Okay, it took me a few months, but I finally finished Rebels Recut, and I have to give serious props to g00b. A fanedit this intricate spread out over this many hours of content must take ages to work on. A great deal of care and effort was clearly taken in slimming episodes down to highlight their best qualities, and cut out as much fluff as possible.
The pace and flow of dialogue is generally improved throughout the entire show too. Not to mention some great amendments to the story, like keeping Kallus’s extermination of the Lasat canon. As well as some subtle edits like the additional voices in the World Between Worlds. I especially love some of the changes to the music throughout the edit.
With that being said, I’m putting these thoughts together after watching through everything, but I’ll do my best to remember at least some helpful notes or critiques that stood out to me.
The first of which would be that I really think Kallus kicking that Stormtrooper to his death should be removed from the first episode. It makes his character arc hard to take seriously when he’s at first shown being so cartoonishly evil towards those around him, only to later have his heel-turn start when he feels like the people around him are too callous. Like, dude, that’s not an Empire problem, that’s a you kicking people who annoy you to their death problem.
Second would be during A Message to Lothal. The way Kanan mentions having met Bail Organa once before is so offhand that it feels like a reference to something we were meant to see. I feel like this line should be cut around if it’s possible.
The next big thing that stood out to me was the episode with The Purrgil. The dialogue in the first half of that episode is really noticeably cut to the point where it feels pretty unnatural. I assume this was done in an effort to tone down Hera’s hatred for an entire species of wild animal, but I think too much was stripped away, and it’s left feeling very awkward as a result.
Another big thing I want to note is that, in Twilight of the Apprentice, while it’s a really cool idea to turn Malachor into Malachor V, some stuff just doesn’t work. The planet shots look janky and out of place, and the new voice for the Holocron sounds noticeably off. I think there should at least be alternate versions of this episode, (and the first episode of Season 3,) that remove these changes. I also think having Ahsoka return Anakin’s eye color to blue is a cool visual effect, but not something that really fits the lore or the character.
Lastly, Ketsu Onyo comes completely out of nowhere in Season 4. Her design is a bit too unique and her actions a bit too helpful for her to seem like a background character, so not ever being formally introduced to her feels very awkward and makes it clear that something is missing.
In any case, for anyone who’s a fan of Rebels, this is probably the best way to experience the show. For me, personally, Rebels is fine, but nothing too great, so even a relatively condensed 18+ hours of it is a lot to sit through. As it stands, however, any edit you’ll find of Rebels that’s shorter than this cuts a lot of pertinent information from the show.
Personally, I still think the best edit for this show sits somewhere around 12 hours, waiting to be made. My fingers are crossed that g00b’s movie edits might manage to trim the series down just a little bit more and approach that length. Until then, however, Rebels Recut is the best edit I’ve seen of this show so far, and a testament to g00b’s editing skills.
