurs outside the main storyline that you won’t be able to see. I noticed similar trends with the pacing of which Crosshair searches for TBB as well, but these missing character moments were the only storyline distraction as the actual events of the main plot work perfectly in the way you’ve structured it.
With that said, I do again want to stress this is seriously a 10/10 edit for the goal it tries to accomplish. You cannot edit a season into a better movie than how Smudger has done it, so for anyone looking for a single sit-down TBB experience, or wanting a refresher before watching Season 3, this is 100% the perfect edit for you. Thanks, Smudger, for all the hard work! It was perfect for what I needed as a recap as I tried to catch up on this show.
Thanks so much for the detailed review. It’s great getting quality feedback on these projects.
Thanks for the wipe feedback. I tend to vary the type of wipe rather than the duration, for some reason it never occurred to me to vary the timing. I’ll look at doing that going forwards.
I agree about the loss of character moments, and as you say, it’s a necessary evil with this format as a lot of those moments occurred in “filler” episodes. My main goal with these is streamlining plot, and as a result the character moments often have to go. The season 2 edit manages that side of things a little better.