IlFanEditore,
It was only at the beginning of March when I had stumbled across your page for the first time and so, after reading through your list of changes, I was ecstatic and knew I had to check out your ROTJ Renewed. I reached out and you were prompt, very friendly and happy to share it; now that I finally had the chance to sit my butt down and watch your edit from beginning to end… I absolutely enjoyed it!
Of course, it certainly helped going into this with the proper mindset that this is more of a “conceptual edit” and still a WIP, as opposed to a fully-polished and completed edit (as there are indeed some rough cuts around [most notably while the Emperor’s shuttle is now landing at the beginning - instead of Vader’s], certain compositing effects do stand out, some color/picture quality inconsistencies, etc.), BUT, you already know all this as you acknowledged it beforehand.
You and I share a lot of the same or similar ideas of where to possibly improve this film and so it was a delight to actually watch them in action and see how well these worked out (some scenes I even had to watch more than once to be sure). Some examples are: I loved the reorganizing/trimming of scenes during Jabba’s Palace, or cutting out the unnecessary “soap opera” drama between Han/Leia on the bridge at the Ewok village (that was executed perfectly!), or even the blink-and-you-miss-it removal of Vader falling on his ass after Luke kicks him down the stairs (we didn’t need to see that - I’ve always been a proponent for Vader appearing stronger overall as a character in certain instances in ROTJ, no matter how big or minor). There were even some other ideas I hadn’t thought of before but it was like, “Wow, that worked so well!”, such as the music you added while Luke is in his X-Wing and on his way to see Yoda, or the audience seeing Ben’s Force ghost already standing there when Luke initially sees him (so you cut out Ben walking through the vines before finally coming to Luke) - those unexpected edits, for example, worked so well for me! There were, of course, some choice editing that didn’t quite land as well with me, such as the removal of Vader’s proper intro at the beginning and thus also removing the build-up for the Emperor (though I completely understand why and what you were going for!), or certain music you inserted/replaced in some areas (especially during Luke/Vader’s final duel - Williams’ original score was already fantastic there), or some of the changes to Jabba’s dialogue, or some other things that, at this point, were very minor niggles and not worth mentioning.
One last note that’s worthy of its own mention: I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but the way you now have Han blindly looking around after he sets off Boba’s jetpack was hilarious to me - I legit lol’d at that 😄 In all honesty, though, I don’t think I’d want that in a final edit (it definitely had a “Marx Brothers” vibe, which I don’t think is wanted in this context) but just wanted to give that a shout out anyway!
So would I recommend this to anyone looking for a new and fresh way to watch ROTJ (or to anyone looking for ideas/concepts for their own edit)?? To that I would say a resounding “YES”! But, again, one must go into this with the correct “viewing lens”; I feel that anyone who may have been overly harsh with criticisms didn’t prepare themselves and expected a fully-polished and completed edit, which it’s not yet.
Thank you so much for all of your hard work and for sharing this edit, IlFanEditore! You mentioned to me that you’re taking a break from the editing for now but may possibly renew the Renewed in the future, so when you do decide to do that, hit me up and I’d be more than happy to lend you any helpful pointers I can 😃
Cheers!